234  Geological  Society : — 
or  rendered  probable  under  the  statical  theory  would  have  some  cor- 
responding explanation  or  confirmation  under  any  true  theory  by 
which  the  statical  might  come  to  be  superseded.  With  a  view 
to  brevity,  however,  and  to  the  avoidance  of  putting  forward  specu- 
lations perhaps  partly  rash,  though,  I  think,  not  devoid  of  real  sig- 
nificance, I  shall  not  at  present  enter  on  details  of  these  considera- 
tions, but  shall  leave  them  with  merely  the  slight  suggestion  now 
offered,  and  with  the  suggestion  mentioned  in  an  earlier  part  of 
the  present  paper,  of  the  question  whether  in  an  extremely  thin 
lamina  of  gradual  transition  from  a  liquid  to  its  own  gas,  at  their 
visible  face  of  demarcation,  conditions  may  not  exist  in  a  stable  state 
having  a  correspondence  with  the  unstable  conditions  here  theo- 
retically conceived. 
GEOLOGICAL  SOCIETY. 
[Continued  from  p.  1 55.] 
Nov.  8,  1871. — Joseph  Prestwich,  Esq.,  F.R.S.,  President, 
in  the  Chair. 
The  following  communications  were  read : — 
1.  A  letter  from  the  Embassy  at  Copenhagen,  transmitted  hy 
Earl  Granville,  mentioning  that  a  Swedish  scientific  expedition,  just 
returned  from  the  coast  of  Greenland,  had  brought  home  a  number 
of  masses  of  meteoric  iron  found  there  upon  the  surface  of  the 
ground.  These  masses  varied  greatly  in  size ;  the  largest  was  said 
to  weigh  25  tons. 
Mr.  David  Eoebes  having  recently  returned  from  Stockholm, 
where  he  had  the  opportunity  of  examining  those  remarkable  masses 
of  native  iron,  took  the  opportunity  of  stating  that  they  had  been 
first  discovered  last  year  by  the  Swedish  arctic  expedition,  which 
brought  back  several  blocks  of  considerable  size,  which  had  been 
found  on  the  coast  of  Greenland.  The  expedition  of  this  year,  how- 
ever, has  just  succeeded  in  bringing  back  more  than  twenty  addi- 
tional specimens,  amongst  which  two  were  of  enormous  size.  The 
largest,  weighing  more  than  49,000  Swedish  pounds,  or  about  21 
tons  English,  with  a  maximum  sectional  area  of  about  42  square 
feet,  is  now  placed  in  the  hall  of  the  Eoyal  Academy  of  Stockholm ; 
whilst,  as  a  compliment  to  Denmark,  on  whose  territory  they  were 
found,  the  second  largest,  weighing  20,000  lbs.,  or  about  9  tons, 
has  been  presented  to  the  museum  of  Copenhagen. 
Several  of  these  specimens  have  been  submitted  to  chemical  ana- 
lysis, which  proved  them  to  contain  nearly  5  per  cent  of  nickel,  with 
from  1  to  2  per  cent  of  carbon,  and  to  be  quite  identical,  in  chemical 
composition,  with  many  aerolites  of  known  meteoric  origin.  When 
polished  and  etched  by  acids,  the  surface  of  these  masses  of  metallic 
iron  shows  the  peculiar  figures  or  markings  usally  considered 
characteristic  of  native  iron  of  meteoric  origin. 
The  masses  themselves  were  discovered  lying  loose  on  the  shore, 
but  immediately  resting  upon  basaltic  rocks  (probably  of  Miocene 
age),  in  which  they  appeared  to  have  originally  been  imbedded ;  and 
