422 MISCELLANEOUS COERESPONIJENCE. 



The foregoing letter was referred by Hon. William Hunter, Assistant 

 Secretary of State, to the Smithsonian Institution. The following is the 

 reply of the Secretary, Professor Henry : 



" We have just received your very interesting letter of April 2, contain- 

 ing a specimen of meteoric iron, accompanied by the communication of 

 Mr. W. M. Pierson, vice-consul of the United States at Paso del Norte. 

 There can be little doubt that the specimen is from a meteorite, but to 

 settle this point beyond controversy we shall have it carefully analyzed. 

 The facts mentioned in the communication are very interesting ; and, if 

 the State Department has no objection, we would be pleased to publish 

 it in the appendix to the next report. 



" It would appear from observations that, on some occasion in the 

 history of the globe, a shower of immense meteors fell upon the region 

 where the meteor in question- is found. The great meteorite at the 

 Smithsonian Institution came from Tucson, and we have heard of a 

 number of others of large size that came from the same locality. Large 

 meteorites are of great interest to the science of the day. They all 

 exhibit the appearance of having been subjected to an intense heat ; and 

 what IS still more wonderful, in some of them, at least, is found con- 

 densed within the pores of the material a large quantity of hydrogen-gas, 

 indicating that they have in some portion of their past existence been 

 in an atmosphere of this material. 



" It would give us great pleasure to subject a portion of the meteorite 

 in question to an investigation in regard to its gaseous contents ; and if 

 the gentlemen who own it will present it to the Institution, we will 

 cheerfully pay the expense of transportation, and forever associate their 

 names in the history of science with the specimen, and with the results 

 of any experiments that may be made in regard to it." 



©N THE HABITS ©F THE BEAVEE. 

 By Felix E. Beunot, of Pittsburgh, Pa. 



While visiting the Shoshone and Bannack Indian reservation in 

 Western Wyoming Territory last September, I saw at the saw-mill a 

 cotton -wood log which had been cat down by beavers, (castor,) and which 

 is 2^ feet in diameter at the butt where the cutting was done. Whether 

 you have anything of the kind at the Smithsonian Institution I do not 

 know. The time will probably come when such tangible proofs of the 

 rare industry and curious habits of the beaver will be unattainable, and 

 people will be loth to credit the facts in regard to them. 



Mr. S. G. Goodrich, in his popular work, " The Animal Kingdom," 

 quotes the traveler Eichardson as saying on this subject, " The largest 

 tree I observed cut down by them was about the thickness of a man's 

 thigh, that is, about 6 or 7 inches in diameter; but Mr. Graham says 

 that he has seen them cut down a tree that was 10 inches in diameter ;" 



