VICTORIAN METEORITES, WITH NOTES ON OBSIDIANITES. 
3| miles in a southerly direction from the township 
of Cranboume. It presents a tabular face, nearly 
level with the surface of the land, and somewhat of 
a triangular shape, the edges measuring respectively 
about 31, 33 and 38 inches. A trench excavated 
around it has revealed its sides to an average depth 
of about 30 inches, the bulk of the mass becoming 
greater as the depth increases, inducing a belief 
that the weight of the portion visible amounts to 
about 4 tons.* The upper surface is studded with 
apparently oxidized blisters, which are easily 
detached in scales, and which, in some instances, 
contain a non-magnetic metallic substance approach- 
ing to the character of black lead. The sides are 
thickly oxidized, the coat being in some places 
nearly half an inch in thickness, and mixed with 
the contiguous earth, with which it is found in close 
adhesion. 
2nd. — A mass [referred to hereafter as Cranbourne No. 2] 
similarly bedded, in land belonging to a Mr. [Jas.] 
Laneham, section 39, parish of Cranbourne, distant 
about 2 miles eastward from the township, and 
about 4 miles north-eastward from the massf just 
described, similar to it in general characteristics, 
but apparently not more than half its bulk.” 
Fitzgibbon also obtained and exhibited with other specimens 
at the meeting of the Royal Society of Victoria, at which he read 
his note, a portion of a third and very much smaller mass (referred 
to hereafter as Cranbourne No. 3), of a similar description. In his 
private letter, Fitzgibbon says, in respect to this piece, that it was 
given to him by McKay, on whose land the Cranbourne No. 1 was 
discovered, and that it weighed about 7 pounds, and represented 
approximately the half of an oblong flattish piece which had been 
picked up half-a-mile or so away from Cranbourne No. 1. Not 
being gold, as, from its weight, the labourer who found it imagined, 
it was placed on the kitchen hob as an andiron, got broken whilst 
being so used, and the other half was lost. McKay also offered 
Fitzgibbon the Cranbourne No. 1, if he chose to be at the cost of 
removing it; but he declined the offer, on the ground that his 
object was to draw attention to the meteorite, and have it cared 
* Nemnayer (42, p. 25) gives the weight, from actual weighing, as 8,200 lbs., which is the 
weight, less that, of the pieces previously removed. The British Museum Catalogue, 1908 (7, 
p. 7) gives it as 3,500,000 grams (7,716 lbs.) Loss by scaling during the interval between the 
two weighings would probably account for the difference in the given weights. 
t Haidinger (33, p. 72) gives the position of the smaller mass (Cranbourne No. 2) as latitude 
38° 8 S., longitude 145 22 E., and, according to Neumayer (42, p. 26) its actual distance from 
the larger meteorite (Cranbourne No. 1) was 3 ’6 miles. 
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