330 Progress of Foreign Scienee. 



Lixna, about fifty paces from two husbandmen, who were work- 

 ing in the field, and who were greatly astonished. About four 

 wersts distant, in the presence of six labourers who were mowing 

 hay on the banks of the Kolupschen lake, there fell at the same 

 time, with a frightful hissing sound, a large body into the water 

 dashing its spray several fathoms into the air. Also at a third 

 place, three wersts in the opposite direction, there was observed 

 to fall from the air into the river Dubna, something which ren- 

 dered its waters muddy for nearly an hour. The stone which 

 fell in presence of the two husbandmen, penetrated a foot and a 

 half into a dense, dry, clayey loam. It was so hot that the men 

 when they tried to touch it, after recovering from their surprise, 

 burned their hands. There was also a smell of gunpowder dif- 

 fused round it. Its shape, when entire, resembled a rounded 

 anvil, of which the narrow end was undermost. It weighed 

 altogether about forty pounds. Its external characters are de- 

 scribed by M. Grotthus, and resemble those of other meteoric 

 stones. Its composition, according to his elaborate analysis, is 

 as follows : Iron 26, nickel 2, sulphur 3.5, (which bodies he re- 

 gards as forming 31.5 of asulphuret of iron and nickel), siUca 

 33.2, protoxide of iron 22, magnesia 10.8, alumina 1.3, me- 

 tallic chromium 6.7, lime 0.5, manganese a trace. His mode of 

 analysis is somewhat peculiar, and we shall perhaps advert to 

 it in our next Number. He thinks the proportions of chromium 

 and manganese are very difficult to determine, when pre- 

 sent in small quantity, unless Ave remove the greater part of the 

 iron by muriatic acid, before fusing the powder with caustic 

 potash. In this way also the mass yields more readily to the 

 alcali. He believes the chromium to have existed in this me- 

 teorolite in the metallic state, because had it been oxidized, it 

 would have dissolved in the muriatic acid. 



The following mode of analyzing copper pyrites by Professor 

 Dobereiner seems ingenious. He transmits over it a stream of 

 chlorine, dried by passing previously over muriate of lime. The 

 pyrites is entirely decomposed, and chlorides of sulphur, iron, 

 and copper result. On heating this mixture with a spirit lamp, 

 the first chloride distils over into a separate vessel, the second 

 sublimes in brilliant flakes into the upper part of the retort, or 

 matrass, and the cupreous proto-chloride remains at the bottom 

 in the form of a cinnamon-brown semi-fused mass*. There is 

 much resemblanc e between this method and Berzelius's for ana- 

 lyzing the ores of nickel, of which an account will be given in 

 our next Number. We were surprised however to perceive M. 

 Dobereiner describing, as a new contrivance of his own, the 

 pneumato-mercurial apparatus, so long ago invented by Mr. 

 Pepys ; wiih which he and Mr. Allen performed their celebrated 

 experiments on carbonic acid and respiration. 



Meteorolitein France. — On the 15th of June last, about three 



* Gilbert's Annalen for 1821, Part 4. 



