426 



NA TURE 



[August 31, 1893 



Dr. Hettner has been at woik on the Andes of Colombia, 

 and Dr. Theodore Wolf has published a magnificent mono- 

 graph (in Spanish) on the geography and geology of Ecuador, 

 accompanied by the best map yet produced of the country. Dr. 

 Tippenhauer has written a fine work on the physical geography 

 of Haiti, and many other papers by German geographers have 

 appeared within the last few months. 



Sir Wiluam Macgregok, for the Briiish Government, and 

 the officers of the Dutch war-vessel Java, have rectified the 

 frorlier between British and Dutch New Guinea. The former 

 boundary was the 141st meridian, and the new boundary, where 

 it cuts the coast, is a stream, chosen to furnish a recognisable 1 

 border-line, in 141° 1' 40" E. and 9° 7' 40" S. 



On August 6 the new ship-canal across the Isthmus of Corinth 

 was formally opened, thus completing a plan which was pro- 

 jected by Periandros about 6co B.C., and actually commenced 

 by Nero, who was, however, compelkd to abandon the work, 

 in 68 A. D. The canal is not quite four mile- long, and will effect 

 a saving of 120 miles in the pa.«sage from the Adriatic lo the 

 ^gean. Two new towns have been planned at the entrances to 

 the canal, which will be nan-ed Poseidonia and Isthmia. 



Mr. F. C. Sei.ous, the recognised authority on the ex- 

 ploration of Mashonaland, has been induced to return there at 

 very short notice, on account of the threatening attitude of the 

 powerful Matabele chief, Lo Bengula, and the consequent 

 risk of interruption in the development of the country. An 

 important work on Mashonaland, by Mr. Selous, will be pub- 

 lished immediately. 



Mr. R. M. W. Swan, who, with Mr. Theodore Bent, sur- 

 veyed the ruins of Zimbabwe, is at present engaged in a sys- 

 tematic i-urvey of other groups of ruins in South Africa, and 

 he reports the discovery of a temple on the Limpopo, 

 "oriented " to the setting sun at the solstice. 



Mr. W. H. Cozens Hardy, the Oxford geographical scholar, 

 is now engaged in carr-ying out his explorations in Eastern Mont- 

 enegro, one of the least known parts of Europe. The work of 

 his predecessor, Mr. Grundy, on the Battlefield of Plata^a, is on 

 the point of publication as a supplementary paper of the Royal 

 Geographical Society. 



The writer is indebted to Mr. Ilislop for a portion of this masi 

 and a preliminary examination fully establishes its meleoii 

 character. 



The fresh fracture is light grey in colour and harsh to th 

 touch, the crust being brown and dull. The chondriiiccharactt 

 is distinctly seen without a lens, though the "chondra"ai 

 mostly under a millimetre in diameter. Examination of a ihi 

 section with the microscope showed the i rescnce of olivioi 

 enstatite, iron, troilitp, and chromite (?). The iroh is present i 

 the form of little shining grains and strings. On treatment »! 

 hydrochloric acid the powder gelatinises readily (olivine) e 

 evolves hydrogen sulphide. By means ol an ordinary hon< 

 shoe magnet some of the powder was separated into a magnet 

 and a non-magnetic portion. The former amounted to aboi 

 23 '5 per cent, of the whole, and consisttd mainly of nickcl-iroi 

 which, however, carried with it a portion of the other coi 

 stituents. 



A partial analysis of the magnetic material gave : — 



Iron 7872 



Nickel (including cobali) 687 



Insoluble in hydrochloric acid 1004 



Soluble silica 146 



Magnesia, cStc, by difference 291 



If all the iron and nickel pre ent be regarded as nickel iro 

 the percentage of nickel (with cobalt) is 873, No doubt, ho' 

 ever, a little of the iron was derived from olivine and possib 

 from troilite. 



The writer hopes to publish before long the results of a l( 

 hurried and more detailed examination of the specimen in I 

 possession. B- J- Harringto.n. 



THE BEA VER CREEK METEORITE. 



SOME of the readers of Nature will no doubt be interested 

 in a short account of a meteoric fall which occurred recently 

 in British Columbia, and was noted in these columns on August 

 10. For the circumstances in connection with the fall, and the 

 finding of fragments of the meteorite, I am indebted to Mr. 

