252 PROCEEDINGS OP THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



This locality is about forty miles southeast from the spot ou Cany Fork 

 where the Carthage meteorite was found. 



There is no question that the irons were found as stated in the 

 above letter, but one familiar with the well known and widely dis- 

 tributed Cocke County iron could not but be struck with its close 

 resemblance to the Smithville meteorites. 



The largest mass of the Smithville iron, as shown in the plate, Fig- 

 ure 1, is roughly spherical, with no sigus of original crust, but marked 

 by one deep pitting which once contained troilite now nearly weathered 

 away, or possibly melted out during the flight of the body through the 

 atmosphere. That the specimen had lain for a long time in the soil 

 is evident from its being coated with a thick covering of magnetic 

 oxide of iron, the magnetism being strong enough to attract iron nails 

 with considerable force. This covering, however, does not fully con- 

 ceal certain very typical features of the iron, — a marked silvery white- 

 ness, a very striking and ready octahedral cleavage, a slightly yellowish 

 metallic foil separating the crystalline plates of iron, — also numerous 

 nodules of a very cleavable troilite, embedded in graphite and granular 

 schreiberseit ; while perhaps the most striking feature of all is a nodule 

 of fine-grained compact graphite nearly two inches in diameter. This 

 is probably a larger mass of meteoric graphite than any on record. 

 The only one which compares with it is that formerly described by 

 J. Lawrence Smith in the Sevier County iron.* The weight of the 

 Smithville nodule cannot be accurately estimated, as it was not observed 

 till the mass had been sawed into slabs. It appeared to be nearly 

 spherical, with a diameter as great as the longest dimension of the 

 dumb-bell shaped nodule described by J. Lawrence Smith, making the 

 total mass of the former considerably greater than that of the latter. 



Figure 2 of the plate represents an etched surface of the largest 

 section of the sixty-four and a half pound specimen of the Smith- 

 ville iron, and here again are very striking features. The natural 

 size of the section is nine and a quarter inches by seven. Near 

 the lower right-hand corner can be seen, somewhat indistinctly 

 outlined, the large nodule of graphite just described, while the rest 

 of the plate brings out quite markedly the peculiar features of the 

 Widmanstattian figures. In the first place, nodules of graphite and 

 troilite are abundantly scattered over the surface. Usually these 

 nodules are troilite embedded in graphite, and this in its turn is sur- 

 rounded by schreiberseit, though there is considerable variety in the 



* American Journal of Science, 3d ser., Vol. XI. p. 392, 1876. 



