174 MEMOIRS NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, VOL. XIII. 



of the Emmitsburg group of octahedrites with medium lamellae. The characters of this group 

 given by Brezina l are as follows: 



Lamellae straight, grouped, not very long; kamacite dark gray, hatched, in part spotted, with plain though not 

 very strongly oriented sheen. Rhabdite very abundant, at times on the edges of the fields taking the place of taenite. 

 Width of lamellae 0.6 mm. 



In the 1895 catalogue, Brezina 2 remarked that Emmitsburg much resembles Plymouth. 

 No further account of the meteorite seems to have been given. The spelling Emmitsburg, 

 here adopted, is from the United States Postal Guide. Brezina's spelling is Emmetsburg. 



The meteorite is distributed among collections, but only 177 grams in all seem to be known, 

 according to Wulfing. 3 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



1. 1885: BREZINA. Wiener Sammlung, pp. 211, 234. 



2. 1895: BREZINA. Wiener Sammlung, p. 277. 



3. 1897: WULFING. Die Meteoriten in Sammlungen, p. 113. 



ESTACADO. 

 Hale County, Texas. 



Estacado is located in Crosby County, but the place of find was Hale County. 



Latitude 33 5<X N., longitude 101 45' W. 

 Stone. Crystalline chondrite (Cka) of Brezina. 

 Found 1902; described 1906. 

 Weight, 290 kgs. (640 Ibs.). 



This meteorite was described by Howard and Davison 2 as follows : 



What is known concerning the fall of this meteorite is told by a resident of Hale Center, Texas: "The best history 

 I can give of the meteorite is as follows: It was found 12 miles south of Hale Center, which is located in the center of 

 Hale County, Texas, in the spring of 1902, or rather that is when it was taken home by R. A. McWhorter, who had been 

 the owner of it all the time. In the year of 1882 a bright meteor was seen one night by the people of a Quaker colony 

 called Estacado. This place is about 15 miles southeast of where the meteor was found. The meteor was seen to pass 

 to the west and fall northwest from them. At that time this Quaker colony was the only settlement on the whole 

 Staked Plains and the only people outside of them were a few scattering cowmen. In the following year of 1883 a few 

 cowboys in rounding up the range saw this meteor, and the Estacado people felt certain that this was what they saw 

 fall the year before, and we have all considered it so." As the region is a stoneless one, the attention of the people of 

 the vicinity was naturally attracted to this remarkable mass. The name of the settlement, Estacado, seema most 

 appropriate for the aerolite. 



The weight of the meteorite before sawing was about 290 kg., it thus being among the largest of known aerolites. 

 Its form was trapezoidal. Its longest diameter was 58.5 cm., while its other two diameters measured 45.7 cm. and 

 44.4 cm. It was cut in half parallel to its longest and shortest diameters. Several slabs were taken off at the same time. 



The exterior of the mass is rusty brown in color, probably due to terrestrial oxidation. The sawed slices of the 

 stone show a tendency to rust rapidly. Hardly any of the coating of the meteorite approaches in appearance the black 

 of an original crust. On some of the sides the oxidation has been considerable, a scale knocked off of one side being 3 

 to 4 mm. thick. The mass has eight well-marked sides, one of which looks like an old fracture surface. The oxidation 

 on this side is less than elsewhere and there is no apparent variation in structure as the edge is approached, such as 

 there is on the other sides. The sides are quite flat, some of them even slightly concave, the edges between adjoining 

 sides being for an aerolite fairly angular. 



Side A (shown in cut) has a smoothed appearance and may have been the "nose " of the mass in flight. The surface 

 markings on this side are not deep, while on sides D and E, which are opposite A, there are well-defined pittings. 



The stone is a crystalline chondrite, its structure being very similar to the Pipe Creek aerolite, which is also from 

 Texas. In Brezina's classification Pipe Creek is placed in group Cka. 



The polished surface shows a dull black groundmass thickly permeated with irregular particles of nickel iron. 

 Roundish enstatite chondri of a more shiny black are scattered through the stone. Here and there are green olivine 

 chondri, some of which are larger than any of the black chondri. The largest of the green ones measures about 1 cm. 

 in length. 



The slice also shows some other interesting markings. Some 5 cm. from the center toward the smaller end a straight 

 dark line runs across the meteorite at an inclination of about 15 from the vertical. It passes just to one side of one 

 of the olivine chondrules. Parallel to and 15 cm. from side A (shown in cut) is an irregular and somewhat broken line 

 composed of the metallic particles. This line runs from the edge of side F nearly to the edge of side B. 



The line also shows on some of the other slabs, and on one of them just before it reaches the edge of side B it 

 turns and runs parallel with the edge for a couple of centimeters. On the various slabs the metallic lines are at different 

 distances from side A, indicating that a seam of this material passes through the meteorite obliquely to the cut surface. 



