Editorial Comment. 251 
part must necessarily have been in advance of the lighter 
portion, which was that shown now by the lower surface. 
The lower surface has lost a large portion of its original 
mass through the removal of such ingredients as once filled 
the openings. Those ingredients were certainly not metallic 
iron, but probably such stony matter as is frequently 
known to accompany sideritic meteorites; although at the 
present time no trace of such stony matter remains. 
The whole surface has lost its original scale, if it had 
one, and is covered now by a film of iron rust, which, in 
some of the protected depressions at the base of the conical 
part, is so thick that it forms a firm scale about a thirty- 
second part of an inch in thickness. Such scale of iron 
rust, which must have covered the whole mass rather uni- 
formlv originally, and has been rubbed off by the accidents 
of transportation, indicates the long period of time which 
has elapsed since the iron reached the earth. It appears to 
require an oxidation continued through many centuries, and 
perhaps thousands of years. On the conical part Dr. Ward 
mentions the occurrence of isolated small protuberances of a 
slightly darker shade than the main mass. He attributes 
them to "flows of melted matter which were once more 
widespread, or continuous;" they would, in that case, be 
remnants of the fused dark- film by which all meteorites are 
covered when they fall. It might be questioned, however, 
whether such fused flowage matter would be less or more 
oxidizable than the mass of the iron. Being non-crystalline 
it would be reasonable to expect it to be more attackable by 
the atmosphere, and by moisture in the ground, than the 
crystalline iron mass, and hence, rather than standing out in 
prominences it would wholly decay" and slough off before 
the iron could be reached. The writer noticed these darker 
patches, which average from half to three-quarters of an 
inch across, and on the spot assumed that they are due to 
inequalities in the iron, or to the occurrence of some ingre- 
dient less oxidizable than the iron by which they are sur- 
rounded. They do not appear to be composed of troilite nor 
of any silicate, and the the occurrence of diamonds of that 
size, while possible, is perhaps too bold a suggestion to be 
entertained. 
