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XI Y. On the Mineral Constituents of Meteorites. By Nevil Story-Maskelyne, M.A., 
Professor of Mineralogy , Oxford , and Keeper of the Mineral Department , 
British Museum. 
Received November 3, 1870, — Read January 26, 1871. 
XII. The Breitenbach Meteorite. 
The Siderolite of Breitenbach was acquired for the British Museum in the year 1863. 
It was found (in 1861) at Breitenbach in Bohemia, at a spot not very far distant from 
the Saxon frontier, or indeed from Rittersgriin, in Saxony, a place in which a very fine 
mass, that bears a close resemblance to the Siderolite of Breitenbach, was almost con- 
temporaneously found. A little way to the west of the centre of the line joining Rit- 
tersgriin and Breitenbach lies Steinbach, a village in the environs of Johanngeorgenstadt, 
near Schwartzenberg ; and here in 1751 was also found a mixed meteoric mass in which, 
as in the two already mentioned, iron, sponge-like in its structure, encloses siliceous mi- 
nerals that do not present a familiar aspect. The three meteorites are, in fact, so similar 
to one another and so dissimilar to any others in European collections, that there can be 
little doubt they belonged originally to the same meteoric fall. 
Stromeyer* in the year 1825 examined a siderolite in which he found as much as 
61-88 per cent, of silica. This remarkable result, together with the numbers of his 
analysis, he interpreted as indicating the presence of a magnesian trisilicate, probably 
meaning thereby a sesquisilicate (magnesium epideutosilicate). The specimen which he 
analyzed he described as coming from Grimma, in Saxony. This specimen was, in fact, 
a portion of a mass preserved in the collection of the Duke of Gotha, and doubtless 
believed by Stromeyer to be a portion of a stone which was known to have fallen in 
the middle of the sixteenth century in a wood near Naunhof in the neighbourhood of 
Grimma. CHLADNif, however, held this view to be untenable, grounding his opinion 
on the completeness of the meteorite preserved at Gotha, both as regards its form and its 
crust, while he adds that the Naunhof mass must have been far too great to allowof its being 
transported, and, indeed, that it had never been rediscovered. It is in every way probable 
that the material Stromeyer really had to work upon was from a Saxon locality, and in 
fact a specimen from a fall, to which the Bittersgriin and Breitenbach siderolites belong. 
Breithaupt J believes the fall in question to have been the “ Eisenregen ” which occurred 
at Whitsuntide, 1164, in Saxony, when a mass of iron fell in the town of Meissen §. 
An inspection of a polished surface of either of these masses reveals the iron in patches 
of irregular form, which exhibit the characteristic crystalline structure of meteoric irons 
* Pogg. Ann. iv. p. 195. t Feuer-Meteore, pages 326 it 212. 
J Rerg. und Hiitt. Zeitung, xxi. p. 322. § Feuer-Meteore, p. 198. 
MDCCCLXXI. 3 D 
