406 MEMOIRS NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, VOL. XTTT. 



SEARSMONT. 



Waldo County, Maine. 



Latitude 44 20' N., longitude 69 10' W. 



Stone. Spherical chondrite (Cc), of Brezina; Montrejite (type 38) of Meunier. 



Fell May 21, 1871, 8.15 a. m.; described, 1871. 



Weight, 5.4 kgs. (12 Ibs.). 



The first description of this meteorite was by Shepard, 1 as follows : 



For the particulars concerning the fall of the Searsmont meteorite, I am indebted to Mr. E. B. Sheldon, post- 

 master of the adjoining village of Searsport, and to the Republican Journal of Belfast, Maine, of Thursday, May 25. 

 Mr. Edward Burgess, of Searsmont, furnished the short notice contained in the newspaper. He states that the fall 

 took place in the southern part of the town about 8 o'clock on Sunday morning, the 21st inst. "There was first 

 heard an explosion like the report of a heavy gun, followed by a rushing sound resembling the escape of steam from 

 a boiler. The sound seemed to come from the south and to move northwardly. The stone fell in the field of Mr. 

 Bean, the flying earth being seen by Mrs. Buck, who lived near. The hole that it made was soon found and the stone 

 dug out. It was quite hot and so much broken as to be removed only in pieces. The outside showed plainly the 

 effect of melting heat. It struck with such force as to penetrate the hard soil to a depth of 2 feet." 



The following is the substance of Mr. Sheldon's letter: 



Mr. Luce, who dug the stone tells me he reached the spot about 15 minutes after it struck, when he found the 

 fragments still quite warm. The largest piece weighed 2 pounds. Altogether the pieces amounted to 12 pounds. 

 They emitted the odor given off by stones violently rubbed together. The hole produced by its descent was vertical 

 in its direction and 2 feet in depth. The character of the soil was a hard, coarse gravel; and the shattering of the 

 stone was produced by its finally meeting 3 large pebbles, each about 4 pounds in weight, in the course of its descent. 

 "Mrs. Buck, who saw it fall, or rather saw the scattering of the soil on its entering the ground, was reading at the 

 time in the house, distant about 30 rods from the spot. The time was 15 minutes past 8. She first noticed a report 

 about as loud as that of a gun, or of a rock blast, such as they hear from a lime quarry about a quarter of a mile dis- 

 tant. This was followed by a rumbling noise, as of a number of carriages passing over a bridge. She rose and looked 

 out from a back door, then recrossed the room to the front door, where, after the lapse of about 10 seconds, she saw 

 the dirt fly from the contact of the stone with the earth. She thought it must have been nearly 2 minutes from the 

 first report until the stone struck the ground. No one went to the place for 20 or 25 minutes. The report was heard 

 in Warren, 12 miles to the southwest; likewise a hissing sound of as escaping steam. No report or sound was heard 

 in Searsmont village, 3 miles to the northeast." 



Through the kind assistance of Mr. Sheldon, I am in possession of the largest remaining mass of this meteorite. 

 Its weight is 2 pounds. Fully one-half of its surface is coated with the original crust. Its shape would seem to 

 denote an oval, subconical figure in the original mass, with a flattish base so as on the whole to have approached the 

 shape of the famous Duralla (India) stone, now preserved in the British Museum. The coated part of my specimen, 

 which corresponds to a portion of what constituted the base of the supposed cone, differs in shape and color from the 

 two oval undulating aides, which make therewith angles of between 60 and 70. The broadest of these sides (above 

 3 inches in length) where it meets the base, forms a blunt rounded edge, is obscurely striated vertically to the inter- 

 section, and shows a slight thickening about the edge, as if matter had been swept over from above and accumulated 

 somewhat on the under side. Nothing is plainer than the distinction between the upper sides and the base. The 

 crust of the latter is perfectly black, more thoroughly fused, with a blebby, somewhat glassy, reticulated surface, 

 whose lines are without any order; while the upper surfaces are more even and almost destitute of the blebby and 

 veined appearance. Feeble striae are visible near the basal side, all of which are perpendicular to the same. The 

 color of the upper surface is brownish black; and these are wholly without luster. 



The thickness of the crust is more than double that found in any stone belonging to my collection amounting at 

 least to one-sixteenth of an inch. The stone is rather below the average in respect to frangibility. The color is 

 bluish white, and remarkably uniform except from feeble stains of peroxide of iron, and from silvery-white, metallic 

 points, produced by the meteoric iron. More than half the stone is in the form of rounded grains, mostly with rough- 

 ened or drusy surfaces, and of a size rarely exceeding mustard seeds. Between these and often partially coating them, 

 is a fine-grained, subcrystalline, white or grayish-white mineral, which I take to be chladnite. It is rather loosely 

 coherent, and without visible crystalline structure. Indeed, as seen with the microscope, it is often porous, reminding 

 one of the silicious skeletons obtained in fluxing certain silicates in blowpipe experiments. This white mineral may 

 form a quarter or more of the stone. 



The rounded globules are bluish-gray, rarely with a faint tinge of yellow, vitreous luster and translucent, with 

 two imperfect oblique cleavages. On the whole, they resemble the unaltered grains of boltonite more than any of 

 our terrestrial minerals; and differ only in their greater tendency to assume the globular figure. 



Minute points of bright meteoric iron are very thickly scattered through the mass. A few grains of troilite, the 

 largest of the size of large kernels of Indian corn (maize), likewise present themselves, together with a single blackish 

 mass of similar dimensions, which on being touched with the point of a knife was found to be soft and left a bright 

 metallic streak. It is probably a plumbaginous aggregate. Specific gravity of the aggregate, 3.626. 



