Sir R. I. Murchison on a ^supposed Aerolite. 381 



June 21. — The Lord Wrottesley, President, in the Chair. 



The following communications M-ere read : — 



" On a supposed Aerolite or Meteorite found in the Trunk of an 

 old Willow Tree in the Battersea Fields." By Sir Roderick Impey 

 Murchison, F.R.S. 



In bringing this notice before the Royal Society, it is unnecessary to 

 recite, however briefly, the history of the fall of aerolites or meteorites, 

 as recorded for uj)vvards of three thousand years, though I may be 

 pardoned for reminding my Associates, that the phenomenon was 

 repudiated by the most learned academies of Europe up to the close 

 of the last century. The merit of having first endeavoured to de- 

 monstrate the true character of these extraneous bodies is mainly 

 due to the German Chladni (1794), but his eiForts were at first 

 viewed with incredulity. According to Vauquelin and other men 

 of eminence who have reasoned on the phenomena, it was in 1802 

 only that meteorites obtained a due degree of consideration and some- 

 thing like a definite place in science through the studies of Howard, 

 as shown in his memoir published in the Philosophical Transactions. 



Vauquelin, Klaproth, and other distinguished chemists, including 

 Berzelius and Rammelsberg, have successively analysed these bodies, 

 and the result of their labours, as ably brought together in the work 

 of the last-mentioned author, is, that whilst they have a great gene- 

 ral resemblance and are distinguishable on the whole by their com- 

 position from any bodies found in the crust of the earth, each of 

 their component substances is individually found in our planet. 

 They are also peculiarly marked by the small number of minerals 

 which have collectively been detected in any one of them ; nickel 

 and cobalt, in certain relations to iron, being the chief characteristics 

 of the metallic meteorites. 



Of the various tlieories propounded to account for the origin of these 

 singular bodies, it would indeed ill become a geologist like myself to 

 speak ; and referring in the sequel to some of the various works in 

 which the subject has been brought within formula, I will at once 

 detail the facts connected with the discovery of this metalliferous 

 body in the heart of a tree, as now placed before the Members of 

 our Society, feeling assured that, whatever be their ultimate deci- 

 sion, my contemjioraries will approve of the efforts that have been 

 made to account for this singular and mysterious phenomenon. 



On the 2nd of June, a timber merchant, residing at North Brix- 

 ton, named Clement Poole, brought the specimen now exhibited to 

 the Museum of Practical Geology, when it occurred to Mr. Trenham 

 Reeks, our Curator, that it might be a meteorite, and on insj)ecting 

 its position in the mass of wood, and having heard all the evidence 

 connected with it, I was disposed to form the same conclusion. On 

 submitting a small portion of the metallic ])art to a qualitative test 

 in the metallurgical laboratory of our establishment, the presence of 

 nickel, cobalt and manganese was detected in the iron included in 

 the mass, and as the surface was scorified, indented, uneven, and 

 partially coated with a peculiar substance, the surmise as to the 



