522 Notices of Memoirs — Short Notices. 



which is formed during the passage of such bodies through the air ; 

 the crust is in parts black, in parts brown, perhaps owing to the 

 influence of the soil. On the smoother faces already referred to, 

 the crust is thicker than, and diflPerent in aspect from, that on the 

 remaining faces. From this it is inferred that the meteorite broke 

 up in the earth's atmosphere at an early part of its course, when the 

 speed was still so enormous that the heat produced by compression 

 of the air in front of the quickly moving stone was sufficient to 

 scorch the newly broken surface, for a fresh fracture of the stone is 

 quite light in colour. In one part the crust is iridescent in purple, 

 blue, and pink colours. Here and there bright particles of a 

 metallic alloy of iron and nickel interrupt the continuity of the dark 

 crust. On one of the smaller surfaces of latest fracture there is 

 visible a section of a large flat nodule of the bronze-coloured 

 protosulphide of iron, troilite, which is a characteristic mineral 

 constituent of meteorites, and is not found as a native terrestrial 

 product. Owing to the presence of particles of nickel-iron dispersed 

 through the stony matter, the meteorite affects the magnetic needle, 

 thougii not to a great extent. A mould of the meteorite has been 

 made from which models will be prepared ; a detailed mineralogical 

 and chemical examination of the material of the stone will be at once 

 begun." 



The Bjurbole Meteorite. — "Wilhelm Kamsay and L. Borgstrom 

 contribute to the Bulletin de la Commission geologique de Finlande 

 (No. 12, 1902) a full account of this fall, which occurred on the 

 i2th March, 1899. It smashed through the ice which covered the 

 fjord, and bedded itself in the mud to the depth of six metres. The 

 ice at the point was 40 cm. thick, and fortunately there was only 

 90 cm. of water, so its recovery was not difficult. It was recovered 

 in several pieces, the total weight of the lot being 328 kilograms. 

 Its chemical composition seems to be of especial interest, but we 

 have not room for further detail, and must refer the reader to the 

 original paper. Bjurbole is about 60 kilometres N.E. of Helsingfors. 



IX. — Short Notices. 



1. Pliocene Voles. — Dr. Forsyth Major has studied the Voles 

 from the Upper Val d'Arno and the Norwich Crag, and his results 

 are embodied in a valuable note in the Proceedings of the Zoological 

 Society of London, just issued. According to Dr. Major, Mr. Newton's 

 Microtus intermedins forms a well-defined group of these animals, not 

 a species, and is raised to the rank of a genus, Mimomys. Three species 

 are defined altogether, but the author wisely says, " I am, however, 

 quite convinced that at least double this number of species ought to 

 be recognised, and am only prevented from doing so at present 

 because I do not wish to found species on isolated teeth," remarks 

 which might well be taken to heart by describers of scraps and 

 fragments of bone and other imperfect and indeterminable material. 



2. Carboniferous Arachnids. — When studying the Arachnida 

 from the Permian of Bohemia for my work "Fauna der Gaskohle " 

 (says Professor Dr. Anton Fritsch), I came to the conclusion that no 



