Meteoric Iron from Tennessee and Alabama. 345 
Its shape was irregularly oval, partly covered with a brown 
oxydated crust, which in some places penetrated 1 of an inch in- 
to the mass, at other places the pure iron is at the surface. The 
iron is very compact. Its fracture is very crystalline, exhibiting 
when broken triangular lamine, some of which are about 2 of 
an inch long. I doubt not, therefore, that it is susceptible of pro- 
ducing the Widmannstattian figures. On the polished surface 
of the section, several lines are perceptible; they are placed in 
such positions towards each other, that in case they were in con- 
tact they would form equilateral triangles. 
By sawing this mass I discovered a nodule about 2} inches 
long, 2 inches broad, and 11 inches high. This nodule being 
placed near the external surface, and the saw-cut going through 
it; and it being separated from the generality of the mass by 
some thin pellicles of a white brilliant metal, as mentioned in the 
_ description of the De Kalb County iron, I could disengage it 
easily from the mass by some slight blows witha hammer. The 
part of this nodule that was imbedded, shows a very crystalline 
surface. 
This iron is not much influenced by atmospheric agencies, but 
where the brown oxidized crust penetrates the mass, as observed 
above, some chemical action takes place. I have often found that, 
just at the junction of the crust with the metallic iron, during a 
humid. state of the atmosphere, small pearls of a brown fluid 
would make their appearance ; these fluid globules would some- 
times become covered by a brown pellicle, and when the atmos- . 
phere was very dry the whole of the fluid would disappear, and 
hothing but the empty spherical pellicle remained. I could not 
conceive the cause of these fluid globules, and endeavored there- 
fore to collect some of the fluid, thinking at the moment, of the 
discovery of chlorine in meteoric iron by Dr. Jackson. I brought 
some of it to the surface of a weak solution of nitrate of silver, 
and immediately a small stream of a white color went to the bot- 
tom; of course here I had the chlorine. This chlorine does not 
exist in the iron. ‘T'o convince myself of this, 1 took some filings 
of it, (between 5 and 6 grains,) and having saturated some pure 
hitric acid with them, dropped it into a similar solution of silver 
as above; no precipitate ensued. I made experiments, also, with 
the little fluid globules, in the presence of Prof. Litton, with the 
Same result. 
