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, in a field, 



more 



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 

 hammered, and externally looks like a cinder from a black- 

 smith's fire." (At first, from not having seen any vesicular me- 



Mr 



" But 



it is too large, and much too heavy to be compared with cin- 

 der. 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 when thoroughly fused at its surface, suddenly to be withdrawn 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. 



quently happe 



page 



them 



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, supposed 

 to represent the junction of the animal's head with its body. I* 

 measures eleven inches in length, by seven in breadth ; and is 

 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 right 

 and lower edge, it thins down to little above one inch. Its sur- 

 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 





