NA TURE 



[November 7, 1907 



The able author has brought to the task not only 

 his former experiences of African fishes — north and 

 south, east and west — but the whole resources of the 

 British Museum, and the vast storehouse of inform- 

 ation amassed during the lifelong labours of Dr. 

 Giinther, and he has accomplished it in a manner 

 creditable to the Egyptian Government, to science, 

 and to himself. His work, indeed, will long form the 

 basis of future labours in the ichthyology of the Nile. 

 The whole of the families are as admirably illustrated 

 as described in the beautiful volume of lifelike litho- 

 graphs by Messrs. Smit and Green, their work rival- 

 ling the exquisite finish of the late G. H. Ford, long 

 facile princcps in the department. Finally, if any sug- 

 gestion may be made in a work so carefully 

 performed, it is that in the index the synonyms 

 might have been printed in italics, and that, in the 

 text, plate xiv. should be substituted on p. 84 for 

 plate XV. W. C. M. 



SOME RECENT PAPERS ON METEORITES. 

 \\! E have before us a number of reprints of recent 



• • papers descriptive of various meteorites. 

 Several of these are by the late Dr. Henry A. Ward 

 and the late Prof. E. Cohen, two of the most inde- 

 fatigable workers in this subject, whose loss is much 

 to be deplored. In 1904, two years before his death. 

 Dr. Ward published a " Catalogue of the Ward- 

 Coonlev Collection of Meteorites," which is not only 

 a catalogue, but contains, in addition, much useful 

 information, including alphabetical and topographical 

 lists of all known meteorites (about 6S0 in number). 

 The Ward-Coolney collection, now exhibited in the 

 American Museum of Natural History at New York, 

 is one of the most complete that has ever been made, 

 containing as it does representatives of 603 meteoritic 

 falls ; it is further remarkable in that it was brought 

 together in the comparatively short space of time of ten 

 years. Prof. Cohen died in 1905, and a third part of 

 his " Meteoreisenkunde " was published after his 

 death ; this, which is the only general work that has 

 yet been attempted on meteorites, unfortunately re- 

 mains incomplete. 



Dr. H. A. Ward (Proc. Rochester Acad. Sci., 1904, 

 vol. iv. , pp. 137-148, with 6 plates) gives a descrip- 

 tion of the Willamette meteorite, which was found in 

 1902 near the town of Willamette, in Oregon. This 

 mass of metallic nickel-iron measures 10 x 6J x 4j feet, 

 and weighs 31,107 lb. (about 155 tons); it is the third 

 largest meteorite as yet known. Like the largest on 

 record, the Anighito, of 36J tons, brought by Com- 

 mander R. E. Peary from Cape York, in Greenland, 

 it is now exhibited in the .'\merican Museum of Natural 

 History. The second largest known meteorite is that 

 of Bacubirito, in Mexico, which has an estimated 

 weight of 27J tons ; this mass, though unearthed and 

 described by Dr. Ward in 1902, has not been removed 

 from the place where it was found. The Willamette 

 meteorite is roughly conical in form, and it was found 

 embedded in the ground with the base of the cone 

 uppermost, suggesting that the apex of the cone was 

 to the front of the falling meteor. The mass is re- 

 markable for the deep, rounded, and cylindrical pits, 

 of which several types are distinguished, on the sides 

 and the base of the cone. The deep cavities on the 

 base (Fig. i) are accounted for by the weathering and 

 rusting action of water standing in pools on the 

 exposed part of the mass as it lay for unknown ages 

 in the soil of the primeval forest of a very moist 

 region. The pittings and groovings on the sides are 

 attributed bv the author to the erosive action of the 

 air during the flight of the meteorite ; but it seems 

 more likely that thev have been produced by weather- 



No. 1984, VOL. yy] 



ing in the ground, and that none of the original 

 surface now remains. The nodules and rods of 

 troilite (iron sulphide) enclosed in the metallic iron no 

 doubt formed the centres around which the weather- 

 ing has proceeded. The Widmanstiitten figures on an 

 etched section of the iron show the structure to be 

 octahedral with broad lamellse. The specific gravity 

 of the iron is 7.7, and it contains 91J per cent, of 

 iron, 8 per cent, of nickel, and small amounts of 

 cobalt and phosphorus. 



Dr. H. A. \\'ard {ibid., 1905, vol. iv., pp. 193-202) 

 also gives an account of the Bath Furnace aerolite, 



'SKv 



which was observed to fall on November 15, 1902, 

 in the vicinity of Bath Furnace in Bath Co., Kentucky, 

 the fall being accompanied by a blinding light, loiid 

 detonations, and hissing noises. In all, three stones 

 were found; one of them, weighing nearly 13 lb., 

 struck the hard surface of a road, making an east to 

 west furrow about a foot in length and five inches in 

 greatest depth. Another mass of 177J lb. fell if miles 

 further south ; it scarred the trunk of one tree, cut 

 through the roots of another, and buried itself two 

 feet in the ground. .-\ side view (Fig. 2) of this larger 



from apex. 



showing furrows radiating 



stone shows very clearly a system of furrows radiating 

 from the apex, which were produced by the intense 

 erosive action of the air during' the flight of the stone. 

 The internal structure of the Bath Furnace meteorite 

 is that of a spheroidal chondrodite like that of the 

 three previously known meteorites (Werchne Tschir- 

 skaja. South Russia, 1843; Trenzano, Italy, 1856; 

 and Saline Township, Kansas, 1898), whicli fell during 

 the November Leonids. Both the Bath Furnace and 

 the Willamette meteorites gave rise to suits at law 

 between the finders and the land owners. In other 

 papers, Dr. Ward describes some new Chilian 



