1888.] PROCEEDINGS OF UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 101 



ON THE SAN EMIGDIO METEORITE. 



BY GEORGE P. MERRILL. 



(With Plate xxxv.) 



The stone here described Las already been the subject of a brief 

 paper in the columns of the American Journal of Science.* As there 

 stated, the fragments came into my possession through the kindness of 

 Mr. Thomas Price, of San Francisco. The stone is stated by Mr. Price 

 to have been found by a prospector in the San Emigdio Mountains, 

 San Bernardino Couuty, in the southern part of California, and to have 

 been sent him for assaying, it being mistaken for an ore of one of the 

 precious metals ; unfortunately, before its true nature was discovered 

 the entire sample received was put through a crusher and hence pieces 

 larger than a few grains' weight are unobtainable. Nothing whatever 

 can be learned regarding the fall of the stone, and its meteoric origin is 

 assumed from its structure, composition, and the presence of the well- 

 known black coating on the exterior surfaces of many of the larger 

 particles. The weight of the entire mass was stated by the finder to 

 be about 80 pouuds. 



All the fragments received are stained throughout a dull reddish- 

 brown color through the oxidation of the metallic portions. The stone 

 breaks with an irregular fracture, and presents on casual inspection 

 nothing indicative of its meteoric origin ; a polished surface, however, 

 shows abundant silvery white flecks of metallic iron in sizes rarely over 

 one millimeter in diameter, and numerous larger spherical bodies of a 

 green color suggestive of olivine. These last, so far as observed, are 

 never over 2 or 3 millimeters in diameter. 



In the thin section the true nature of the stone is at once apparent. 

 As seen under a power of fifty diameters its appearance is as indicated 

 in Figs. 1 and 2, PI. xxxv. A large number of rounded and irregular 

 chondri and crystal fragments with scattering blebs of metallic iron 

 and pyrrhotite, imbedded in a groundmass the true nature of which is 

 so badly obscured by ferruginous stains as to be almost irresolvable, 

 but which from a study of the thinnest slides obtainable, I am inclined 

 to consider as fragmental. This irresolvable groundmass I have indi- 

 cated by the dotted areas in the two figures. 



The readily determinable constituents named in the order of their 

 abundance are olivine, enstatite (bronzite), metallic iron, and pyrrho- 

 tite; there are also occasionally very minute fragments of an almost 



* On a new Meteorite from the San Emigdio Range, San Bernardino County, Cal., 

 by George P. Merrill. American Journal of Science, Jane, 1888, p. 190. 



ProcN.M. 88—11 fc^W. 



