552 Dr. Walter Flight — History of Meteorites. 



Found 1861. — Cranbourne, near Melbourne, Australia. 

 [Eat. 38° 11' S. ; Eong. 145° 20' E.] 1 



This enormous block of meteoric iron, which is a familiar object 

 to those frequenting the British Museum, is, with the exception of 

 the recently found Ovifak irons, preserved at Stockholm and Copen- 

 hagen, the largest meteorite contained in any collection. The 

 minerals composing it have for some time past formed the subject 

 of an investigation, and the results which I have obtained will shortly 

 be published. It will suffice here to state that the Australian, like 

 the Greenland irons, oxidises on exposure to moist air and scales off. 

 These masses differ in that the Ovifak iron yields a rusty-brown 

 coarse powder, apparently without structure ; in the debris of the 

 Australian iron, on the other hand, distinct crystals of nickel-iron 

 are to be met with. Though partially converted into oxide and 

 readily broken when handled, they attain after treatment with 

 an excess of hydrogen at a red heat their pristine stability. A num- 

 ber of crystals, apparently tetrahedra, of nickel-iron, large and 

 very perfect, as well as plates of what may possibly be beam -iron 

 and which lie, though not immediately, upon them, were reduced 

 by this method : I had the honour of showing a small suite of 

 them at the Soiree of the Eoyal Society on the 26th May last. Be- 

 tween these two forms lie excessively thin plates of an alloy of iron, 

 much richer in nickel, and to the diminished action of an etching fluid 

 on this more stable alloy I ascribe the development of such thin lines 

 as are seen in the section of the Toluca iron (see Plate IX. p. 311)'. 

 The descriptions and analyses of these and other minerals will appear 

 in the memoir which I have in preparation. I have now to refer 

 the reader to von Haidinger's early notices 2 of the discovery of this 

 block, based for the most part on a report supplied by Neumayer, at 

 that time Director of the Flagstaff Observatory at Melbourne. Two 

 masses of meteoric iron were discovered, and near the larger meteorite 

 Neumayer found a brown ochrey mineral which he regarded as a 

 portion of its oxidised crust. It had but feeble action on the magnet 

 and did not fuse before the blowpipe, but turned black and became 

 magnetic. The hardness is rather less than that of felspar, and the 

 specific gravity = 3 '744; the composition, according to a recently 

 published analysis by Haushofer, is : 



Insoluble silicate 4-1 



Silicic acid ... ... ... 2'3 



Alumina ... ... ... ... l - 5 



Iron oxide 71*1 



Nickel oxide 3-1 



Lime ... ... ... ... 1"8 



Phosphoric acid ... 1*4 



Water 137 



99-0 



1 K. Haushofer. Jour, Prakt. Chem., 1869, cvii. 330. — M. Berthelot. Ann. chim. 

 et phi/s. 1873, xxx. 419. 



2 W\ von Haidinger. Siizber. Ah. Wiss. Wien, 1861, xliii. 583 ; xliv. 378 and 

 465; and 1862, xlv. 63. 



