126 EH Es SCHWARZ, 
ites, as I may call them, range up to sizes which would shake consider- 
able areas of country by their fall, as for instance the Bacubirite 
meteorite, which is thirteen feet long and is estimated to weigh so 
tons.* 
In the Coon Butte, Ariz., there is a crater which was described 
by Gilbert as volcanic, but subsequent investigation has failed to 
discover any volcanic material connected with it; on the other hand, 
strewn round it are masses of meteoric iron of which ten tons have 
been carried away at different times and now figure in collections as 
portions of the Canyon Diabolo meteorite. The rocks in the vicinity 
of Coon Mountain consist of horizontal beds of Aubrey limestone and 
sandstone belonging to the upper Carboniferous series. ‘The moun- 
tain is formed by the up-turned edges of the strata making a jagged 
circular ridge varying in height from 120-30 feet above the plain. 
The chasm is 600 feet deep and 3,800 feet across. The nearest lava 
flows and cinder cones are twelve miles distant, while the San Fran- 
cisco mountains which contain many volcanic cones are 45 miles 
away. "The material at the bottom of the crater has been investigated 
by Messrs. Barringer and Tilgham by means of bore-holes down 
to 1,000 feet, and the rock encountered is mostly pure white silica 
which in some places is in the form of impalpable powder; scattered 
throughout this there are masses of varying sizes of pumiceous and 
more compact material, which chemical and microscopic examinations 
show to have been formed by the crushing and fusing of the quartz 
sandstone. Below the zone of crushed and fused material there is 
an underlying sandstone quite intact and unaltered.’ 
There seems to be no reasonable doubt that this crater is actually 
the result of the impact of a huge bolide and the absence of the large 
meteor itself is explained by supposing that the heat of the impact was 
sufficient to melt and perhaps vaporise its substance; certainly there 
is a large quantity of magnetic iron oxide lying as dust about the 
neighboring country, which, on analysis, gives a notable-percentage 
of nickel. 
tH. A. Ward, ‘‘The Bacubirite Meteorite,’’ Proc. Rochester Acad. Sci., 1902, 
IW p07 
2D. M. Barringer, ‘““Coon Mountain and Its Crater (Arizona), Philadelphia 
Acad. Nat. Sct. Proc., 1906, LVII, p. 861; B. C. Tilgham, zbzd., p. 887; G. P. Merrill, 
Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections (quarterly issue), L, 1907, pp. 203, 461. 
