1848.] Meteoric Iron from the Kurruckpore hills. 545 



and then the resistance of the earth, which no longer meets the other 

 forces in their direct path. If we next suppose the mass to fall diago- 

 nally upon a tolerably soft soil — and our mass, if semi-fluid, must have 

 done this, for if it had fallen upon a hard one it would have been broken 

 to pieces, unless indeed it fell in a solid state from the heavens, which 

 we do not assume* — we can suppose it also to be driven into the 

 earth for a certain distance till the vertical part of the force was ex- 

 hausted, but during this process the projectile force would, particularly 

 for the part above ground, be urging forward the remainder of the mass, 

 so as upon its final cooling to produce a disk somewhat like what we 

 see in our specimen, and place the centre of gravity somewhere in a 

 line about that which I have marked at a. b. in Plate XXIX. 



In the course of this cooling we might also find that one part of the 

 mass, being more rapidly cooled by the contact of the earth, would be 

 more porous, which our mass is ; and that the lower and front part of 

 it (the front part in relation to its supposed motion) might be drawn 

 out into a ridge-like prominence, which is the case with our specimen 

 also ; and I have marked this ridge, which however is sharper and better 

 defined than there shown, in the vertical section at x. in Plate XXX. 



With means at command it might perhaps be possible, as by project- 

 ing a ball or mass of softened fusible metal on a yielding soil at various 

 angles, to test the truth of all this, which I beg to be understood as 

 submitting as a mere theory, but even if we were to obtain a solid some- 

 what in the form of our specimen, we should merely thereby increase 

 the probabilities that this was really the cause of its assuming this shape ; 

 for, after all, its original form may have been nearly what we see it, and 

 upon the hypothesis of these bodies being originally projected from the 

 Lunar Volcanoes, we may suppose it to be a huge lava-dropf detached 

 from some mass of botryoidal concretions, and blown into the sphere 

 of the earth's attraction. The coincidence of our mass with the Brazilian 

 one in having a foot (though it wants the tail which Mr. Mornay deli- 

 neates) is too remarkable to be passed over. I have been unable to 



* There are instances of stony Aerolites being found in a soft state immediately 

 after their fall, but I do not recollect any of the metallic ones being so found. 

 Nevertheless we may fairly assume that, as less heat is required, the probabilities are 

 that they also fall in a semi-fluid state. 



f A French writer would have a better word, " une larme de lave," or lava tear. 



