Dr. Walter Flight— On Meteorites. 507 



hnng on the western horizon over the station Mekenskoi, the inhabi- 

 tants of which were startled at about seven o'clock by a deafening 

 sound, which continued a long space of time. A non-commissioned 

 oiBcer of the Mosdok regiment, who was walking from the Navursky 

 to the Mikenskoi barracks (?Staniza), noticed that the sound ap- 

 peared to come from the west, where the rain-clouds were, and 

 describes it as resembling that produced when many cannon are 

 fired simultaneously, followed by a deafening noise like that caused 

 by battalion-firing. He observed the fall of one of the stones, which 

 descended at a low angle, and it was accompanied by lateral bands 

 of a bluish colour (welcher von Nebenstreifen von blaiilicher Farbe 

 begleitet war). It fell in the court-yard of a house about two paces 

 distant from a summer-house, and thirty paces from the bank of the 

 Terek. A soldier's wife, standing on the threshold of the house, 

 drew back in the greatest alarm as the meteorite struck the ground 

 two paces from her with all the violence of a bomb-shell, scattering 

 the earth over the wall of the house. A soldier soon probed the 

 hole with a ramrod, and found at a depth of rather more than a foot 

 fragments of the stone weighing in all ten pounds. Many heard a 

 second sound, as though the meteorite burst twice in its descent 

 through the atmosphere, and the noise attending the fall was observed 

 by jDcrsons eight versts distant on the other side of the Terek. A 

 woman who was occupied in washing clothes, at a spot about 1050 

 feet distant from the point where the meteorite struck the ground, 

 heard fragments, which had been detached by the explosion, fall 

 into the river Terek. The water fizzed just as it would when 

 brought in contact with a large quantity of heated iron. 



The meteorite has a longish rounded form, and has lost the greater 

 portion of its crust ; in fact, the crust, together with a thin layer of 

 the inclosed silicate, is very easily removed, and probably dropped 

 off at the time of the fall. Its actual thickness is much greater 

 than in the case of the stones which fell at Knyahinya, and about as 

 thick as that of the Pultusk aerolites. 



Professor Tschermak goes on to describe the Vandal treatment 

 to which the stone was subjected before it reached his house for in- 

 vestigation. A cast of it had been taken for the Academy of Sciences 

 of St. Petersburg, and it had subsequently been sawn in two. It 

 appears, in the first place, to have been rubbed down with fat, not 

 oil even, and, after the mould was taken, to have been soaked with 

 potash lye to remove the unctuous layer ; the carbonate of potash, 

 which penetrated the porous stone with scarcely any crust to protect 

 it, next began to effloresce, and the new danger to which it was 

 exposed had to be compassed by drenching it with water. It was 

 now ready to pass from the clumsy hands of the modeller to experi- 

 ence the yet more tender mercies of the lapidary, who, not to be out- 

 done by his fellow- workman, it is to be conjectured, proceeded to 

 close all the fissures and lines upon its surface with a black varnish. 

 Long treatment with alcohol and protracted drying in a steam bath 

 were the next operations which were made with a view to cleanse it. 



A system of cracks and fissures, arranged like the branches of a 



