AUG 1/ 1921 



July, 192 1. The Insh Naluralist ' 73 



THE METEORITE OF CRUMLIN. CO. ANTRIM, 



1902. 



BY GRENVILLE A. J. COLE, F.R.S. 



The death of Sir Lazarus Fletcher, f.r.s., on 6th January, 

 192 1, has removed one of the most kindly and stimulating, 

 as well as one of the most eminent, of scientific workers in 

 our islands. He left behind him the MS. of a description of 

 the meteorite that fell visibly at Crossbill, near Crumlin in 

 the county of Antrim, on 13th September, 1902, and this has 

 now been published in the Miner alogical Magazine (Vol. xix., 

 June, 1921, p. 149).^ The news of the fall spread somewhat 

 slowly, the first notices being in the form of unsigned para- 

 graphs in the Belfast Evening Telegraph of i6th September, 

 and the Northern Whig of the following day. Sir L. Fletcher 

 properly gives to Mr. W. H. Milligan, of Belfast, the credit 

 for being the first to examine the occurrence from a scientific 

 point of view. A small personal note may perhaps here be 

 allowed, lest it should be thought that no effort was made 

 to secure the stone for Ireland. I was already on my way to 

 Scotland when one of the newspaper paragraphs caught my 

 eye. I wrote at once to the owner of the meteorite and to 

 the authorities at our National Museum. Unfortunately 

 the replies were addressed to me, not to Inverness, but to 

 Inverary, where, as unclaimed correspondence, they waited 

 their due postal month. Meanwhile, Fletcher had established 

 communications, and on 26th September he descended, with 

 the energy of a Viking, on the Irish coast. Paying a con- 

 siderable sum by his personal cheque, he returned the same 

 evening with his prize to England. A handsomely coloured 

 model of the stone was subsequently presented to the 

 National Museum in Dublin by the Trustees of the British 

 Museum, and perhaps we ought not to regret that the central 



1 Naturalists may like to know that No. 93 of the Miner alogical 

 Magazine, containing this long-delayed scientific description, can be 

 obtained from Messrs. Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 31 Paternoster Row, 

 London, E.C.4, price 5s. 



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