80 Report on Meteorites. 
having been melted, one side being flattened, while from other 
parts of it, there were projections (“spurs”) as long as a man’s 
finger, which he could batter down with a stroke of the hammer. 
He said he obtained it a year before in Buncombe county, ina field, 
where he was of opinion that more of the same might be found. 
Mr. C. afterwards visited the neighborhood in which the specimen 
occurred ; and was there assured by a young man, that he had 
seen the piece that the Clarkes had described, and that he knew 
of another much larger piece, similar to it, at an old house on the 
Clarke farm, where the smaller had been found. 
On procuring the mass, (which weighed nearly twenty-seven 
pounds,) Mr. C. communicated to me the following particulars 
respecting it, which may perhaps be given in this place as gen- 
erally descriptive of its aspect. ‘It is rather flat on one side, as 
though it had been laid when semi-fluid on a somewhat plane 
surface, while its other sides are irregular, with cavities and va- 
rious inequalities. It has no appearance of ever having been 
ered, and externally looks like a cinder from a_black- 
smith’s fire.” (At first, from not having seen any vesicular me- 
teoric iron, Mr. C. was led to question its genuineness.) ‘‘ But 
it is too large, and much too heavy to be compared with cin- 
er. It has some malleability, though it may be broken if struck 
on its thinner projections and edges. Its knotted appearance, 
toughness and malleability, together with the peculiar form of 
the broad side, or bottom, and that of the large end, indicating 
that a greater than human force must have been applied to the 
mass, and evincing that it was cleft by an explosion from some 
large body, lead me on the whole, to rest in the inference, that 
it is of foreign origin.” Mr. C. likewise remarked, that its ex- 
ternal appearance would be well conceived of, if we supposed an 
ordinary mass of meteoric iron to be thrown into a forge-fire, and 
when thoroughly fused at its surface, suddenly to be withdrawn 
and cooled. 
Its shape may be judged of by the figure on the opposite page. 
As frequently happens with these productions, a general conception 
may best be obtained by likening them to some familiar objects: 
this specimen strikingly reminds one of the head of a reptile. As 
figured, it reposes on its flat and broad side, and the dark shadow 
at the left, is in the place of the nearly vertical section, supp 
to represent the junction of the animal’s head with its body. It 
measures eleven inches in length, by seven in breadth; and 1s 
four in thickness at the thicker end, while at the upper extremity 
of our figure, it is not above two and a half, and on the night 
and lower edge, it thins down to little above one inch. Its sut- 
face is rather tuberose and jagged, than pitted with regular de- 
pressions. Color various shades of brown to black, and some- 
what variegated (especially in the bottoms of the cavities) with 
