May, 1902. Meteorite Studies, I — Farrington. 303 



given by Mr. Ward as Section 2, Township 20 S. , Range 21 W. 

 The village of Wellmanville is not far from this locality and this 

 aerolite may therefore be called the Wellmanville stone. 



For investigating Preston's hypothesis two lines of inquiry may 

 be followed; (1) The probable course of the meteor and (2) the con- 

 stitution and structure of the stones. 



(1) The probable course of the meteor: Starting from Franklin- 

 ville and going in a general northwest direction the Kansada and 

 Jerome stones will be found nearly in the same line at distances of 

 seventeen miles to Kansada and thirteen miles further on to the 

 locality of the- Jerome meteorite.* Thirty miles further on in 

 the same line appears the Oakley find. (See Plate XLV.) That 

 a meteor may have moved along this line dropping fragments 

 as it passed is conceivable, although no observed shower has 

 a greater length of distribution than sixteen miles. If these 

 stones are from a single meteor the direction of movement was 

 undoubtedly from southeast to northwest rather than the reverse, 

 since the smaller fragments would undoubtedly fall first. f The 

 Wellmanville stone is somewhat eccentric to this general course 

 but it is quite conceivable that it may have come from the same 

 meteor so far as the latter's course is concerned. This would give a 

 length of distribution of forty-six miles, or, if the Oakley stone is 

 included, of eighty-six miles. The Long Island and Prairie Dog 

 Creek meteorites evidently lie far outside of this course, although the 

 exact location of the Prairie Dog Creek find seems not to be recorded. 

 Brezina gives it| as 39°3o' N., 99°o' W., on Sappa Creek, Decatur 

 County, Kansas, which is an utterly impossible location. However, 

 Prairie Dog Creek, Decatur County, may be assumed to be its approx- 

 imate place of find. The Long Island and Prairie Dog Creek locations 

 form then, as shown by Preston, in connection with the Jerome and 

 Ness County stones, a parallelogram 117 miles long by 35 miles 

 broad. This parallelogram extends in a north-northeast direction, a 

 course at about right angles to that which I have just traced. It is 



* Dana, as quoted by Washington, states that the Jerome meteorite was found on the Smoky 

 Hill River fifteen miles east of Jerome.— Amer. Jour, of Science, 4th ser., vol. 5, p. 447. 



tl do not know that attention has been called before to this method of deducing a meteor's 

 course, but it seems evident as a matter of reasoning that the smaller fragments would reach the 

 ground first since the greater momentum possessed by the larger fragments would carry them 

 farther. Meunier is of the opposite opinion (Meteorites, p. 424), but as a matter of record in all 

 showers of which I have been able to obtain statistics the larger stones are found at the farther 

 end of the meteor's path. This was the case at New Concord, Orgueil, Lanc6 and Butsura. For 

 the purpose of gaining further evidence on this point it is quite desirable that observers should in 

 the future note .the weight of the stones in connection with their location when picked up after a 

 meteoric fall. 



J Die Meteoriten Sammlung, etc., Wien, May 1895, p. 359. 



