2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 98 



No further details could be furnished by Mr. Collett. His state- 

 ment that the farmer "saw it fall" cannot be taken literally, for at 

 that hour of the night he could not have seen it fall after it had ceased 

 to be luminous ; and if the appearance had been that of a fireball strik- 

 ing the earth, it actually would have struck many miles away. We may 

 fairly assume, therefore, that it fell nearly vertically and that he saw 

 the light and later heard a noise — -perhaps not aptly described by the 

 word "explosion." The hum or swish near the end of its flight perhaps 

 was audible, and so gave him the impression of something falling 

 nearby. At any rate, whatever he observed was such as to convince him 

 that something had fallen and to prompt him to search for it the next 

 morning. 



The meager narrative of this occurrence is quite consistent with the 

 supposition that this small iron fell in the manner above suggested. 

 If any improbability attaches to that supposition, the coincidence of 

 Frist seeing and hearing a meteor, believing it fell close to him, and 

 actually finding an obviously freshly fallen meteorite the next day, 

 would surely be much more improbable. The facts therefore seem 

 to justify adding this to the short list of iron meteorites of which falls 

 have been observed. 



It is a flake-shaped mass, flat on one side and slightly convex on the 

 other. It weighed when received 218.5 grams, having lost perhaps 10 

 or 15 grams when one side was polished by Dr. Collett. It was about 

 6 by 7 cm. in its larger dimensions and about 1.5 cm. in its greatest 

 thickness. 



The surface of the flat side which is covered by a very thin, slightly 

 shining coating of magnetic oxide, shows no rust or abrasions and is 

 characteristically pitted. At one edge a fine crack extends inward about 

 2 cm. from the edge on the flat side and a shorter distance on the 

 rounded side, which undoubtedly resulted from stresses during its 

 flight flatwise through the air. No evidence of drift is apparent on the 

 fusion crust. 



Most of the convex surface had been polished and etched by Dr. 

 Collett, the polished surface following the original rounded contour 

 (pi. 1, fig. 2). In order to provide an adequate surface for study, it 

 was cut in a plane parallel with the flat side, whereby a slice about 5 

 mm. thick was removed and a surface about 4 by 5 cm. was obtained. 



The structure is of the coarsest octahedral type (Ogg) , the width of 

 the bands ranging from 2 to 4 mm. They are slightly curved or wavy, 

 of variable width, with irregularly rounded ends. The etched surface 

 corresponds roughly with a cubic plane, and the kamacite bands run in 



