AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE 



[FOURTH SERIES.] 



Art. I. — Colombian. Meteorite Localities: Santa Rosa, 

 Rasgata, Tocavita • by Henry A. Ward. 



The hopeless ambiguity in which these localities have heretofore rested 

 makes the precision of the information secured by Professor Ward in his 

 trip to South America in the early spring of 1906 a valuable contribution to 

 scientific knowledge. The following article, clearing away this ambiguity, 

 was begun by Professor Ward shortly before his death on July 4, 1906, and 

 was left in such shape that it is practically his own. His assistant, Mr. 

 Chester G. Gilbert, added the notes on the structure of the Santa Rosa iron 

 from observations made during its cutting at Ward's Natural Science Estab- 

 lishment in Rochester, New York. 



In 1824 two naturalists, Rivero and Boussingault, returning 

 to Bogota from a trip through what was then the Republic of 

 ISTew Granada, published a memoir* concerning two native 

 iron localities in the Eastern Cordiere of the Andes. The 

 Tocavita Hill just back of Santa Rosa, a village about twenty 

 miles northeast of Bogota, furnished the main locality, and 

 from this hill, in 1810, by the united efforts of the community, 

 a great block of pure native iron had been brought down to 

 the village square. There it remained until 1818, when it was 

 removed to the local smithy to do duty as an anvil, — a duty it 

 was still performing when the travelers passed through the 

 village. They recognized it at once as a massive siderite 

 weighing approximately 750 kilograms ; and, going to the hill 

 whence it came, they found several fragments of the same 

 pure malleable iron of granular texture. The other locality 

 lay at Rasgata, near Saline de Zipaquira. Here the writers 

 had seen one siderite weighing 41 kilograms and another of 

 about half that size. The larger of these consisted of a hard 

 malleable iron which was free from recesses and broke along 



*Ann. de Chimie et de Phys., vol. xxv, pp. 438-448, Paris, 1824. 



Am. Jour. Sci.— Fourth Series, Vol. XXIII, No. 133. — January, 1907. 



1 



