74 



The Irish Naturalist, 



JuJy 



institution was able to add so interesting a specimen to the 

 finest collection cf meteorites in the world. Meteorites, 

 after all, have no country, and Fletcher's investigation now 

 adds dignit}' to that received from outer space at Crumlin. 



By a characteristically friendly arrangement, Fletcher 

 intended to present his paper to the Royal Irish Academy, 

 and would have come over himself to read it. Year after 

 year, when I visited him in the Natural History Museum at 

 South Kensington, he would open the drawer containing his 

 manuscript and specimens, and regret that his many 

 official duties rendered the research still incomplete. His 

 promotion to the Directorship of the Museum in 1910 

 established many further claims, and the work remained 

 unfinished at his death. Dr. G. T. Prior, who succeeded 

 him as Keeper of the Mineral Collections, has now added 

 a chemical analysis and a microscopic investigation. He 

 determines the stone as " a grey hypersthene-(to bronzite-) 

 chondrite, containing about 9 per cent, of nickel-iron, in 

 which the ratio of iron to nickel is about 7." That is, the 

 iron by weight is about seven times as much as the nickel. 

 The chondrite type of meteorite, it may be remembered, 

 takes its name from the globular aggregates of silicates 

 known as " chondrules." The nickel-iron, forming in this 

 case nearly 9 per cent, by weight of the stone, occurs in 

 these " sporadosiderites " of Daubree as scattered blebs 

 throughout a silicate ground, which, like the chondrules, 

 consists mainly of pyroxene and olivine. Good photographs 

 are given of two aspects of the stone. 



Fletcher's admirable summary of the accounts of eye- 

 witnesses of the fall is accompanied by a map. W. H. 

 Milligan's careful and prompt enquiries failed to elicit 

 evidence of any other falls, though, from his investigation of 

 the sound records, he believes that the mateorite "entered 

 the denser strata of the atmosphere apparently at a high 

 angle over the centre of Co. Down." 



The weight of the portion seen to fall, and dug up from 

 the cornfield at Crossbill, is 4,329 grammes (nearly 9 J lbs.). 



Royal College of Science, Dublin. 



