OBSEEVATIONS OF LUMINOUS METEOBS. 295 



may be the rliabdite of Reiclienbach. The density of the iron is 7'65 and 

 its composition : 



Iron 94-08 



Nickel 4-52 



Phosphorus 007 



Graphite O'lO 



99-67 



1880, May (first lialf of). — Karand, 12 miles east of Telieran, Persia.^ 



' The fall of a meteorite -which -was actually seen, and which is not an 

 event of every- day occurrence, deserves, on account of its mineralogical 

 interest, some slight notice. It is not possible here to ascertain with cer- 

 tainty the constituent minerals ; it is therefore possible at present only to 

 give a short sketch of the stone ; later on, when wei have the material to 

 work with and the help of an authority in this branch, we may return to 

 the subject. In the first half of the m.onth of May last year, 1880, we 

 were called before the Shah, who handed to us a metallic shining mineral, 

 weighing about 400 grammes, which, from the outer crust still adhering 

 to it, we at once recognised as a meteorite. We saw that the Shah took 

 the shining metal in it for silver, for he asked the value of it. But when 

 we spoke of the iron, and its probably containing nickel, and that the 

 mineral had more scientific than intrinsic worth, it was permitted to us to 

 take the stone away, and to break off a piece for closer examination. 



' The Shah made himself acquainted with the origin and cause of 

 meteorites, and informed us that the stone in question weighed 45 kilo- 

 grammes, and fell in the neighbourhood of the village of Karand, twelve 

 miles east of Teheran, with an explosive noise like thunder. 



' Half of the stone was covered with a thin, blackish, fused crust, while 

 the fresh lustrous fractured surface showed it to have formed a portion of 

 a much larger stone. A fragment weighing 3-66 grammes was found to 

 possess a density of 4-36. The fractured surface showed a grey, passing 

 into green, ground-structure, with, in places, single pieces of an oil-green 

 mineral, with a lustre of glass, probably olivine. In the mass lay, closely 

 strewn together, small and large granules of white iron ; also little plates 

 of this metal lay enclosed in it, and violet-blue tinted grains, similar in 

 their play of colour to copper pyrites. 



' The pulverised mineral is pretty light, and almost entirely soluble in 

 hydrochloric acid. The fractured surface was covered in a few days with 

 a thin oxidised crust, although some portions of it are as fresh after five 

 months as at first.' 



1880. Found in May. — Lexington County, South Carolina.^ 



A mass of iron, weighing 10^ lbs., was found at this locality, in May, 

 and sent to the Shepards, father and son, for examination. It has the 

 form of a cylinder with two flattened edges ; the surface is nearly free 

 from yellow hydrated peroxide of iron, being mostly enveloped with a 

 black and brittle coating, which, though containing some troilite, is yet 

 almost entirely formed of magnetite. Amygdaloidal masses of troilite, of 



' Mining engineer Ferd. Dietzsch, in Teheran ; in a paper intituled ' Geologisches 

 Berg- und Hiittenmiinnisches aus Persien,' in Berg- und Hucttenmdnnische Zeitung, 

 March 18, 1881. 



== C. U. Shepard, Amer. Jour. So. 1881, sxi. 117. 



