33 
two gentlemen’s opinions, both from a brief inspection of the 
stone, and from an equally brief, and yet conclusive visit to the 
locality of its fall, that the unusual looking stony fragment is 
really a genuine meteorite of an exceptionally perfect descrip¬ 
tion and appearance. It is very remarkable in its external 
characters, both by its general form and by the unusual depth 
and regularity of the indentations which its surface has received 
by heat and fusion in the flames, fiercer than any forge’s, which 
these astronomical quarry-blocks or wandering missiles of the 
sky undergo in the fireballs that mark their igneous course 
in the first moments of their collision with the earth’s 
atmosphere. Grains of iron-pyrites, but none apparently of 
metallic iron, are visible in some small surface-fractures of 
the stone. 
No sounds of detonation, or visible phenomenon of a 
smoke-cloud in the sky, such as usually accompany the appear¬ 
ance of an aerolitic fireball, are reported in this case to have 
been observed; but it is more often in distant places than in the 
immediate localit}^ of the fall, where the close and explosion of 
the fireball’s flight are so nearly overhead that they may easily 
escape notice in that neighbourhood from their unfavourable 
position for observation there, that the accompanying features 
of an audible explosion and of a luminous fireball and smoke- 
track in the sky, which usually present themselves, are noticed 
and perceived. It may, therefore, be worth while to inquire, 
in presenting this notice of the rare occurrence to the readers 
of your journal, if any information of such phenomena having 
been detected at about half-past three o’clock on Monday after¬ 
noon, the 14th inst., in places in Durham or Yorksliire, near to 
or far from Middlesbrough, can be made known by any of your 
correspondents. 
Although two falls of aerolites have been recorded in 
Scotland and two in Ireland during the present century, and a 
small mass of solid iron fell in Shropshire on the 20th of April, 
1876, yet the last recorded occurrence in England of a stony 
aerolite of the ordinary or prevailing description of these bodies 
to which the present meteorite belongs, took place as long ago 
as the year 1795, and its locality of fall, at Wold Cottage, was, 
