248 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



fierce cannonading (echoes of the explosions ?) Hke the discharge of a battei'v 

 of artillery or a rai)id-fire machine gun, gradually growing fainter and dying 

 out like rolling thiuider in the distance. The first explosion took place about 

 40 miles west of the fall and fully as far above the surface of the earth. The 

 fragments Avere scattered over an area nine miles l)y three; the largest ones 

 going farthest. I heard the largest one drop and hunted for it for over two 

 years. 



" On INIay 6, 1908, I was breaking new ground on the prairie with a gang- 

 plow and a five horse team that was a little too high-spirited to be controlled 

 easily, but having half-mile furrows as smooth as a lawn before me, I had set 

 the plow a few notches deeper into the ground and let them go, thinking 

 nothing of meteorites. While congratulating myself upon our speed we 

 suddenly — very suddenly — struck something hard. It threw me out of 

 my seat and piled my gang-plow up in a ])romiseuous heaj) against the team, 

 which was too l)adly suri)rised to do anything. I had plowed hundreds of 

 acres and knew there was not a rock within ten miles of me, so my first 

 thoughts were of dynamite. After sitting for some time trying to think, I 

 ventured back to where my plow had left the groimd. Seeing nothing, I 

 commenced stabbing with my jack-knife and soon located the cause of the 

 distiu'bance. It was the largest fragment of the Modoc meteorite and com- 

 pletely buried under the tough Ijuffalo sod (virgin soil) and was pounded in 

 so hard that the force of the blow of my gang-plow had not loosened it. So 

 completely was it buried, that I had hunted dozens of times all over that 

 pasture without either finding the rock or the hole in the ground which it had 

 made." 



Twenty-five fragments of Modoc have been found. All are covered 

 with the thin glassy black coating or "skin" that is generally character- 

 istic of aerolites and that is caused by the njeltiiig of the surface in the 

 great heat generated by friction with the air during flight through the 

 earth's atmosphere. Flakes broken off by the plow reveal the interior 

 of the mass and show that the meteorite is composed of whitish stony 

 material like some terrestrial lavas, but containing bright specks of 

 metallic iron. 



