July 19, 1877] 



NATURE 



239 



resembling lightning were seen darting. Whistling, rumbling, 

 and rattling noises were also heard. The sound was thought, 

 for the most part, to come from the west or south-west. It was 

 not heard in Karlskoga, which lies to the south, but far to the 

 north and north-west. At Falun it was supposed that a fall of 

 rock had taken place in a mine, and at Grandgrufvan, at Lud- 

 vika, the sound was heard as of a peal of thunder at a depth of 

 si.\ty metres underground. At other places a dynamite magazine 

 was thought to have exploded, or it was taken for a loud clap 

 of thunder. 



In the neighbourhood of a workman who was cutting trees in 

 a wood several branches of a tree were broken off" by a stone 

 weighing nearly a kilogram, in a way which clearly showed no 

 gre.at falling velocity, which was further confirmed by the stone 

 making a hole in the ground only a decimetre in depth. Another 

 person saw a stone fall close beside him, and immediately took 

 it up. It was not at all warm. A girl saw a stone weighing 

 two kilograms fall to the ground "so that the earth smoked" 

 Several fell in the Lake Bjorken or were picked up in the neigh- 

 bourhood soon after. One weighing Si kilograms fell in a rye- 

 field. In falling it had gone in two pieces and made an eight- 

 inch deep hole in the cultivated soil. The largest stone weighed 

 li\ kilograms. 



The number of the stones that have been found, however, 

 amounts only to eleven, with a total weight of thirty-four kilo- 

 grams. They were scattered within an oval two kilometres 

 broad, whose larger axis had a length of eight kilometres. The 

 largest stone was found in the south-west end of the oval, in a 

 meadow surrounded by wood. It is probable that larger stones 

 have fallen farther into the wood, and thus escaped observation. 

 The stones are of very irregular form, and on their surface are 

 full of the depressions peculiar to meteorites. On the surface 

 they are, as usual, covered with a blackish fused crust of very 

 variable thickness, being so thick on some of the fractured sur- 

 faces as to completely conceal the colour and inequalities of the 

 main mass, and on other similar surfaces so thin that the colour 

 and crystalline structure of the main mass may be clearly dis- 

 tinguished. Sometimes the crust is completely wanting, so 

 that the surface of the stone, with the exception of an 

 inconsiderable blackening, resembles a fresh fracture. The 

 stones are thus fragments which have been formed at different 

 times, and exposed for different periods to the action of the glowing 

 envelope. Tlie largest stones are covered in many directions 

 with black friction surfaces which are more clearly marked on 

 these meteorites than on any I know. These too have pro- 

 bably been formed in our atmosphere, and show that with the 

 great pressure produced by the resistance of the air, cracks have 

 been formed in the meteorite along which its different parts 

 bel'ore springing asunder rubbed against each other during the 

 rotation of the irregularly- formed mass, whereby the uneven 

 surfaces have been smoothened, and coloured black by the heat 

 developed during friction, the projecting metallic particles 

 flattened, ..Vc. On breaking in pieces the meteorites in question, 

 they are found to consist of a coarse breccia-like mixture of grey 

 and of nearly black portions, little differing from each other in 

 chemical composition. It is remarkable that the grey mass when 

 heated becomes dark, and thereby in appearance quite like the 

 black, which appears to show that some of the breccia-like 

 pieces found in the stones had been lieated, while this docs not 

 appear to have been the case with the other part. Different 

 pieces of the StiiUdalen meteorites thus appear to have been 

 exposed to the action of very difl'erent temperatures before they 

 were uhittd into the mass, hard, tough, and difficult to break up, 

 which formed the meteorite. 



