﻿Dana and Penfield — Undescribed Meteoric Stones. 227 



to Professor Brush and he presented it to the Yale College 

 Collection. Nothing is known in regard to the circumstances 

 or time of its fall;, in that dry climate it may well have lain 

 exposed on the surface of the ground for a long time without 

 disintegration, especially as it was well protected by its crust. 



The weight of this stone is 875 grams ; it is oblong in 

 shape, about 12 cm long, and 9 cm in its greatest width ; one edge 

 is sharp and wedge-like, and one end is relatively sharp, the 

 other rounded. The surface is comparatively smooth ^and 

 shows only a few broad and shallow pittings. A uniform crust, 

 smooth except for minute angular elevations on certain portions 

 and not very thick, covers it almost completely. The color of 

 the crust is reddish black, in consequence of the partial rusting 

 of the fused material. A small portion of the mass has been 

 broken from one end to give material for study. 



The interior of the stone is of a dark bluish gray color, 

 distinctly mottled by its chondritic character, and showing a 

 rather large proportion of iron irregularly distributed through 

 it, with minute patches of troilite. The small portions of the 

 interior of the stone which had been exposed are much stained 

 by the oxidation of the iron, but this change has penetrated 

 comparatively little into the mass, and the stone as a whole is 

 exceptionally hard and firm. The nature of the mineral sub- 

 stances which, together with the metallic parts, make up the 

 mass can be only imperfectly made out by mere macroscopic 

 examination ; thin sections, however, under the microscope 

 show this very satisfactorily. The olivine is the most promi- 

 nent constituent. This appears frequently in spherules or 

 " chondrules " of the size of very small .shot ; these are made up* 

 of a multitude of individual grains having distinct rounded 

 outline and each with its own optical orientation. These 

 granular chondrules are sometimes enclosed by an iron border, 

 and as the grains of olivine are fresh and clear and give bril- 

 liant polarization colors, they form very beautiful objects 

 under the microscope. The separate grains in these cases are 

 closely packed together, but sometimes show a little intermedi- 

 ate glassy matter. The olivine also appears in relatively large 

 fragments, much fractured, but showing by the common opti- 

 cal orientation that all belongs to a single individual. Still 

 again the olivine is seen in chondrules which have a distinct 

 coarsely fibrous structure in consequence of the inclusions of 

 dark-colored glass. 



The bronzite (enstatite) appears in irregular crystal fragments 

 scattered through the mass. Also in chondrules with fine fibrous 

 structure usually eccentric ; these have sharp angular outlines 

 in many cases and appear to be but fragments of the original 

 spherules — in this as in some other respects the stone has a 



