I 



jan. — mar. 1857.] Supposed Aerolite in a tree. £45 



" Concerning the highly interesting mineral mass, lately found 

 enclosed in a trunk of a tree, and of which you have done me the 

 honour to ask my opinion, I beg leave to observe, that I have no 

 hesitation in pronouncing it to be a true meteoric stone. 



" Aside from the difficulty of otherwise accounting for it, under 

 the circumstances in which it is found, the mass presents those 

 peculiar traits that are regarded as characteristic of meteorites. It 

 has, for example, a fused, vitrified black coating, which is quite 

 continuous over a considerable part of the mass, and contains se- 

 veral grains and imbedded nodular and vein-like portions of metallic 

 iron, in which I understand nickel and cobalt have been detected. 



" The general character of the body of the stone is indeed pecu- 

 liar ; and as a whole, unlike any one I have yet seen ; it being 

 principally made up of a dull greyish yellow, peridotic mineral, 

 which I have nowhere met with among these productions, except 

 in the Hommoney Creek meteoric iron mass, and which exists in 

 it only in a very limited quantity. It is singular to remark also, 

 that the stone under notice strikingly resembles in size, shape and 

 surface, the iron above alluded to. 



" The absence of the black, slaggy coating on one of the broad 

 surfaces of the stone, may arise from its having been broken away, 

 by the violence to which it must have been subjected in entering 

 the tree ; for it appears to have buried itself completely at its con- 

 tact, an operation which would probably have been impossible, in 

 the case of a stone, but for its wedge-shape configuration, and the 

 coincidence of one of its edges with the vertical fibres of the wood. 



possesses a collection from 103 localities, but also essays on the same subject by his 

 countrymen Dr. Troost, Professor Silliman, jun., and Dr. Clark. 



In our own country, Mr. Brayley published some years ago a comprehensive 

 view of this subject in the Philosophical Magazine, and recently Mr. Greg has in 

 the same publication put together all the previous and additional materials, with 

 tables showing the geographical distribution of meteorites. Among the well-re- 

 corded examples of the fall of metalliferous meteorites, no one is more remarka- 

 ble than that which happened in the year 1851, about sixteen leagues S. E. of 

 Barcelona in Spain. In describing that phenomenon, Dr. Joaquim Balcells, Pro- 

 fessor of Natural Sciences at Barcelona, has illustrated the subject with much eru- 

 dition, whilst his theoretical views are ingenious in his endeavour to explain how 

 meteorites are derived from the moon. 



