428 Scientific Intelligence. 



1 908 (pp. 46 1-498, plates Ixi-lxxv). The present paper, the title of 

 which is rfivon above, was read by Mr. Barringer at the Princeton 

 meeting of the National Academy of Sciences a year ago ; it 

 embraces the results of his own extensive explorations, and the 

 conclusions drawn from them. The tliorougliness with which the 

 study of the locality lias been carried on will be understood from 

 the fact that no less than twenty-eight holes have been drilled in 

 the central portion of the crater, some of them being carried to a 

 depth of 1000 feet and more, below the level of the original 

 plain. 



The chief features of Meteor Crater, briefly characterized, are 

 as follows : A crater-like depression a little more than three- 

 quarters of a mile in diameter, with an average depth from the 

 rim to the more or less level floor of about 570 feet. The walls, 

 in part nearly perpendicular, are composed of limestone and 

 underlying sandstone strata, which are tilted up and dip away 

 from the center at varying angles. These strata, it is estimated, 

 have been vertically lifted more than 100 feet from their original 

 position, involving an uplift of perhaps some 20 to 30 million 

 tons of rock. Further than this, many million tons of rock have 

 been ejected from the crater. This includes great masses of solid 

 limestone, from fifty to several hundred pounds in weight ; the 

 larger fragments lie near the crater's rim, the smaller ones extend 

 to a distance of from one to one and one-half miles. The ejected 

 rock material also includes the sandstone much of it in the form 

 of "silica" or rock flour; this last makes up perhaps some 15 or 

 20 per cent of the entire material thrown out of the crater. 

 Within the crater there are also enormous quantities of the sand- 

 stone which has been reduced to a fine pulverulent condition, 

 while other portions are metamorphosed, a part showing a 

 strongly marked slaty structui'e, and part, having undergone a 

 kind of aqueo-igneous fusion, having a light, spongy consistency, 

 with more or less opalescent quartz. 



All of these phenomena, of the extent and magnitude of which 

 it is difiicult to form a conception, have been apparently accom- 

 plished without volcanic agency,* and are to be referred, as 

 recent investigators agree, to the impact of an enormous meteoric 

 mass of almost incredible size, such as we have no parallel 

 for elsewhere on the earth. The writer concludes that "the 

 crater was made, not by a single giant meteorite, but rather by a 

 compact cluster or swarm of many thousand of shale ball meteor- 

 ites and also possibly other iron meteorites traveling together as 

 the head or part of the head of a small comet." 



Many thousands of specimens of meteoric iron have been found 

 in the neighborhood of the crater, up to over 1000 pounds in 

 weight ; some of the smaller ones have been found at a distance of 



* Since the above statements were put into type, a paper on this locality 

 by, .J. M. Davison has been published in Science (Nov. 18, p. 724). He 

 returns to the idea of volcanic action, early suggested, and, speaking of 

 the pulverulent sandstone, he remarks: "li rather suggests long-continued 

 deposition of this powder, with occasional pieces of rock, by geyser action 

 and a final explosion or series of explosions that closed the drama." 



