36o 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XV. No. 384 



and has an altitude of about 330 feet above sea-level. Some 

 drains of the head waters of the Medicine River and its tributaries, 

 farther south, become ravines and valleys; and there a gravel 

 occurs, the debris of miocene "Loup Fork" conglomerates. But 

 on the high prairie not a stone of any kind is to be found: hence 

 the ranchmen and settlers were greatly surprised at finding heavy 

 rocks or stones projecting through the prau-ie sod. 



Several years ago, Mr. Davis, a lawyer at Greensburg, identified 

 these as meteorites ; and although the farmers had known this for 

 a long time, yet, strange to say, no importance was attached to 



The history of some of these pieces is quite remarkable. The 

 35.73-pound piece was found on the Evans place, was lost, and 

 again found in a hole made by some hogs under a barbed-wire 

 fence. The 75-pound mass was used by Mrs. Kimberly to hold 

 down a cellar-door or the cover of a rain-barrel. No. 3 was used 

 to keep down a stable-roof. The 466 pound mass (called by the 

 farmers the, " moon meteorite ") was covered by only three inches 

 o£ soil, and broke a ploughshare when it was struck. Appar- 

 ently none of the masses were buried to a greater depth than five 

 or six inches. 



PIG. 1.— PRAIRIE LAND, KIMBERLY FARM. 



them until Mrs. Kimberly applied to Professor F. W. Cragin, of 

 Washburn University, in the early part of March. It was not 

 until the 13th of March that Professor Cragin secured four of these 

 masses. 



They were nearly all found by being struck by mowing-machines, 

 ploughshares, corn- cultivators, or other farm implements. Over' 

 twenty distinct masses have been reported ; but it is very evident, 

 from the weight and other facts, that some have been noted sev- 

 eral times over. 



The 101.5-pound, the 71.5-pound, and the 55-pound masses were 

 found four years ago by a cowboy, when the ranch had not yet 

 been occupied by settlers, and was simply used as a cattle-range. 

 He was unable to move them to the ' ' Green's Stage Station," now 

 Greensburg, eight miles distant, and so buried them in the gulch 

 a mile north-west of the " Francisco Claim." About a year after- 

 ward he became ill, and died; but before his death he communi- 

 cated the burial of the "three strange rocks," as he called them, 

 to two of the settlers, who succeeded in finding them and bringing 



RAWGE la. 



SOUTH 



RANCE 17, 



PIG. 2. — TOWN MAP BRENHAM T0V7NSH1P. 



(The asterisk denotes the spots where meteorites were found.) 



The townships are reckoned from the base-line, the 40th parallel; 

 and the ranges, from the 6th principal meridian, which crosses 

 Kansas about longitude 97° 30' west of Greenwich. 



Brenham Township (37) is made up of thirty-six sections, each 

 one mile square, numbering from No. 1 to No. 36. The meteor- 

 ites seem to have been scattered north-east and south-west, and to 

 have covered an area over one mile in length. Some of the mete- 

 orites fell on the east half of the north-west quarter, Section 37, 

 Township 38, Range 17, west of the 6th principal meridian. 



them to the new town of Greensburg about a year after his death. 

 The 55-pound mass was carried over by a neighbor, who used it 

 to weight down his haystack. 



Professor Snow of Lawrence, Kan., visited Kiowa County sev- 

 eral times, and the last time obtained the 101.5-pound mass in the 

 streets of Greensburg, the county seat, where it had lain for several 

 years in front of a lawyer's real-estate office. 



The exterior of all the masses shows the characteristic pitting. 

 The surfaces have all been more or less oxidized by exposure to 



