298 EEPOBT — 1881. 



to have prevailed. Combining this negative evidence with the moderate 

 description of the atmospheric concussion which the accounts of the re- 

 port convey, it seems most probable that the direction of the fire-ball's 

 descending course through the rarest strata of the atmosphere must have 

 been nearly vertical, so as to escape general observation in the beaming- 

 sunshine by its great altitude overhead. The almost exactly vertical 

 direction of the hole pierced in the earth by the stone's penetration 

 through the coke-ballast of the railway- slope affords evidence of the same 

 general directional character with what is indicated by the aerial pheno- 

 mena which have been described. 



The stone was warm — ' new milk warm' — when felt with the hand at the 

 bottom of the hole by the platelayer who found it a few minutes after the 

 fall. It was extracted, without injury or disturbance of the hole, with the 

 hand ; and after the first surprise at the occurrence, it was left on a ballast 

 heap, and a communication of the circumstances, and consignment of the 

 stone, were made next day by Mr. Bllinor to the Railway Engineer, Mr. 

 W. Cndwoi'th, who was passing on the line. Immediate care of the 

 meteorite was taken by Mr. Cudworth, who took those steps for its 

 preservation which have secured its present exhibition in the collection 

 of the Tork Museum, and who by his subsequent efforts collected most of 

 the local information on the stone-fall which it has been the immediate 

 object of this paper to describe. 



The weight of the meteorite as found was about 31bs. S^ozs. ; and 

 its entirely fused and crusted surface has scarcely suffered any visible 

 abrasions by the fall and extraction from the earth. It is a slightly 

 scolloped or conchoidal-looking, low pyramid, of between five and six 

 inches width in the two dimensions of its base, and about three inches 

 high. The rounded summit and sloping sides are scored and grooved, 

 with a polish like black-lead, in waving furrows running to the base, 

 showing that this side was foremost during the whole of the fusing action 

 of the atmosphere which the meteorite underwent in its flight. The 

 rear, or base, is equally fused and branded by heat, but rough, dull brown 

 in colour, and not scored or furrowed. From the size of the hole which 

 it j^ierced, it must have struck the earth front- foremost, and have turned 

 edgewise finally on nearing the bottom of the hole. It is somewhat 

 difficult from this circumstance to assign a real axis of the hole's direction. 

 But the penetration-line sloped apparently about 10° from the vertical, from 

 the S.S.E. The hole was eleven inches deep, penetrating with knife-like 

 sharpness the surface herbage, and seven or eight inches of coke-ballast, 

 and thereafter brick-earth or coarse clay to the remaining depth. By the 

 courtesy of the North-Eastei'n Railway Company's Directors and servants, 

 the hole has been preserved entire, enclosing it with some hundredweights 

 of the surrounding earth m situ in a strong box with a sheet iron floor, 

 which Avas slid under it through the yielding clay.^ 



An experiment was also made at the same time on the work of pene- 

 tration of a cast-iron model of the aerolite, driven in front of a short oak 

 pile to the same depth into the earth, at an immediately adjoining spot, 

 by repeated falls, through about four feet, of a heavy iron drop- weight 

 weighing 701bs. The iron model was first driven front-foremost, 



> The earth-chest was placed in the Museum of the Tork Philosophical Society 

 during the meeting of the British Association in the city. Its unwieldy weight is 

 now replaced there by a light plaster model taken of the surface and of the burrow- 

 like bore-hole made bj^ the meteorite in the earth which it contained. 



