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masses have been known to fall, and they all possess the same 
characteristics as those that have fallen. Native iron, that is, 
iron in a metallic state, is very rarely found on the earth's 
surface, and when found, only in very small particles, owing to 
the ease with which iron combines with oxygen. Iron, again, 
when obtained from the ore, is rarely combined with nickel. 
The masses, when found, have been in positions far removed 
from any iron ore from which they could have been formed ; and, 
lastly, when these meteoric irons are cut and their surfaces are 
polished, the application of a dilute acid sometimes, but not 
always, brings out on their surface crystalline lines and figures, 
like those sometimes seen formed by frozen moisture on a 
sheet of window-glass in frosty weather. These are called 
after their discoverer, “ Witmannstaetten figures”. No 
one has succeeded in producing these figures by acting on 
ordinary iron, whether cast or malleable, in the same manner; 
not even in the case of iron axle-trees, which have become 
crystalline after long use. M. Daubree, by using a peculiar 
furnace producing a very great heat, established the fact that 
fused meteoric iron will not reproduce the figures, and that 
malleable iron melted with nickel in the same proportions as 
found in meteoric iron, would not produce the Witmann- 
staetten figures artificially, until from two to ten per cent, of 
phosphide of iron was added to the mixture. 
Meteoric iron is sometimes malleable ; at others, scarcely so 
at all. Knives made from malleable meteoric iron by the 
Esquimaux may be seen in the British Museum. In the year 
1620 a mass of meteoric iron fell in the Punjab, and was dug 
out of the earth while still violently hot. It was conveyed to 
the court of the emperor Tchanjire, who ordered a sabre, a 
knife, and a dagger, to be forged from this iron of lightning. 
After a trial, the workmen reported that it was not malleable, 
but shivered under the hammer ; and it required to be mixed 
with one-third part of common iron, after which the mass was 
found to make excellent blades. I need not, perhaps, remind 
you that there is no similarity of structure whatever between 
any of the known meteorites, and the concretionary balls and 
oblong masses of iron pyrites washed out of the chalk cliffs of 
Dover, and often sold to the visitor as genuine thunderbolts. 
I must also tell you that the existence of nickel and cobalt 
combined with iron is no proof that the mass in which it is 
found is necessarily a meteorite. On June 21st, 1855, Sir 
B. Murchison read a short paper before the Royal Society “ On 
a supposed aerolite found in the trunk of an old willow-tree in 
the Battersea Fields.” This “ aerolite” contained a large per- 
centage of iron, and also traces of nickel, cobalt, and manga- 
