374 VICTORIA METEORIC IRON. 



Dickson County irons. The mass was pear-shaped, and weighed 

 abour six pounds eight ounces. One end was smooth and 

 rounded; the smaller end was jagged, as if torn or parted 

 from a larger meteorite. 



A small fragment of it was first brought to Europe in 1868, 

 by which its true meteoric character was established. In 1870 

 the trustees of the South African Museum had it cut, retaining 

 one half of it, and sending specimens to the British, Calcutta, 

 Vienna, and Berlin museums; also to Mr. Nevill of G-odalming ; 

 and a mass weighing about twelve ounces to myself. 



From the specimen in my possession I here describe its 

 characteristics. The iron is compact, with a tendency to fissure 

 near some portions of its surface. The amount of oxide on the 

 surface is small, the cut surfaces showing bright metal quite 

 up to the exterior surface. The Widmannstattian figures 

 developed are of that class where the lines are delicate and 

 straight, inclined at a considerable angle to each other, a form 

 I have seen common to irons rich in schreibersite. This last 

 mineral is diffused through the iron in masses with absolutely 

 straight boundaries, some of them five eighths to three fourths 

 of an inch long, by one eighth of an inch broad (1 and 2 on 

 figure), and others much longer (6) and narrower; others again 

 triangular (5) and arrow-shaped; and on my specimen a layer 

 of it (3) coating an oval cavity that must have been an inch 

 and a half in its longest and one inch in its shortest diameter, 

 the schreibersite having a thickness of about one twentieth 

 of an inch; the rest of this cavity being filled by pyrite (this 

 is distinctly seen in the photograph). My specimen shows 

 one fourth of this cavity, and there are doubtless others in the 

 original mass. The specific gravity is 7.692. On analysis it 

 was found to contain : 



Iron ' 88.83 



Nickel • 10.14 



Cobalt 53 



Copper. minute quantity- 

 Phosphorus 28 



99.78 



Enstatite of Chladnite. 



This mineral now occupies so important a relation to the 

 mineral constitution of meteoric stones that it is well to give 

 an account of its discovery, and the subsequent investigations 



