Dr. Walter Flight— On Meteorites. 165 



Wellington and Market Drayton Eailway, when his attention was 

 attracted to a hole cut in the ground. He probed it with a stick and 

 at a depth of eighteen inches, four inches being of soil and fourteen 

 of solid clay, he found the mass of iron. The hole is nearly per- 

 pendicular, but the meteorite appears to have fallen in a S.E. direc- 

 tion. The mass was quite warm, it appears, when found. 



The meteorite passed into the hands of Mr. Ashdown, the agent 

 of the Duke of Cleveland, who presented it to the Trustees of the 

 British Museum. The national collection contains 351 distinct 

 meteorites, and of these 118 are iron masses, the fall of only seven 

 of which has been witnessed ; nine stony meteorites have fallen in 

 the British Islands and the Rowton iron is only the second iron 

 meteorite known as having been found in Great Britain. Mr. 

 Maskelyne pointed out the resemblance to be traced between this iron 

 and that of Nedagolla in India, both in its depth of penetration into 

 the soil as well as the direction of the little mass in space. 



The iron of this meteorite is compact and bright and the greater 

 part of the surface is covered with a thin film of magnetite : the 

 point where it struck the ground is worn bright. The composition 

 of this iron was found to be : — 



I. II. 



Iron 91-2.50 9r046 



Nickel 8-532 , g.^-- 



Cobalt 0-371) 



Copper trace trace 



100-203 100-123 



The fragment of iron chosen for analysis contained half a nodule 

 of troilite, which was easily removed, and on analysis was found to 

 have the composition : — 



Theory. 



Iron 63-927 63-64 



Sulphur 36-073 36-36 



100-000 100-00 



The occluded gases removed at a red heat with a Sprengel pump 

 consisted of: — 



Carbonic acid 5-155 



Hydrogen 77'778 



Carbonic oxide 7-345 



Nitrogen 9-722 



100-000 

 The gases extracted were 6-38 times the bulk of the iron taken for 

 experiment, an unusually large quantity ; due doubtless to the iron 

 being examined so soon after its fall. 



1876, June 25tli, 9 — 10 a.m.— Kansas City, Missouri.^ 



A small meteorite fell between nine and ten in the morning of 

 the above day, on the tin roof of the house, No. 556, Main Street, 

 Kansas City. It struck the roof with sufficient force to cut a hole 



^ J. D. Parker, Amer. Journ. Sc. 1876, vol. xii. p. 316. 



