136 ; Analysis of the Maryland Aerolite. 
“ This c ircumstance is much less apparent upon the erolites 
of Weston (1807,) L’aigle ( 1803) and Stannern in Moravia 
_ (1808) : it appears to have arisen from the rapid cooling of | 
the external vitreous crust after intense ignition. It is im- 
possible to doubt that this crust is a result of great and sud- 
den heat. In the Maryland erolite it is not quite so thick as 
the back of a common penknife, and, as in that of Weston 
and Stannern, it is separated by a well defined line, from 
the mass of the stone beneath. The mass of the stone is, 
on the fractured patats. ofa light ash gray colour, or per- 
haps more properly of a Sreyeh white ; i is very uniform 
in its appearance, and not marked by that strong contrast 
of dark and light gray spots, which is so conspicuous in the 
Weston meteorolite. ‘The fractured surface of the Mary- 
land stone is uneven and granular, harsh and dry to the 
touch, and it scratches window glass decidedly, but not with 
eat energy. To the naked eye it presents very small glisten- 
ing metallic points, and a few minute globular —— bodies 
scattered here and there, through the mass of the stone. 
With a magnifier all these appearances are of ea much 
increased. The adhesion of the small ef the stone is 
pe that it a to pieces with a slight cine wrid-eniide 
: most like oa of sand. The metallic 
parsare conspicuous, but they are much less numerous than 
which, whe ee separated, are nearly white, 
ott have a pretty high vitreous lustre, considerably resem- 
bling porcelain. They appear as if they had undergone an 
incipient vitrification, and as if they had been feebly aggluti- 
nated by a very intense heat. 1 cannot say that I observed 
in them asM. Fieuriau de Bellevue did in the erolites of Jon- 
zac (Jour. de Phys. tome 92, pa. 136) appearances of crystal- 
ization, although it is possible there may have been an incip- 
jent process of that kind, especially as the small parts are 
translucent.* The Maryland stone is highly magnetic ; pieces 
as large as peas are readily lifted by the ee and that 
instrument takes up a large tt poo of the smaller frag- 
* This vitreous rea ep e I believe has not been observed before (at 
least as far as appears in any account that I have seen.) It seems to 
Weave resulted from intense heat; the some doubtless, which 
the exterior, with the black crust, and the aaiovelit of the two is ae 
ably to be ascribed to the one being covered and compressed, and to 
other being on the outside. 
