6 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
have been cut from the Woman and Ahnighito, which have been 
carefully polished and etched in order to determine the presence 
and character of the Widmanstatten lines. The analyses ' show 
that the material is an alloy of iron and nickel, with a small 
amount of cobalt and minute percentages of other elements 
present. The etched surface shows that the iron is to be de- 
scribed as belonging in the octahedral division. The lamelle are 
rather broad (1. to 1.5 mm) and under Brezina’s classification 
the iron would be called a ‘‘ Broad Octahedrite (Og).’’ The 
character of the figures may be seen from the accompanying 
illustration. (See p. 5.) The lamella are rather long and 
straight and sometimes gather together in groups. 
The nature of the surroundings amid which the masses were 
found precludes the idea of their being anything but meteorites. 
The country rock is gneissoid in character, according to Professor 
R. D. Salisbury, who visited the island in 1895 with Commander 
Peary, and neither in the bedrock nor in the glacial drift cover- 
ing the region, so far as seen, is there any of the igneous rock 
which is the only telluric rock known to contain metallic iron. 
The position of the meteorites when found, half-buried in drift, 
seems to indicate that they fell on the ice at a time when a glacier 
covered the islands. The close similarity of the three in posi- 
tion, chemical composition and texture renders it most highly 
probable that they fell at the same time. The Eskimo preserve 
a tradition, the origin of which is lost in antiquity, that the 
™ Results of chemical analyses of the Cape York meteorites made by J. Ed- 
ward Whitfield of Philadelphia: 
No. 1. The Dog. No. 2. The Woman. No. 3. Ahnighito, 
or the Tent. 
\bdornsacos . SS OMCLLO So nooner KN I Mong oes OnA7le 2% 
INTCKEL es ee Gee) OPO Sale eee TG EEN | awe eesEnee Hovis) . 
COAG Rees rate a BO? 5130 rte nay OS 53S) tw De ee rom) 
COD PE wearer as & OL OM Ommitneebaw, fists 6,018“ 2.05/54 Osonraae 
-Sabthalohbbartrnm coms cant: | CHONG), reece prior mee NOISE © Goths co. c none. 
Phosphorus. ...2-: -\. OF 72 me ate, 2 0, TO Os: meee », 0202 ae 
Carbon in spews ONOT hae ee -. ©1020 ~ "items. -ClO2omee 
neon D So sosa06 oe NOOKIOD “Yvon os. 100.038 % 
None of the samples contained silicon or manganese. A trace of chromium 
was found in the fine oxidized particles from the surface of No. 3, Ahnighito, 
indicating the former presence of a nodule of variable composition. 
