ro Field Columbian Museum — Geology, Vol. III. 



have been made about the time the meteorite struck the earth. 

 It passes along the plane of a nickel-iron-troilite vein such as appears 

 in other parts of the meteorite, and the position of this vein doubt- 

 less determined the fracture. Of the narrow surfaces of the mete- 

 orite, one, that shown in Plate VII, has a rugose character and 

 incomplete crust similar to that of the front side of the meteorite. 

 Here, evidently, the meteorite split off from some other mass dur- 

 ing its descent to the earth. The other narrow surfaces, shown in Plate 

 VIII, have a complete crust and rounded edges. Their pittings 

 are few and irregular and show rounding and smoothing. 



By means of a cast of the larger stone, kindly furnished the 

 Museum by Dr. Borgstrom, it was possible to determine in what 

 manner the two stones may have been joined together. The rear 

 and front sides are so plainly marked on both stones and the surface 

 of mid-atmospheric fracture so evident in the smaller one that there 

 is little difficulty in deciding that the stones were joined together in 

 the manner indicated in Plates IX and X. Of these, Plate IX 

 shows what, in the view of the writer, was the front side of the 

 meteorite in its descent and Plate X the rear side. This deter- 

 mination does not however, accord with that of Borgstrom; 

 for the larger stone. Borgstrom reverses them,* basing his 

 determination chiefly on the fact that on what he re- 

 gards as the rear side, the apparent directions of flow of 

 molten matter point in a general way toward the center of the 

 mass. These directions of flow are determined by a heaping of 

 the crust on the sides of the pits. Such indications, however, are 

 liable to be deceptive. Several pits on the smaller stone show 

 drift phenomena in one direction or another which, in the present 

 writer's view, are to be regarded as remains of flows from the centers 

 of the pits outward. These flows probably take place in all directions 

 but leave traces only here and there. All the other characters of 

 the side regarded by Borgstrom as the rear one seem without ques- 

 tion to be those of the front. It has a generally arched or conical 

 character, a relatively large extent of surface, and deep pits. These 

 are well known characters of the front side of oriented meteorites. 

 Moreover, if this were regarded the rear side, the side which 

 must be taken for the front is one having a form concave toward 

 the direction of movement through the air. It is hardly conceiv- 

 able that the mass could have come through the air with its con- 

 cavity foremost. The form obtained by joining the two stones 



*0p. cit. p. 84, 



