364 DANVILLE (ALA.) METEORITE. 



the spot that night. A rain fell during the night, and no trace 

 of it could be found the next day. Yarious other stones were 

 heard to fall in different parts of the adjacent country. Two 

 brothers by the name of Wallace were plowing in their field, 

 about one and three fourths miles north-west of Danville. 

 They distinctly heard two or three fainter reports after the 

 first loud one, and heard the sound of two falling bodies 

 whizzing down, one to the right and the other to the left 

 of them. 



With the above data, and the known geography of the 

 country, its direction must have been north-east and south- 

 west ; but it is impossible to say from which of these quarters 

 it came. 



The portion of the meteorite that I possess has a large por- 

 tion of it covered with the usual black crust. Its general 

 aspect is rough and dull; a portion of the outer surface, not 

 covered with the black coating, is nevertheless a surface that it 

 had when it reached the ground, for on this surface are streaks 

 and little patches of a bright, pitchy matter, which was once 

 fused, and was derived either from another part of the coating 

 that was thrown off in a melted state from the coated portion, 

 and whipped around (as it were) on to the unfused surface as 

 the stone fell through the air, or from an incipient fusion that 

 was begun on the denuded surface, and arrested by the termi- 

 nation of the fall. Where the black crust reaches the denuded 

 places it appears to be rounded off, as if it had been melted 

 matter passing from another portion of the stone, and rolled 

 over the surface of the borders. ^ 



The broken surface has a dark-gray color, and is somewhat 

 oolitic in structure, but not as much so as many other meteoric 

 stones. There are veins and patches of a slate-colored mineral 

 running through it. Pyrites and iron are also to be seen dif- 

 fused through the stone; thin flakes of the iron giving that 

 slickenside-like appearance to a fracture not unfrequently seen 

 in this class of bodies. There seems to be more of iron in the 

 slate-colored mineral than in the other parts. There are a few 

 patches of white mineral, which I take to be enstatite. The 

 specific gravity of the stone is 3.398. 



For further examination a portion of the meteorite was sep- 

 arated mechanically into three parts, the pyrites, the metallic 