 James Hislop —a former student of this University, and a most 

 trustworthy observer— and also to a letter by Mr. E. L. McNair 

 in the Spokane Kevietv of June 2. 



Both gentlemen were members of a party of engineers engaged 

 upon a survey for the Nelson and Fort Sheppard Railway Com- 

 pany on Beaver Creek, about eleven miles north and five miles 

 east of where the Columbia crosses the international boundary 

 line. About four o'clock on the afternoon of May 26 a series 

 of sharp reports was heard, following one another in quick suc- 

 cession, and apparently occupying in all about half a minute. 

 The first report was quite loud and sharp, and each succeeding 

 one less so, as if coming from a greater distance. Following 

 the reports was a whizzing sound, such as might be supposed to 

 be produced by a body moving rapidly through the air. 



At the time of the "explosion" a man named Gerlnig was 

 walking along the Beaver Creek trail. At first he thought that 

 the noise was thunder, but the whizzing sound puzzled him, 

 and on looking upward to see if he could tell whence it came, it 

 grew louder and louder until a stone struck the ground not far 

 from where he stood. He searched for it, but without success, 

 as the place was thickly overgrown with bushes. 



Some distance from this a fragment fell within fifty feet of a 

 man named Edward McLeod. It buried itself in the earth, but 

 was dug out, and found to weigh four or five pounds. On the 

 following day (May 27), in the course of his topographical woik, 

 Mr. Hislop came upon a freshly-made hole in the ground into 

 which the loose earth had fallen, and on following it down to a 

 depth of three feet from the surface a portion of the meteorite 

 weighing about twenty- five pounds was discovered. The hole 

 made an angle of 58° with the horizontal, and its course showed 

 that the mass had come in a direction S. 60° E. (true meridian), 



NO. 1 244, VOL. 48] 



SPANGOLITE, A REMARKABLE CORNJSH 

 MINERAL. 



AMONG the valuable Cornish minerals from the Willia 

 collection which have recently been acquired hy t 

 trustees of the British Museum ' is one specimen which deser' 

 immediate notice, since if proves to be a recently discovei 

 mineral of which only one other example is known to exi 

 and that from a foreign country. 



The mineral belongs to the fine series of copper ores from 1 

 St. Day mines, which are chiefly arsenates and phosphates, a 

 among these, while it exceeds the remainder in scientific 

 teresl, it is inferior to none in beauty. 



The specimen, about the size of a hen's egg, consists 

 granular gossany quartz carrying on both sides a little xattt 

 cuprite, which i.s covered and replaced by greenish alterati 

 products— chrysocoUa, malachite, liroconile, and clinocl«< 

 together with a little chessylite ; especially cou^picuons be 

 the bright green crystals of liroconite and indigo-blne groups 

 clincclase. 



But among these, dispersed upon both sides of ihe spearo 

 are numerous brilliant and translucent ciystals of a d 

 emerald-green colour, which at once strike the eye as soi 

 thing unusual. Their form is a hexagonal prism terminated 

 an acute hexagonal pyramid having the apex truncated h 

 single bright plane; and one cannot call to mmd any ot 

 mineral having precisely this habit. . 



A minute group of crystals was detached and examined 

 Mr. Prior and myself with the following result :— The mini 

 belongs to the rhombohedral system, the p)ramid angle be 

 53° 7' ; it has a perfect basal cleavage ; it is uniaxial, the b 

 Iringence being .'trong and negative ; the specific gravity, « 

 mined by suspending a fragment in solution of cadmmm be 

 tungslate (Rohrbach's solution), is 3-07 ; it isinsoluHem»a 

 but readily soluble in acids ; and is found to be a hydratea 

 phate and chloride of copper and aluminium. This iDdic, 

 a very remarkable and unusual composition, but the p««e 

 of both aluminium and chlorine is quite unmistakable. 



In all the above characters the substance is ielenli<»J» 

 spangolite, a new copper mineral which was described I9 

 S. L. Penfield in 1890 {American Journal oj SaeHM, 



''' The resemblance between the two specimens extends e 

 to the circumstances of their discovery ; the original spang' 

 Naturk, vol. xlviii. p. 35:- 



