A CATALOGUE OF OBSERVATIONS OF LUMINOUS METEORS. 33 
piece of meteoric iron, weighing 42 lbs. 3 oz. Austrian, was sent to the Imperial 
Cabinet at Vienna. Its form is an irregular parallelopiped, and the exterior 
surface is covered with concavities, the deeper parts of which exhibit a smooth 
yellowish brown coating. 
It was soon afterwards found that the “lightning” had penetrated the do- 
minial house called the Ziegelschlag, situated at a short distance from the 
town. Mr. Pollack, the chief forester, describes that he found a hole as large 
as the head in the roof, and a mass of broken lath and plaster in the bed-room 
of three children, who, when terrified by the crash, were unable to escape. 
The piece of iron which was found here under the ruins, weighed 30 lbs. 8 oz., 
and differed from the other only in form, inasmuch as it has some resemblance 
to a colossal oyster-shell. In breaking through the plaster, the melted sur- 
face carried off some unconsumed straw, which gives it at a distance a gold- 
like appearance. The chief forester Pollack calculated the height of the 
cloud from which the two fragments diverged at 29,351 Vienna feet=29,562 
Prussian feet* ; the distance asunder of the two places where they fell being 
6507 Vienna feet. pe 
Analysis of the Braunau meteoric iron, by A. Duflos and N. W. Fischer. 
Pe). COS TI Poa Ua 91-882 
Capper yee Me Pere, 
Manganese............ 
Arsenic ........ pS EG 
Calenimg i638 Sores 
Magnesium .......... 2072 
Siliclum........ see . 
Garbo esi 208 eee 
Chlorine.............. 
wahpmare? 2 Sy BRET: 2%} 
100-000 
It was afterwards found that the mass was not homogeneous, but contained 
portions of iron pyrites, in which Fischer found also carbon, phosphorus and 
chromium,—Poggendorff’s Ann. lxxii. 
Extract from a letter from W. W. Smyth, Esq. 
“London, March 1, 1849.- 
“T have just met with a curious fact, viz. the presence of phosphorus in 
certain meteoric irons. 
“ Berzelius found in the meteoric iron of Bohumilitz certain steel-gray lami- 
nettes and grains, which he proved to be composed of iron, nickel and phos- 
phorus. Lately, my friend Patera at Vienna has analysed a similar mineral 
in the meteoric iron of Arva. It was observed in small leaflets, which are 
flexible, and have a strong effect on the needle ; the hardness=6°5, the spec. 
gr.=7°01 to 7-22, and the composition— 

Phosphorus teedin sites vtiavie ds's 7°26 
Tita. Mio Bats eats Sas wos 87°20 
Wighelr. tse se.<%10 Sr it, si ya: ceria 
98°70 

“The mean of three analyses also gave a small quantity of carbon. The 
_ name Schreibersite has been proposed for this new mineral. 
“ Yours ever, 
« WaRINGTON W. SmyTH.” 
* Above 30,000 English feet, or five miles and five furlongs. 
1849, D 
