METEORITES OF NORTH AMERICA. 185 



his frightened horses, he began to dig for the aerolite; and with the help of a neighbor, Mr. J. D. Foster, and three 

 other men, he reached the upper surface of the stone in one hour, but it required three hours to remove the mass from 

 its bed, it was so firmly held in place by the compressed " gumbo. ' ' The stone was not hot when reached, which may 

 be explained by the fact that it seems to have passed through the minimum amount of air from a direction but a few 

 degrees south of the zenith. It was covered, however, by the usual burned crust. The stone was found to have been 

 cracked, doubtless by the force of collision acting upon a body already under the disrupting strain of unequal tem- 

 peratures. The entire mass weighed 188 pounds, and was divided by this crack into two portions, weighing respec- 

 tively 144 and 44 pounds. The smaller mass was soon subjected to a process of sledge hammering by the hundreds of 

 people who almost immediately visited the spot. Nearly every citizen of Washington has in his pocket a small frag- 

 ment of the stone. The portion remaining, weighing 144 pounds, is somewhat wedge shaped, in dimensions 19 by 17 

 inches, by 8 inches at the base. The writer obtained from Mr. J. D. Foster for analysis a fragment weighing 2.25 

 pounds. In color the stone is dark slate, resembling a compact trap rock. An analysis has been made by Mr. E. E. 

 Slosson, assistant in our chemical department. 



The stone is of a gray color and resembles porphyry. A few metallic grains are all that can be detected with the 

 naked eye. Under a microecope*by chemical treatment the following minerals can be detected: 



1. A white crystalline silicate, insoluble, forming about half the mass of whole; probably enstatite or a similar 

 bisilicate of the pyroxene group. 



2. A black translucent crystalline silicate, intermingled with the above, though lees in amount. It is decom- 

 posed by aqua regia and contains iron; probably a unisilicate of the olivine type. These two minerals are in some 

 fragments arranged in alternate microscopic layers of equal thickness. 



3. Malleable nickeliferous iron in small irregular masses, intimately mixed with troilite and the silicates. 



4. Troilite or pyrrhotite in microscopic particles disseminated through the whole rock, estimated from sulphur to 

 be about 10 per cent. 



5. Chromite, distinguishable as small black magnetic crystals in the residue after treatment with acids. 



6. A few scattered siliceous crystals, yellow and red; too small to determine, probably olivine. 

 The following is an approximate analysis of a small fragment: 



Metallic iron (with part of the iron in silicates) 14. 953 



Troilite 10 



Soluble silicates (olivine) 25. 147 



Insoluble silicates (enstatite) 49. 9 



Nickel and chromite, undetermined. 



100.000 

 Specific gravity of fragment weighing 2.5 pounds, 3.48, water at 25 C. 



The characters of the meteorite were later fully described by Kunz and Weinschenk * as 

 follows : 



Wednesday, June 25, 1890, at 12.55 p. m., central time, in the neighborhood of 75 miles about Washington, Wash- 

 ington County. Kansas, a roaring, bursting sound was heard and some observers saw a meteor which moved ia a 

 northerly direction and left behind traces of smoke. The sun was shining clear and in consequence no light was 

 observed. The explosion which followed was likened by many witnesses to the sound of a steam boiler, a clap of 

 thunder, or a distant cannon shot. The largest piece of the meteorite, weighing about 82 kg., fell on the farm of W. 

 H. January, near the owner, he being employed in mending a wagon, and he was considerably startled by the phe- 

 nomenon. The neighbors broke off pieces weighing about 20 kg. The rest has been distributed among various 

 scientific collections. A second piece, weighing about 4 kg., which evidently produced the second smoke, was found 

 on the farm of J. Windhurst. 



The analysis was made by L. G. Eakins, and gave the following composition of the whole stone: 



Nickel-iron 7. 7 



Iron sulphide 5.0 



Silicate soluble in HC1 46. 



Silicate insoluble in HC1 . . 4L 5 



10L2 

 The analysis of the nickel-iron gave: 



Iron 86. 76 



Nickel 12.18 



Cobalt.. 0.83 



B -. :: 



This composition shows that the nickel-iron of stony meteorites is in general richer than the iron masses. A con- 

 tent of about 13 per cent nickel plus cobalt has been shown in a great number of the stony meteorites, but in iron 

 meteorites only exceptionally. The siliceous portion of the stone remaining after treatment with the magnet was 

 separated by hot hydrochloric acM into soluble and insoluble portions. Under I is given the result of the analysis 



