32 Meteorites and What they Teach us. — Hensoldt. 
terrestrial rocks, except, perhaps, in the oolitic limestones, but 
here due to totally different causes. 
These meteorites are composed of little spheres or globes, 
either perfectly round or slightly oval, sometimes flattened or 
pressed, as it were, out of shape, and either cemented together 
by an interstitial paste or matrix, or adhering only loosely with 
little or no interstitial matter to bind them. These chondri 
consist of minerals which are also of common occurrence in 
terrestrial rocks, although never in this peculiar form. They 
are either composed of olivine, bronzite, augite, triclinic 
feldspar or metallic iron, or' of two, seldom three, of these 
combined, never of anything else, except occasionally of glassy 
matter. The most significant fact is that nearly every chon- 
drum is surrounded by a distinct crust as if it had once been 
an independent cosmical body — a miniature meteorite — and 
perhaps equally remarkable is the resemblance, not mereh' in 
structure, but in composition, between these chondritic mete- 
orites , and we must bear in mind that of every ten stone-meteor- 
ites eight at least are chondritic. This resemblance is perfectly 
astonishing and all the more so as we have nothing like it 
among terrestrial rocks. Every experienced petrographer 
knows that terrestrial rocks of the same character and 
composition will present, under the microscope the most 
striking structural differences if they are merely gathered from 
different localities (often less than half a mile distant from 
each other). No two granites, basalts, dolerites, serpentines 
are alike. There are differences even in the same granite from 
the same locality and if we prepare twenty sections from one 
piece not larger than a walnut, the probabilities are that each 
will show something that can not be observed in any of the 
others. 
But the chondritic meteorites, no matter when or where 
they fell, whether in Japan or the desert of Sahara, in Great 
Britain or Bolivia, practically agree in structure and composi- 
tion and the resemblance is often so great that even a Daubree 
or Tschermak could not. in many instances, tell the section of 
one from that of another except by its label. Thus, for in- 
stance, the meteorites of Dhurmsala and Fayette county are 
absolutely identical in mineralogical composition as well as 
structure, the similarity extending even to the smallest micro- 
scopical details. The former fell 29 years ago in the Punjaub, 
