Description and Analysis of a Meteoric Mass. 251 
and its real value was made known. ‘To the politeness of Col. 
Micajah C. Rodgers, of Serierille, I am indebted for a considera- 
ble quantity of it; and the Hon. Judge Jacob Peck of Jefferson 
County, has also presented me with some small fragments. J am 
thus enabled to lay a description of this singular substance before 
the scientific public. 
Having ascertained, as appears from the analysis below given, 
that this iron contains nickel, the mass must be considered of 
meteoric origin ; but it differs from most of the masses of meteoric 
iton hitherto described. The original weight of it is said to have 
been about 2000 pounds. he portions that I have seen, (as well 
as those which are in my possession, ) present a singular heterogene- 
ous mixture of metallic iron, carburet of iron or graphite, sulphu- 
ret of iron, (pyrites,) and hydroxide of iron, the latter, brown and 
yellow ; in some parts all four ingredients form a kind of homo- 
geneous mixture. 
The most abundant constituent, however, is the nickeliferous 
iron, and it composes about ;°3,ths of the whole mass. It has 
partly a crystalline structure, and is in part, composed of grains 
or globules of various sizes and forms, merely agglutinated to- 
gether, or sometimes separated by a thin flexible highly polished 
pellicle of graphite. The crystalline part is composed of lamin 
of various thickness, in the form of equilateral triangles, which 
are separated from each other by very thin flexible pellicles, as 
mentioned above respecting the grains. 
I expected to find these triangular lamin placed in such posi- 
tion as to form octahedrons, or showing a cleavage parallel to the 
Sides of a regular octahedron; but this is not the case, as the 
Cleavage gives a regular tetrahedron. I have one of these forms, 
Which is about an inch from base to apex. 
The metallic iron is also dispersed. in small irregular-shaped 
masses through a hard, compact, brown hydrated oxide of iron. 
Throughout this the iron is also dispersed in invisible grains, to 
be detected only by the magnet, which attracts them when the 
Substance has been reduced to powder. 
‘This iron is malleable. I have in my possession a horse-shoe 
hail, which was made of it without having undergone a previous 
Preparation, but it is harder and whiter than common wrought 
iron. This hardness and color may be owing to a small quantity 
of carbon which it contains, or perhaps to the nickel; in its nat- 
ural state, however, the color of the iron differs much in different 
