258 
when they fall. Fortunately, no fall 
has to date injured or killed anybody 
as far as authenticated records go. 
Buildings have been struck, and some 
day one may fall in a thickly populated 
zone and take its toll, but that day 
may be in the far distant future. 
W. J. Fisher | made a study showing 
that out of a total of 528 witnessed 
falls for the world, 18, or only 3.4 
percent, had struck buildings, and 12, 
or 2.27 percent, had landed on roads. 
Hence it will be seen that the risk to 
an individual is negligible. 
The finding of a meteorite depends 
largely upon natural conditions, such 
as the abundance of rocks scattered 
about, and the frequency and com- 
pleteness with which a district is 
covered by man. In rugged terrain 
or in heavily forested areas few finds 
have been recorded. In areas of our 
country that have been covered by 
glaciers, meteorite hunting is very 
discouraging, as _ preglacial mete- 
orites are now buried under glacial 
drift. 
ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1948 
Meteorites that fall into the water 
sink to the bottom and become buried 
in the sediments forming there. It 
is not likely that many of these will 
ever be found, but quite by accident 
J. O. Neill, who was fishing some 
three-quarters of a mile from the shore 
of Lake Okeechobee, Fla., had the 
rare fortune to recover a small meteor- 
ite in his net. 
The number of meteorites that 
reach the earth each year far exceeds 
the number actually witnessed. The 
British Museum ? published a table 
listing 1,251 different meteorites from 
the entire world, and of this number 
602 were seen to fall and 649 were 
finds of old falls. The proportion of 
observed falls to finds in the United 
States is 97 to 441, or about 1 to 5, 
whereas in the table referred to it is 
nearer 1 to 1. 
About 10 years ago Smead reported 
on the frequency of witnessed falls 
within the various countries of the 
world, and the figures are given in 
the last column of the following table. 
TABLE 1.—Area, population, and reported falls of meteorites in five countries* 
Country Area square 
miles 
Inidtaitiys-s fetes sinew! oe Sk 1, 802, 629 
(WnitedtStatesss 6 oo ae 3, 026, 789 
Rrancen tga tenets cots tee 212, 681 
Germany jccsc ee cles 181, 662 
Spain ses cicueyccaee ckeceiaeyeeis 195, 010 
i Population Witnessed 
Population densi falls 
352, 837, 778 195 102 
124, 693, 606 41 79 
41, 834, 923 196 54 
64, 600, 000 B55 24 
22, 760, 854 116 Pe} 
* Figures for area and population are from Rand McNally Atlas, 1934. The number of 
witnessed falls is from J. L. Smead’s article in Pop. Astron., vol. 46, p. 331, 1938. 
This table, although out of date as 
to the number of witnessed falls, is of 
interest in giving the relative propor- 
tion of observed falls for these coun- 
tries. —The United States, with its 
lower population density, has done ex- 
ceptionally well in recovering freshly 
fallen meteorites. From the following 
17 States no witnessed falls have been 
reported: Alabama, Arizona, Colo- 
1 Pop. Astron., vol. 41, pp. 246-254. 1933. 
rado, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Lou- 
isiana, Massachusetts, Montana, Ne- 
vada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, 
Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, West 
Virginia, Wyoming. 
Meteorites in the United States 
There have been 524 different mete- 
orites found within the limits of the 
2 Second appendix to Catalogue of Me- 
teorites, by Max H. Hey. 1940. 
