Description and Analysis of a Meteoric Mass. 251 



and its real value was made known. To the politeness of Col. 

 Micajah C. Rodgers, of Serierille, I am indebted for a considera- 

 ble quantity of it ; and the Hon. Judge Jacob Peck of Jefferson 

 County, has also presented me with some small fragments. I am 

 thus enabled to lay a description of this singular substance before 

 the scientific public. 



Having ascertained, as appears from the analysis below given, 

 that this iron contains nickel, the mass must be considered of 

 meteoric origin ; but it differs from most of the masses of meteoric 

 iron hitherto described. The original weight of it is said to have 

 been about 2000 pounds. The portions that 1 have seen, (as well 

 as those which are in my possession,) present a singular heterogene- 

 ous mixture of metallic iron, carburet of iron or graphite, sulphu- 

 ret of iron, (pyrites,) and hydroxide of iron, the latter, brown and 

 yellow ; in some parts all four ingredients form a kind of homo- 

 geneous mixture. 



The most abundant constituent, however, is the nickeliferous 

 iron, and it composes about yVoths of the whole mass. It has 

 partly a crystaHine structure, and is in part, composed of grains 

 or globules of various sizes and forms, merely agglutinated to- 

 gether, or sometimes separated by a thin flexible highly polished 

 pellicle of graphite. The cr5''stalline part is composed of larainse 

 of various thickness, in the form of equilateral triangles, which 

 are separated from each other by very thin flexible pellicles, as 

 mentioned above respecting the grains. 



I expected to find these triangular laminee placed in such posi- 

 tion as to form octahedrons, or showing a cleavage parallel to the 

 sides of a regular octahedron ; but this is not the case, as the 

 cleavage gives a regular tetrahedron. I have one of these forms, 

 which is about an inch from base to apex. 



The metallic iron is also dispersed in small irregular-shaped 

 masses through a hard, compact, brown hydrated oxide of iron. 

 Throughout this the iron is also dispersed in invisible grains, to 

 be detected only by the magnet, which attracts them when the 

 substance has been reduced to powder. 



This iron is malleable. I have in my possession a horse-shoe 

 nail, which was made of it without having undergone a previous 

 preparation, but it is harder and whiter than common wrought 

 iron. This hardness and color may be owing to a small quantity 

 of carbon which it contains, or perhaps to the nickel ; in its nat- 

 ural state, however, the color of the iron differs much in different 



