OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 



68 



Date of Fall or Find. 



Weight 

 No. in 

 Grams. 



5,705 



186.5 



Description. 



inch in breadth, yet they are bound 

 firmly together by a network of plates, 

 which in some parts raggedly jut out 

 from the octahedral faces. The general 

 appearance of the exterior of the speci- 

 men reminds one somewhat of a rough 

 mass of galena crystals, only of octahe- 

 dral form. The rough crystal is evi- 

 dently the result of fracture, probably 

 caused during the passage of the mass 

 through the air, and the octahedral 

 faces are cleavage planes, if the term 

 cleavage may be applied to such frac- 

 tures, which cannot be reproduced by 

 splitting in the ordinary way on ac- 

 count of the malleability of the mass. 

 The specimen further exhibits a fused 

 crust over the octahedral faces, which 

 must have formed after the partial 

 breaking up of the large mass, giving 

 a rounded appearance to the edges. 

 On a polished surface, cut nearly paral- 

 lel to the largest octahedral face, the 

 figures produced by etching appear very 

 strikingly. They are perfectly distinct 

 and regular, being typical Widmanstat- 

 tian figures ; but when they come to 

 the cracked portion of the iron, they 

 appear as separate plates, some having 

 been broken by the rupture, others 

 separated, while the greater number 

 appear bent and strained, but still co- 

 herent and binding the mass firmly to- 

 gether. The whole appearance on the 

 etched surface gives at once the idea of 

 a forcible explosion, and yet all the 

 cracks, even the most ragged, follow 

 directions parallel to the octahedral 

 faces. f [Smith Collection.] 



Specimen with three faces at right 

 angles to each other polished and 

 etched. The exterior is ragged, with 

 octahedral plates jutting out. [Smith 

 Collection.] 



This specimen consists of a mass of 

 octahedral plates loosely packed to- 

 gether so as to form hopper crystals. In 



t Oliver W. Huntington "On the Crystalline Structure of Iron Meteorites," 

 loc. cit. 



