THE CRANBOURNE METEORITES 
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mm., and are 4 mm. to 30 mm. long, averaging 12 mm. This is 
typical for the four meteoritic masses. 
Neumann Lines 
Neumann lines were observed in the a-iron of the Cranbourne 
No. 7 meteorite, on surfaces that had been flattened by filing, but 
not on surfaces ground flat with carborundum on a rotating 
lap. In this respect, the Cranbourne No. 7 iron resembled the 
Kyancutta iron (Spencer, 1933). 
Chemical Composition 
Analyses were made by one of us (A.B.E.) on the metal of 
the Cranbourne Nos. 4, 5 and 7 irons, using freshly prepared 
shavings (Table 1, analyses 6, 7 and 8). The shavings from the 
No. 4 and No. 5 irons were obtained by drilling the respective 
meteorites after de-scaling their surfaces and collecting the 
shavings with a magnet as they broke from the drill. The shavings 
from the No. 7 iron were obtained during the shaping of a sawn 
fragment in a Selson shaping machine. Care was taken in each 
instance to avoid including material from nodules. In addition, 
three unpublished analyses of the No. 8 iron (analyses 9, 11 and 
12), including one of the metal free from nodule material (Table 
1, analysis No. 9), were placed at our disposal by the Director of 
the Victorian Geological Survey, and six published analyses are 
added to Table 1 for purposes of comparison. 
Analyses 1 to 9 reveal marked uniformity of composition in 
seven of the analysed irons, but the analyses of Cranbourne No. 
1 and of the Beaconsfield iron give higher figures for nickel. 
Coarseness of Widmanstatten structure is closely controlled by 
the nickel content of the iron-nickel alloy (Edwards and Hodge 
Smith, 1941). Widmanstatten figures developed on Cranbourne 
No. 1 and the Beaconsfield irons show that they, like all the other 
members of the group, are coarse octahedrites ; had their nickel 
contents been those indicated in the analyses, Cranbourne No. 1 
would be a fine octahedrite and the Beaconsfield iron a medium 
octahedrite. It is therefore almost certain that the higher nickel 
shown in these two analyses is due to faulty sampling, and it may 
safely be assumed that the nickel contents of both meteorites is 
of the order of 6 5 per cent. 
The relative abundance of sulphur and carbon in analysis No. 
10 indicates that this sample of the Cranbourne No. 8 iron included 
material from a pyrrhotite-graphite nodule; analysis No. 11 was 
made from similar material. The analysis of the scale from this 
meteorite (analysis No. 12) shows that during the oxidation of 
