A HERETOFORE UNDESCRIBED METEORIC STONE 

 FROM KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI.^ 



By George P. Merrill, 

 Head Curator 0/ Oeology, United States National Museum. 



The stone described below was first brought to the attention of the 

 United States National Museum in October, 1917, by Mr. Edward 

 Butts, curator of the Daniel B. Dyer Museum, of Kansas City, Mis- 

 souri, who forwarded a small fragment for identification. Subse- 

 quent correspondence led to the forwarding of the entire stone to 

 Washington for the purpose of making a cast and for description of 

 the occurrence and its lithologic character. The history of the stone 

 as given by Mr. Butts is as follows: It was found by a Mr. C. C. 

 Frisby, who, in 1903, was working a stone quarry, now abandoned, at 

 the corner of Twenty-fourth Street and Oakley Avenue, within the 

 corporate limits of Kansas City. According to his statement, it lay 

 some 6 feet below the surface, having penetrated 3^ feet of dirt and 

 soil and 2| feet of shaly limestone, coming to rest about 6 inches 

 above the solid ledge. Although the meteoric nature of the find was 

 suspected, no record seems to have been made of its finding, and in- 

 quiries made by Mr. Butts fail to bring to light any conclusive infor- 

 mation on the subject. A Mr. Whiting, who had lived within 100 

 feet of the spot for the past 25 years, had no knowledge of a fall in 

 the vicinity, nor had a Mr. King, who had lived for 33 years about a 

 fourth of a mile away. From its general appearance one can only 

 surmise that it belongs to an old and unrecorded fall. 



It may be well to note, however, that in the Transactions of the 

 St. Louis Academy of Science for December, 1875, Prof. J. C. Broad- 

 head described the flight of a meteorite over eastern Nebraska and 

 northwest Missouri, the stone traveling in a general southeasterly 

 direction and becoming disrupted with the usual explosive accom- 

 paniments in the vicinity of St. Joseph, some 50 miles north of 

 Kansas Cit}^, whence it passed onward and was lost to sight. As 

 the directions mentioned would carry the main mass to the east of 

 Kansas City, and as, moreover, the stone here being described must 

 have traveled for a very considerable distance as a nearly complete 



* Museum Catalogue, No. 583. 



Proceedinqs U. S. National Museum. Vol. 55— No. 2259 



95 



