460 , CHIHUAHUA 
ral letter which General Trias had given me to all 
officials on my route, directing them to extend to me 
and my party every facility in the prosecution of our 
the grander phenomenon of fire-balls—the former being known to be 
projected from the latter with such force as to penetrate from ten to fif- 
teen feet into the earth—has been proved, among many other instances, in 
the fall of aerolites at Barbatan, in the Department of Landes (24th of 
July, 1790), at Siena (16th of June, 1794), at Weston, in Connecticut 
(14th of December, 1807), and at Juvenas, in the Department of Ar- 
deche (15th June, 1821). Meteoric stones are sometimes thrown from 
dark clouds suddenly formed in a clear sky, and fall with a noise resem- 
bling thander. Whole districts have occasionally been covered with 
thousands of fragmentary masses, of uniform character but unequal 
magnitude, that have been hurled from one of those moving clouds. 
The great meteoric mass which fell in Siberia in 1771, described by 
Pallas, was regarded by the Tartars as a sacred object fallen from hea- 
ven. Analogous masses have been found in Bohemia, Hungary, the 
Cape of Good Hope, Mexico, Peru,’Senegal, Baffin’s Bay, etc. The iron 
is full of cavities, filled with more or less perfect crystals of olivine ; 
when these crystals are removed, the residue still contains 90 per cent. 
of iron, a certain percentage of nickel, and the rest needs scarcely to be 
taken into account.”* 
Of the meteoric masses found in Mexico, Baron Humboldt gjves the 
* following account. “In the environs of Durango, is found the enor 
mous mass of malleable iron and nickel, which is of the identical com- 
position of the aerolites which fell in Hungary, in 1751. This mass is 
affirmed to weigh upwards of 1900 myriogrammes (41,933 pounds). 
Another mass was discovered in Zacatecas, of the weight of 97 myrio- 
grammes (2140 pounds).” The exterior character of this was found by 
him to be entirely analogous to the malleable iron described by Pallas.t 
A collection of meteorites has been made by Professor Shepard, of 
Amherst College, which is already said to embrace two hundred speci- 
mens from more than a hundred different localities. Among them is one 
from Newberry, South Carolina, weighing 58 pounds. Another mass 
*Kaemtz. Meteorology, p. 476, y ik 
¢ Political Essay on New Spain. Vol. ii. p. 299. London ed. 
