76 Meteorites and What they Teach us. — Hensoldt. 
a huge bed of basalt, which contains metallic iron in abund- 
ance. 
Steenstrup found that at Disco, within a few hundred yards 
from the shore, the cliffs rise to a hight of 2,000 feet above the 
sea level. A basalt-breccia of dark-green color, and about 200 
feet in thickness, rests on an ancient fundamental Gneiss. 
Above the breccia lies a bed of vesicular basalt wacke, the cav- 
ities containing cabasite, mesotype, analcime and other 
zeolites and this again is covered by a basalt-sheet of enormous 
thickness, sometimes attaining one thousand feet, composed 
mainly of anorthite, augite and native iron, the latter often 
in nodules of considerable size. This immense basalt stratum, 
produced by volcanic outbursts on the grandest scale during 
the miocene period can be followed along the entire western 
coast of Greenland, extending far beyond Smith's sound, over 
ten degrees of latitude, until it finally disappears under a huge 
glacier. We shall probably never know how far this gigantic 
lava stream, with its incalculable wealth of nickeliferous iron, 
stretches to the frozen North. 
About ten years ago the writer, when examining a number 
of thin sections prepared from the meteorite of Braunfels, 
which was found in Germany in 1878, made a discovery which, 
however, he did not follow up in its important bearings, on 
the origin of these cosmical bodies, as the meteoric character 
of the Braunfels specimen was not clearly established. Tsch- 
ermak and Brezina, for instance, declared the meteorite of 
Braunfels to be a pseudo-meteorite, on the ground that it 
differed so much in its structural features from every other 
known meteorite, as to render its extra-terrestrial origin very 
doubtful. But quite recently the writer has made the same 
discovery in the meteorite of Loutalaks, a well authenticated 
meteorite, which fell in Finnland in 1813 and also in that of 
Nobleborough, Lincoln county, Maine, as well as in that of 
Bustee, which fell in India in 1852. These meteorites are of a 
brecciated character and belong to a class which has been 
called howardites by Gustav Rose. They consist of angular 
fragments of anorthite, pyroxene, etc. with little or no metallic 
iron. 
Now the writer's discovery, does not, like that of Dr. Otto 
Hahn, relate to organic remains ; if it did it is doubtful 
whether he would have the courage to communicate it to the 
