458 H. A. Ward — Veramin Meteorite. 



granular particles of bright nickel iron, there are occasional 

 nodules of the same element of larger size. One of these 

 which 1 separated from the mass is a perfect sphere, 8 mm in 

 diameter, which lay almost free from attachment except that 

 upon one side it is incrusted by a portion of the firm base 

 mass. A section of this shows it to be a solid metal, which, 

 when a polished surface is etched, gives clearly sharp Wid- 

 mannstaten figures of a' clear pattern. Meunier classes Vera- 

 min as a member of his type of Logronite, including with it Barea, 

 Sierra de Chaco, Janecera, Estherville, Miney and Hainholz. Of 

 these seven, but two, Estherville and Veramin, have any crust. 



Of about twenty-five siderolites now known to science, only 

 four of them have been seen to fall. Veramin has an addi- 

 tional interest as being one of these four. The other three 

 are Barea (Spain) 1842, Lodran (India) 1868, and Estherville 

 (Iowa) 1879. It may not be irrelevant here to call attention 

 to the interesting fact that the siderolites, with their special 

 composition and structure, have been as widely distributed 

 both in time of fail and in geographical dispersion on our 

 globe as have either of the other two — alike artificial — groups 

 of meteorites : the siderites and the aerolites. This seems to 

 attest to each group representing a class of rocks, or mineral 

 aggregations, existing abundantly in some of the asteroids or 

 fragmentary bodies circling in the celestial spaces. 



In closing, I return to the narrative portion of my paper 

 to notice the extreme difficulty which I had in breaking the 

 Veramin, due to the very intimate mingling of its stony and 

 its metallic parts. Had the mass been a siderite, I might have 

 cut it with my steel saw, or had it been an aerolite I might 

 have broken off a piece with a hammer ; but the intimate 

 mingling of its stony and its metallic parts made a compound 

 so tough that separation seemed quite impossible. After work- 

 ing over the mass, which I had taken to the Palace yard, for 

 several hours, and assisted by a native smith with a large, long- 

 handled hammer, we had failed to detach more than a few 

 ounces of the precious material. It then occurred to us that 

 we should take the meteorite to the arsenal and there under- 

 take to cut it by machinery. The fortunate presence there of 

 an old steam planing machine was in our favor. Steam power, 

 however, there was none. In its absence we harnessed ten or 

 twelve men by ropes at either end of the planer. Yet so hard 

 and refractory was the mass that the work of cutting off a 

 piece barely six inches in greatest diameter required two nights 

 and one day. Then I took my piece and hastened back to 

 Europe. This fine mass of this very rarest of siderolites forms 

 one of the choice specimens in the Ward-Coonley collection of 



