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Report on Meteorites. — 377 
Be Bae XKXV.— Report ‘on: -Miateorites-—Read. before he Amen. 
_ ean Association of Geologists and Naturalists, at their meeting 
in New York, held September 2d, 1846; by Cuarues Upuyam 
Sueparp, M. D., Professor of Chemistry in the Medical Col- 
lege of South Carolina and in Amherst College, Mass. 
Tus report was undertaken with a view to collect all the in- 
formation within reach, relative to the meteoric productions of 
_ the United States, (or at farthest those of North America.) In 
the prosecution of the work, however, I have been led to pay at- 
tention to meteorites generally ; at least so far as to classify and 
describe the various mineral species they contain, to give a view 
"of their chemical constitution, and to treat of some of those re- 
lations familiar to us as geological so far as these are common to 
meteor-masses, id 
Part I. ae 
Description of the Mineral Species found in Meteor-Masses. 
‘The number of species recognized in these bodies is thirty- 
Seven. 'Their natural history properties readily permit them to 
be distributed into the three classes, and under thirteen of the 
orders of the mineralogical system of our earth. But as meteor- 
ites are now, by universal consent, admitted not to be of ter- 
testrial origin, it would obviously be improper to describe the 
Species of which they consist under the science of mineralogy, 
_ although we may perhaps be allowed to borrow temporarily the 
hames of its orders; since, in the use proposed, no change in their 
Significance is to be made. ‘The natural history treatment of the 
meteoric species will therefore constitute a new science, for which 
the name AsrroxirHotocy is suggested, (from «orig a meteor, 
dos a stone, and hoyos & treatise.) The following is a tabular 
View of the systematic arrangement of the species. 
CLASS I. 
Order 1st, Gaseous. 
Sp. 1. Sulphurous Acid. — 
Order 2d, Soluble. 
2. Ey | Sp. 4. Vitriolic Nickel. 
. 3. Glauber's salt. Sp. 5. Copperas. 
COND Sxnizs, Vol. If, No. 6—Nov., 1846. 49 
ane, 
