250 



SCIENCE 



[Vol. LVI, No. 1444 



a tobacco bed three miles southwest of Glas- 

 gow, Barren County, Kentucky. They exhibit 

 on fresh surfaces, even without etching, very 

 coarse "Widmanstadt structure. One of them 

 weighs about twenty-five and the other about 

 twenty pounds. They are both very much 

 oxidized on the surface, and had evidently been 

 in the earth a very long time. The smaller 

 piece goes to the National Museum, where 

 doubtless it will be described in full by Dr. 

 Merrill in the near future. We propose for 

 this fall the name "Glasgow siderite." It is 

 the fifteenth meteorite known from Kentucky. 



In hunting down the first meteorite the 

 writer secured after he came to Kentucky — 

 the Bath Fui-naee, which fell November 15, 

 1902, at 6:45 p.m. central time — he had good 

 success in obtaining from a large number of 

 observations five which were so aeeui'ately ex- 

 pressed as to angular measurements that they 

 indicated southern Bath County, Kentucky, as 

 the place of the fall. It was here that the fii'st 

 two pieces of the meteorite (an aerolite) were 

 almost immediately recovered, and this was 

 followed five months later by the discovery by 

 a squirrel hunter of the main portion. 



It is in the attempt to locate a meteorite 

 which passed over Indiana, Kentucky and 

 West Virginia, early in the evening of May 30 

 last, 7:30 central time, 8:30 eastern time, that 

 the writer has thus far been baffled by the sin- 

 gular ineptitude of the average man, and even 

 of the man supposed to be above the average 

 in intelligence, to grasp the space relations 

 involved in the problem of a body coming to 

 the earth from without. To his request 

 through the newspapers for observations on 

 this meteor the writer has received prompt re- 

 plies from a large number of persons. They 

 came from four states — Ohio, Indiana, Ken- 

 tucky and West Virginia — manifest the great- 

 est eagerness to serve the cause of science, and 

 represent, for the most part, the more intelli- 

 gent of the various communities from which 

 they come; yet even by a follow-up corre- 

 spondence it has thus far been almost impos- 

 sible to obtain from any of them reliable data 

 concerning the main thing desired — namely, 

 the compass direction of the point of disap- 

 pearance of the meteorite, either by "bursting" 



or sinking below the horizon, as seen from the 

 place of observation. Another thing desired 

 was information concerning any sounds, as of 

 cannonading, that might have been heard in 

 connection with the "bursting," and if such 

 were heard, what was the interval between the 

 two phenomena. 



It is evident from the replies received, that 

 while people about us formally subscribe to 

 the doctrine of a spherical earth, surrounded 

 by infinite space, practically their conception 

 of the universe when it comes to orienting 

 themselves in it with reference to things ter- 

 restrial and things celestial is as primitive as 

 that delineated on the monuments of Egypt, 

 set forth in the writings of the ancient Chal- 

 deans and Hebrews, or promulgated from the 

 pulpit of Voliva of Zion City. 



Knowing that few people possess compasses, 

 and that still fewer know how to use them in 

 measuring degrees of azimuth, the writer sent 

 out maps, with the direction to each observer 

 that he return it after he had oriented it with 

 reference to the points of the compass and 

 drawn a line on it from the place of observa- 

 tion toward the point of bursting or disap- 

 pearance of the meteor. It has been surpris- 

 ing (though we should have been prepared for 

 it by previous experience) to find how few 

 people can locate points correctly on a map, 

 or indeed use a map for any of the purposes 

 for which it has been made. One of the par- 

 ties, and he a college professor, evidently held 

 the map above his head in an effort to make it 

 represent the sky and tried to show by a curved 

 line on this flat surface, and hence in a dif- 

 ferent plane, what appeared to him to be the 

 descending path of the meteor. As other evi- 

 dences of the survival of naive primitive con- 

 ceptions as to the relation existing between 

 the "heavens and the earth," all the Indiana 

 observers were sure the meteorite fell in their 

 state, with commendable state pride making 

 the "circle of the heavens" meet that of the 

 earth on their side of the Ohio River. The 

 pot of gold is to be found at the end of the 

 rainbow just over the neighboring hill. Hence 

 also the Ohio observer, who saw it from a 

 moving automobile, was sure that he could 

 conduct the writer to the exact spot where the 



