H. A. Ward— Bath Furnace Meteorite. 319 



The mineral is in too small quantities to be determined 

 accurately from the two sections which I have thus far pre- 

 pared. The stone is chondritic, but the chondrules show 

 no disposition to separate from the groundmass, and I am 

 inclined to classify it with Brezina's intermediate chondrites 

 (CI)." 



The date of fall of this meteorite — November 15th — will 

 not be overlooked. It comes as one of the Leonids whose 

 orbit our earth cuts yearly, as it has been known for a full 

 thousand years to do, on that date. This, as also the Saline 

 Township, Kansas, aerolite (1898), fell on the same day of the 

 month. These (as also Trenzano — November 12, 1856, and 

 Werchne Tschirskaja — November 12, 1843) would seem to 

 belong to the great Leonid stream, estimated by astronomers 

 at many millions of miles in length, which at these dates we 

 have cut at one of its sparse portions, picking up only stragglers 

 in place of the millions which have shown themselves in the 

 dates of thirty-three or thirty-four years apart, when we met 

 with the immense bulk of the stream. It is well known, how- 

 ever, that in the very acme — so to call it — of these greatest of 

 meteor-showers — 1766, 1799, 1833, 1866— the number of 

 meteorites which have reached our earth has not been greater 

 than at other periods (of three days) in the year. Bath Furnace 

 (for so we will call this stone) is still none the less suggestive 

 as a Leonid. 



Professor Farrington has already called attention (Science, 

 July 11, 1902) to the fact that of the three above-mentioned 

 meteorites which have thus far been known to fall at the time 

 of the Leonid showers, all have had a nearly similar structure, 

 — veined globular chondritic (CCA). We regret that Bath 

 Furnace should not wholly coincide in this feature with the 

 other three known Leonids (?). 



Bath Furnace adds a twelfth one to the meteorites which are 

 to the credit of the State of Kentucky. Only two of these are 

 stones, and both of them (Cynthiana and Bath Furnace) have 

 fallen in closely adjoining counties, only about forty miles 

 apart. This, with an interval of twenty-six years. 



We omitted to say in its proper place in this article that this 

 Bath Furnace meteorite passed promptly from the hands of 

 the finder, Mr. Bluford Staton, to those of Mr. W. H. 

 Dougherty, who in turn deposited it for sale with Professor A. 

 M. Miller in Lexington. From him the writer duly obtained it, 

 and has given it a place among the other 302 aerolites (stones) 

 which make an important part of the Ward-Coonley Collection 

 of Meteorites now on deposit and display in the American 

 Museum of Natural History in New York. 



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