358 Dr. Walter Flight— On Meteorites. 



Bernardino in Southern California, by a Mr. Goddard, who while 

 crossing a loash had his attention arrested by a singular-looking 

 boulder. The block is oval in shape, having a side somewhat 

 flattened ; its surface is covered with depressions and dents, as if 

 it had been pelted all over with pebbles while soft or plastic. These 

 concavities are from 1 to 4 inches across, and, in addition, there are 

 three round holes an inch deep, as if made by the little finger. 

 The mass is supposed to weigh 120 lbs., and it is 14 inches long, 

 9 inches broad, and 7 inches deep. The examination of a fragment 

 shows it to be highly crystalline, requiring no etching to reveal the 

 Widmanstattian figures ; the cleavage appears to be octahedral. 

 The schreibersite is very thin, and, according to Shepard, of two 

 kinds : one in flat leaves, the other in wavy semi-cylinders or 

 irregular prisms ; the latter, he says, may be the rhabdite of 

 Keichenbach. The density of the iron is 7"65, and its composition : — 



Iron 94-98 



Nickel 4-52 



Phosphorus 0-07 



Graphite O'lO 



99-67 



1880, May (first half of). — Karand, 12 miles east of Teheran, 



Persia.^ 



The fall of a meteorite which was actually seen to descend, and 

 which is not an event of every-day occurrence, deserves, on account 

 of its mineralogical interest, some notice. It is not possible here to 

 ascertain with certainty the constituent minerals ; it is therefore 

 possible at present only to give a short sketch of the stone ; later 

 on, when we have the material to work with and the help of an 

 authority in this branch, we may return to the subject. In the 

 first half of the month of May, 1880, we were called before the 

 Shah, who handed to us a metallic shining mineral, weighing about 

 400 grammes, which, from the outer crust still adhering to it, we at 

 once recognized as a meteorite. We saw that the Shah took the 

 shining metal in it for silver, for he asked the value of it. But 

 when we spoke of the iron, and its probably containing nickel, and 

 that the mineral had more scientific than intrinsic worth, it was 

 jDcrmitted to us to take the stone away, and to break off a piece for 

 closer examination. 



The Shah made himself acquainted with the origin and cause of 

 meteorites, and informed us that the stone in question weighed 

 45 kilogrammes, and fell in the neighbourhood of the village of 

 Karand, twelve miles east of Teheran, with an explosive noise like 

 thunder. 



Half of the stone was covei'ed with a thin, blackish, fused crust, 

 while the fresh lustrous fractured surface showed it to have formed 

 a portion of a much larger stone. A fragment weighing 3-66 



1 Mining engineer Ferd. Dietzsch, in Teheran ; in a paper intituled ' Geologisches 

 Berg- und Hlittenmannisches aus Persian,' in Berg- und Suttenmdnnische Zeitung, 

 March 18, 1881. 



