58 Dr. Walter Flight— On Meteorites. 



especially in this part of tlie island, is so thickly scored with faults, 

 that no efforts of the imagination are admissible. 



The rock at Bryngwallen, which Dr. Koberts wishes to correlate 

 with the Twt Hill conglomerate, is undoubtedly Cambrian ; but the 

 lithological resemblances between the two tj'pes are by no means 

 striking. They are alike in containing pebbles of vitreous quartz, 

 but this mineral is too widely distributed to prove much. 



The other inclosed fragments do not correspond ; the Twt Hill 

 rock containing jasper, quartzite, and schist, while the Bryngwallen 

 conglomerate, besides the quartz, incloses, so far as I could find, 

 only felsite pebbles, which alone would be sufficient to suggest a 

 Post-Archaean age. It is curious that Dr. Roberts should maintain 

 that " the absence of felsite pebbles " in this rock " removes the only 

 really strong d priori argument against referring the Twt Hill bed 

 to the Cambrian series ;" when almost the first blow of my hammer, 

 on my visit to the quarry, struck off a piece of conglomerate contain- 

 ing at least one felsite pebble. 



IV. — Supplement to a Chapter in the History of Meteorites. 

 Ey Walter Flight, D.Sc, F.G.S. 

 N the volume of the Geological Magazine which appeared 

 in 1875, I published a digest of the literature relating to the 

 meteorites which fell between 1869 and that date, as well as an 

 examination of the work done during that interval of time on 

 meteorites which had fallen before 1869. I purpose now to direct 

 the reader's attention to what has happened or been done during the 

 intervening years, 1875 to 1881, and bring the supplement down to 

 the present time. 



Found 1870. — Ovifak, Disko, Greenland.^ 



M. Daubree gives the name Laicrencite to the iron protochloride, 

 the presence of which he has detected in the curious meteoric irons 

 of Ovifak. It was earlier recognized in the Tennessee meteoric iron 

 by Dr. Lawrence Smith. 



The Academy of Sciences of Paris appointed a commission to 

 rejDort on a paper by Dr. Lawrence Smith on the supposed native 

 iron of Greenland, and their report has recently been presented by 

 M. Daubree. It is pointed out that the bodies which come from 

 beyond our atmosphere, and which are called meteorites, present, as 

 regards their mineralogical constitution, a most striking resemblance 

 to certain terrestrial rocks. The important fact that masses derived 

 from most widely separated regions of space should present such 

 resemblances was pointed out by Nordenskjold in 1870, when he 

 discovered large masses of native iron at Ovifak, on the island of 

 Disco, Gi'eenland. The first thought which suggested itself to hi in 

 was that they were of meteoric origin. In order to explain the fact 

 that these masses were fused into the basalt, he assumed that they had 

 fallen into it while it was still liquid. Many adopted this view, and, 

 among others, Nauckhoff and Tschermak. Steenstrup, on the other 



1 G. A. Daubree, Compt. rend, 1877, Jan. 8th, Ixxsiv. 66 ; Ibid. Ixxxvii. 911. 



