Keyes—Meteorites on the Painted Desert. 145 
every 24 hours there are, according to Young,*® no less 
than from 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 of meteorites entering 
the earth’s atmosphere. The collection of some thou- 
sands of meteoritic stones and irons in the Canyon Diablo 
district no longer demands the intervention of special 
explanations to account for their reality. 
It is however, to the desert regions of our earth that 
we must turn in order to gain our chief knowledge con- 
cerning the exact nature, great volume, and general pre- 
valency of the meteoritic augmentation to the earth’s 
mass. 
Abysmal Sea Deposits. The great abundance of those 
peculiar masses brought up in deep-sea dredgings called 
chondres which occur throughout the abysmal deposits 
covering the floor of the ocean is especially noted by Mur- 
ray and Renard*! in the reports of the Challenger expe- 
dition. These masses are largely composed of basic min- 
erals closely related to the earthy minerals known as 
bronzite and with small doubt are of cosmic origin. The 
materials from the bottom of the deep seas should be 
examined anew in the light of their possible celestial 
origin. 
Dark Bands m Arctic Snow-fields. The banded appear- 
ance of arctic glaciers has seldom found adequate expla- 
nation. Its main cause appears to be due to layers of 
fine dust and minute rock-fragments. Nordenskiold‘? in 
particular calls attention to the distinct layered appear- 
ance of certain arctic snow-fields in which the dark zones 
were found to be imparted by minute black grains most 
of which were metallic in character. Chamberlain‘? in 
presenting some fine photographic views of the fronts 
of the Bryant, Krakokla and other Greenland glaciers 
specifically emphasizes the marked banded appearance. 
Although he incidentally states that the dark bands are 
* Astronomy, 472. 1898. 
“ Narrative of the Cruise of H. M. S. Challenger, 2:809. 1885. 
*“ Comptes rendus de l’Acad. d. Sci., 77:463. 1873. 
*% Jour. Geol. 3:568. 1895. 
