CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE STUDY OF THE CANYON 

 DIABLO METEORITES 



By GEORGE P. MERRILL and WIRT TASSIN 

 Of the Department of Geology 



Part I 

 By GEORGE P. MERRILL 



Attention was first called to the remarkable distribution of me- 

 teoric irons in the vicinity of Canyon Diablo, Coconino County, Ari- 

 zona, at the 1891 meeting- of the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, held in Washington. 1 , 



Since that time the physical and chemical characteristics of the 

 irons have been described by numerous workers, including Hunting- 

 ton, 2 Cohen, 3 Brezina, 4 and Derby, 5 while others have discussed the 

 subject with reference to the occurrence of diamonds in the iron, the 

 origin of the crater, etc. ; these papers, for the present, need only in- 

 cidental reference. The matter will be taken up more in detail in a 

 final paper which is in process of preparation. 



Interest, almost to the point of sensationalism, has recently been 

 revived in the occurrence through the publication of Messrs. D. M. 

 Barringer and B. C. Tilghman, 6 of Philadelphia, who have shown 

 the meteoric hypothesis of the origin of the crater to have had a 

 much more substantial basis than many, including the writer, were 

 at first disposed to admit. Correspondence and interviews with the 

 writers of this paper led to the acceptance on the part of the present 

 writer of an invitation to visit the crater, and the placing in his 

 hands, for study, of a complete series of the meteoric products and 

 other materials found associated therewith. One of these products, 

 an altered sandstone, has been already described. 7 The present paper 



1 Proc. Am. Assoc. Adv. of Sci., August, 1891, p. 277; Am. Jour. Sci., vol. 

 42, 1891, p. 413. 



2 Am. Acad. Arts and Sciences, vol. 22, 1892, and 1894. 



3 Meteorischen Studien, iv, 1895. 



4 Die Meteoritensammlung des k. k. Nat. Hof. Mus., 1895. 



5 Am. Jour. Sci., vol. 49, 1895, p. 101. 



' : Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Pliila., December, 1905. 



' A Peculiar Form of Metamorphism in Sandstone. Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., 

 vol. xxxi, 1907, p. 547. 



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