ON THE FAYETTE COUNTY, TEXAS, METEORITE FINDS 

 OF 1878 AND 1900 AND THE PEOBABILITY OF THEIR 

 REPRESENTING TWO DISTINCT FALLS. 



By George P. Merrill, 

 Head Curator, Department 0/ Geology, United States National Museum. 



Under date of February 10, 1900, Prof. O. C. Charlton, then of 

 Baylor University, Waco, Texas, sent me two chips of a stony meteor- 

 ite, concerning the exact nature of which he was in doubt, but which 

 were brought to him by a Mr. C. L. Melcher, of Swiss Alp, Fayette 

 County, in that State. Subsequent correspondence developed the 

 fact that three stones had been found by Mr. Melcher, weighing, 

 respectively, 16 pounds 9| ounces, 12 pounds 3^ ounces, and 2 pounds 

 12 ounces. The meteoric nature of the material was easily estab- 

 lislied, and from the locality where found, color, general texture, and 

 other features of the stones, which were badly oxidized exteriorly, it 

 was assumed by me, as well as by others, that they were a part of 

 the Fayette County (Bluff) stone found in 1878 and described by 

 Whitfield and Merrill in the x\merican Journal of Science for 

 August, 1888. The largest, nearly complete individual of this (1900) 

 find passed immediately into the hands of H. A. Ward and is the 

 8,619-gram mass figured on plate 64 of Farrington's catalogue of 

 1916. A 3,136-gram piece, approximately one-half of the 12-pound 

 individual, is in the collection of the United States National Museum, 

 and the remainder is or was in the cabinet of the university at Waco. 



As stated above, the identity of the find of 1900 with that of 1878 

 was unquestioned at the time, and has apparently remained so until 

 the present day. I, at least, had no occasion to doubt until a short 

 time ago when examining a number of thin sections in connection 

 with the occurrence of the problematic phosphate, concerning which 

 I have prepared sundry papers.^ That the two finds are not identical 

 but must be regarded as two distinct falls will, I think, be apparent 

 from the descriptions below. 



* See On the Calcium Phosphate in Meteoric Stones, Amer. Journ. Sci., vol. 43, 1917, 

 pp. 322-324. 



Proceedings U. S. National Museum, Vol. 54— No. 2248. 



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