1872.] Meteoric Iron from Augusta Co., Virginia. 



369 



would deny to the Virginia specimen the right to be classed amongst 

 meteoric masses, with which, however, all its other physical and chemical 

 characteristics agree most fully. 



It is to be noted that the analysis of the gases from the Lenarto iron was 

 not made with the whole of the gaseous matter collected : the first portion, 

 amounting to about 32*5 per cent, of all collected, was used for merely 

 qualitative examination ; the second portion, 57 *6 per cent., was that fully 

 analyzed ; while no mention is made of the disposition of the remaining 

 third portion of 9*9 per cent. ; and it is stated that the iron was not fully 

 exhausted at the end of two hours and thirty-five minutes, for which time 

 only the experiment was continued. In my own experiment it appears 

 probable that the amount of hydrogen (and with it the total volume of gas) 

 has been slightly diminished by its union with chlorine of metallic chlorides 

 to form the minute quantity of hydrochloric acid observed in the faint film 

 of moisture on the sides of the first tubes ; and probably also this moisture 

 itself may have been caused by the partial reduction, by means of hy- 

 drogen, of carbonic anhydride to carbonic oxide. Although it might be 

 assumed, especially in view of the strong tendency of iron to take up and 

 " occlude " carbonic oxide, that this gas had been the original form in which 

 the gaseous carbon compounds obtained existed in the iron, and that it had 

 in part broken up at the temperature of the experiment into carbon (re- 

 maining united with the iron) and carbonic anhydride (which escaped as 

 gas), yet, in view of the steady decrease in the quantity of this latter gas 

 collected as the experiment proceeded and the temperature became higher, 

 and bearing in mind the ready decomposition it undergoes in contact with 

 ignited iron, it seems more likely that a larger amount of carbon originally 

 existed in the iron in this higher state of oxidation than appears from the 

 figures of the analysis. Although the proportion of hydrogen found is so 

 much less in the Virginia than in the Lenarto iron, it yet represents for the 

 former about 1*14 times the volume of the iron itself, whereas common ter- 

 restrial iron occludes but about '42-46 of its own volume under ordinary 

 pressure. 



I am quite satisfied, from the condition of the masses of iron as they 

 came into my hands, and especially from the character of the crust, that 

 the metal has not been subjected to any heating in a blacksmith's fire or 

 otherwise by human hands since it was found, as has sometimes happened 

 to similar specimens in the endeavour to discover their nature, or to make 

 use of them. 



Whether or not this analysis be considered as furnishing presumptive 

 evidence of the Virginia iron having come to pur earth from a different 

 atmosphere to that of which the Lenarto meteorite brought us a sample*, 

 the result differs so far from that of our sole previously recorded determi- 



* Some of the observations of Secchi and Huggins seem to render it probable that 

 carbon may play an important part in some regions of the universe, though the results 

 on this head are not as full or satisfactory as those in reference to hydrogen. 



