Br. Walter Flight — History of Meteorites. 73 



observed, the entire stone presenting crystalline characters. Little 

 clefts filled with fused material cross the field in every direction. 

 Two very small red granules were observed in the bronzite ; their 

 composition is not known. Similar bright coloured grains have 

 been met with in meteorites by Wohler and other observers. 



1870, October 27th, 3 a.m.— Forest, Ohio. [Lat. 40° 50' N. ; 

 Long. 84° 40' W.] L 



The meteor exploded with a report like that of a heavy siege gun, 

 followed by two or three reports in rapid succession. The firmest 

 houses were shaken to the foundations, and thousands of sleepers 

 aroused in an instant. People awake at the time were startled to see 

 the night suddenly lighted into day and again relapse in darkness. 

 The time between the extinction of the light and the sound of the 

 explosion is estimated at from one minute to half a minute. An 

 observer at Patterson, a mile from Forest, states that the meteor 

 came from the direction S. 35° W. The descriptions of its size are 

 of the usual vague kind : one man makes it as large as a beer-keg, 

 another as a load of hay, while a third observed a tail thirty feet 

 long and three feet wide ! 



The report appears to have been heard for fifty miles around, if 

 not at still greater distances. No fragments of the meteorite have 

 been found. 



Found 1870. — Kokomo, Howard Co., Indiana. 2 



A piece of meteoric iron was found in plastic clay under a bed 

 of peat. It is described as a flattened, irregularly-shaped mass, 

 rounded on one side and concave on the other. It is 5 inches long, 

 3| inches wide, and l-'-g- inches thick ; and it weighs 4 lbs. 1^ oz. 

 It is granular, like fine steel, and is malleable ; and though harder 

 than common iron, can be wrought into any form. No quantitative 

 analysis of this iron has yet been made, but the presence in it of the 

 following elements has been determined : nickel, cobalt, tin, carbon, 

 phosphorus, and perhaps sulphur. By acid the Widmannstattian 

 figures are developed in great perfection. 



Found 1870.— Ilimae, Desert of Atacama, Chili. [Lat. 26° S. ; 

 Long. 70° W.j 3 



This, the most recent addition to the little group of irons and 

 siderolites which have from time to time been found on the desert 

 and cordilleras of Atacama, in about the latitude of the Tropic of 

 Capricorn, partly in Chili and partly in Bolivia, was acquired for the 

 Vienna Collection in 1870. It is a very interesting specimen of 

 meteoric iron, apparently nearly complete, and weighing about 51 

 kilog. It bears a rough resemblance to a shield, being convex on one 

 side, somewhat hollow on the other. 



Over the entire concave side are shallow hollows from 3 to 4 cm. 



1 J. L. Smith. Amer. Jour. Sc, 1870, xlix. 139. 



2 E. T. Cox. Amer. Jour. Sc, 1873, v. 155. 



3 G. Tsckermak. Denkschrift Wien. Akad. Math. Naturw. Classe, xxxi. 187. — 

 E. Ludwisr. Silz. Wien. Akad., lxiii. 323. 



