362 report— 1878. 



noticed that the sound appeared to come from the west, where the rain- 

 clouds were, and describes it as resembling that produced when many- 

 cannon are fired simultaneously, followed by a deafening noise like that 

 caused by battalion-firing. He observed the fall of one of the stones, 

 which descended at a low angle, and it was accompanied by lateral bands 

 of a bluish colour (welcher von Nebenstreifen von blaulicher Farbe 

 begleitetwar). It fell in the court-yard of a house about two paces distant 

 from a summer-house, and thirty paces from the bank of the Terek. A 

 soldier's wife, standing on the threshold of the house, drew back in the 

 greatest alarm as the meteorite struck the ground two paces from her 

 with all the violence of a bomb-shell, scattering the earth over the wall 

 of the house. A soldier soon probed the hole with a ramrod, and 

 found at a depth of rather more than a foot fragments of the stone 

 weighing in all ten pounds. Many heard a second sound, as though the 

 meteorite burst twice in its descent through the atmosphere, and the 

 noise attending the fall was observed by persons eight versts distant on 

 the other side of the Terek. A woman who was occupied in washing 

 clothes, at a spot about 1050 feet distant from the point where the 

 meteorite struck the ground, heard fragments, which had been detached 

 by the explosion, fall into the river Terek. The water fizzed just as it 

 would when brought in contact with a large quantity of heated iron. 



The meteorite has a longish rounded form, and has lost the greater 

 portion of its crust ; in fact, the crust, together with a thin layer of the 

 enclosed silicate, is very easily removed, and probably dropped off at the 

 time of the fall. Its actual thickness is much greater than in the case of 

 the stones which fell at Knyahinya, and about as thick as that of the 

 Pultusk aerolites. 



Professor Tschermak goes on to describe the Vandal treatment to 

 which the stone was subjected before it reached his house for investigation. 

 A cast of it had been taken for the Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg, 

 and it had subsequently been sawn in two. It appears, in the first place, 

 to have been rubbed down with fat, not oil even, and, after the mould was 

 taken, to have been soaked with potash lye to remove the unctuous layer ; 

 the carbonate of potash, which penetrated the porous stone with scarcely 

 any crust to protect it, next began to effloresce, and the new danger to 

 which it was exposed had to be compassed by drenching it with water. 

 It was now ready to pass from the clumsy hands of the modeller to expe- 

 rience the yet more tender mercies of the lapidary, who, not to be outdone 

 by his fellow- workman, it is to be conjectured, proceeded to close all the 

 fissures and lines upon its surface with a black varnish. Long treatment 

 with alcohol and protracted drying in a steam bath were the next opera- 

 tions which were made with a view to cleanse it. 



A system of cracks and fissures, arranged like the branches of a tree, 

 traverses the whole stone, and gives us the impression that they are the 

 result of the blow which the meteorite received on its fall. The mass of 

 the stone is brittle, the colour blackish grey with bright points. Thex-e 

 are many enclosed mineral particles, some almost invisible, others 1 cm. 

 across, the greater part having a diameter of less than 2 mm. The 

 matrix is black and opaque even when viewed in a microscopic section, 

 and many of the enclosed particles are opaque or only translucent in 

 points. Most of them, however, are transparent, and the majority have 

 a circular or rounded outline. A plate is appended to Tschermak's paper 

 showing figures of the enclosed minerals. Five distinct ingredients 