The stones that fell at Stalldalen have been carefully aualysf d 

 by Mr. G. Lindstrom, assistant in the mineralogical department 

 of the Riks Museum, who found them to consist of nickel-iron ; a 

 silicate decomposed by acids, chiefly olivine ; a silicate indecom- 

 posable by acids, probably bronzite ; magnetic pyrites, and incon- 

 siderable quantities of phosphide of nickel-iron ; of a phosphate, 

 and of chloride of iron. The first-named substance, a metallic 

 alloy of ninety per cent, iron and ten per cent, nickel, is net 

 known [of terrestrial origin, but distinguishes most meteorites, 

 and makes it possible to separate with certainty the meteorites 

 which have fallen at Stalldalen from all other minerals occurring 

 in the quarter. The two other main constituents again, olivine 

 and bronzite, are also wanting in our granites, gneisses, and 

 common slaty rocks, but are found commonly entering into the 

 composition of a number of rocks which by most of the geologists 

 and mineralogists of the present day are considered to be of 

 plutonic origin. Mai y circumstances, however, indicate that 



these rocks, which in remarkably regular layers cover exten- 

 sive regions of the earth's surface, ofloi, but twt al-ways, consist of 

 stratified tuff-like formations which during the enormous duration 

 of geological periods have assumed a crystalline structure. The 

 resemblance between them and various constituent parts of the 

 meteorites is so striking that the question must be seriously and 

 impartially discussed whether a part of the plutonic rocks are 

 not of cosmic origin. By this I mean that it gradually fell to 

 the earth even after its surface formed an abode for animals and 

 plants, and that under favourable circumstances it collected so 

 as to form proper stratified so-called plutonic r^ cks, in which, 

 through subsequent chemical changes, so great a development 

 of heat has sometimes taken place that volcanic and plutonic 

 incandescent craters have arisen in the interior of the earth. 



Many observed facts may be quoted in suppcrt of this view, 

 if it for the present appears very strange on account of the 

 great changes it would bring about in the prevailing ideas of the 

 history of the form,ation of the heavenly body which we inhabit. 

 We have perhaps here the true solution of the many di<;puted 

 questions raised by the disco\ery of meteoric iron at Ovifak, in 

 Greenland, a simple explanation of the abundant occurrence of 

 magnesia in certain geological formations, and of many other 

 geological phenomena difficult of explanation according to 

 theories now prevalent. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE 



Cambridge.— Mr. W. N. Shaw, B. A., Emmanuel College, 

 1 6th Wrangler, 1876, and ist Class Natural Sciences Tripos 

 (Distinguished in Physics), 1S76, has been elected to a fellow- 

 ship in his College. 



London. — The following have passed the recent examination 

 for the degree of Doctor of Science in the branches specified : — 



Branch IV. — Inorganic Chemistry. — J. M. H. Munro, Royal 

 College of Science, Dublin. 



Branch VI. — Electricity (treated experimentally). — O. J, 

 Lodge, University College. 



Branch VIII. — Physical Optics, Heat, Acoustics (treated 

 mathematically). — J. K. Main, Trinity College, Cambridge. 



Branch X. —Comparative Anatomy. — A. M. Maishall, B.A., 

 St. John's, Cambridge, and St. Bartholomew's Hospital. 



Branch XfV. — Geology. — W. Saise, Royal School of Mines. 



SOCIETIES AND ACADEMIES 



London 



Geological Society, June ^20.— Prof. P. Martin Duncan, 

 F.R.S., president, in the ch.air. — Messrs. George Alexander 

 Gibson, Henry P. Gurney, John Higson, and Francis Stevenson, 

 were elected fellows of the Society. — The following papers were 

 read :— On a hitherto unnoticed circumstance affecting the piling 

 up of volcanic cones, by R. Mallet, F.R. S. — The steppes of 

 Southern Russia, by Thomas Belt, F.G.S. — The glacial period, 

 l-y J. F. Campbell, F.G.S. — The action of coast-ice on an 

 oscillating area, by Prof. John Milne, F.G.S., of the Imperial 

 College of Engineering, Tokio, Japan. — On points of similarity 

 between zeolitic and siliceous incrustations of recent formation 

 by thermal springs and those observed in amygdaloid and other 

 altered volcanic rocks, by Prof. A. Daubrte, F.M.G.S. — On 

 the cretaceous Dentaliadfe, by J. S. Gardner, F.G.S. — On a 

 number of new .sections around the estuary of the Dee which 

 exhibit phenomena having an important bearing on the origin 

 of boulder-clay and the sequence of glacial events, by D. 

 Mackintosh, F.G.S. — Discovery of silurian beds in Teesdale, 

 by W. Gunn, F.G.S., and C. T. Clough, F.G.S., of H.M. 

 Geological Survey. — On the superficial geology of British 

 Columbia, by George Mercer Dawson, F.G.S., Assoc. R.S.M., 

 of the Geological Survey of Canada. — The exploration of the 

 ossiferous deposit at Windy Knoll, Castleton, Derbyshire, by 

 Rooke Pennington, F.G.S., and Prof. W. Boyd Dawkins, 

 by Prof. W. Boyd Dawkins, F. R.S. — Description of the fossil 

 organic remains from Bendigo, by M. Carl August Zacharise, 

 commimicated by the president. — Notes on some recent dis- 

 coveries of copper ore in Nova Scotia, by Edwin Gilpin, F G.S. 

 — Glacial drift in the North-eastern Carpathians, by R. L. Jack, 

 F.G.S., and John Home, F.G.S., of the Geological Survey of 



