Dr. Walter Flight— On Meteorites. 215 



appeared to be nearly if not quite as large as the full -moon, but not 

 round, more of an oblong shape, and while travelling through the 

 air it very much resembled a large turpentine ball. It gave forth a 

 bright bluish light, which lit up the whole sky, and you could dis- 

 tinguish everything around j^ou for miles as plainly as in the day- 

 time." Native Hottentots and Kaffirs, the account adds, were so 

 terrified that they sought refuge in the nearest houses, and the 

 apparition of the fireball was regarded by them as a warning of 

 approaching famine, drought, or some other calamity. None of 

 them had ever seen a meteor of anything like the size or half so 

 brilliant as the present one. The oxen in the waggons stopped on 

 the road and could not for some time be got to start again, others 

 turned round, snapped off the disselbooms of the waggons, and 

 bolted for some distance into the bush. The consternation was 

 general in the country round Uitenhage. The illumination lasted 

 nearly a minute, and the light was such that it dazzled the eyes of 

 all who saw it. The events recorded took place on a beautiful 

 starlight evening. 



1877, May 17tli, 7 a.m. — Hungen, between Steinheim and Borsdorf 

 Provinz, Oberhessen.^ 



An eye-witness of the fall of one of these meteorites states that, 

 as he was passing through a wood, on his way from Steinheim to 

 Borsdorf, he heard a noise as of thunder, although the sky was 

 cloudless, followed by a hiimming, hissing, whistling sound, such as 

 would be caused by a number of stones rapidly rushing among the 

 trees. One stone struck a pine tree close by him, severed a branch 

 about the thickness of the finger, and fell at his feet. It was some 

 time before he could convince himself that the object before him 

 was not alive, but when he at last ventured to raise it from the 

 ground he found it was cold. 



Buchner visited the locality five months later and found a second 

 stone, weighing 26 grammes. The first must have weighed more 

 than 86 grammes, and a portion of it weighing 73-26 grammes has 

 been deposited in the mineralogical collection of the University of 

 Giessen. It has an irregularly triangular and flattened form, and 

 less than one quarter of the stone has apparently been removed. 

 It should be stated here that Buchner learned from several who were 

 able to bear witness to the occurrence, that the sound attending the 

 descent of the meteorites proceeded in a direction from N.W. to S.E. 

 The freshly fallen leaves of mid-October rendered hopeless further 

 search for the other stones which must have fallen. 



The crust of the meteorite is dull black and thin, and exhibits 

 here and there granules of nickel-iron. The fractured surface 

 displays a grey, occasionally brownish, matrix, which is traversed 

 by a very thin but very conspicuous brilliant black band of material ; 

 it runs obliquely to the flattened side of this stone, and is also found 

 in the smaller mass, picked up five months later, which evidently 

 never formed part of a larger meteorite. On another part of the 

 ^ 0. Buchner and G. Tscliermak, Mineralogische Mittheilungen, 1877, 313. 



