[ 885 
XIX. Report of an Examination oj the Meteorites of Cranbourne, in Australia; of 
Rowton, in Shropshire; and of Middlesbrough, in Yorkshire. 
By Walter Flight, D.Sc., F.G.S., of the Department of Mineralogy, British 
Museum, South Kensington. 
Communicated by H. Debus, Ph.D., F.R.S. 
Received January 19,—Read February 9, 1882. 
[Plate 53.] 
I. The Siderites of Cranbourne, near Melbourne, Australia. 
Already, in 1854, it was known that masses of iron lay near Western Port, south-east 
of Melbourne. Mr. E. Fitzgibbons, the Secretary of the Municipality of Melbourne, 
was the first to direct attention to their meteoric characters, and he succeeded in 
removing enough of the larger mass to have the pieces forged into a horseshoe. 
Two masses of meteoric iron were discovered in Victoria, and they were first 
reported upon by the late W. Haidinger in the ‘ Sitzungsberichte Akad. Wien 
in 1861. The smaller block became the property of Mr. Abel, the engineer; the 
larger one was purchased for a sovereign by Mr. A. Bruce, now of Chislehurst. It 
appears that Mr. Bruce had seen a piece of iron, which had the appearance of being 
meteoric iron, in the fireplace of a squatter there, and he asked the man if any more 
of that kind was to be met with in that neighbourhood. He was conducted to a spot 
in the adjoining parish of Sherwood, where an irregular spur of iron projected from 
the surface, and he there and then purchased it with the intention of presenting it to 
the British Museum. Later on, when they proceeded to dig round it and uncover its 
sides, they were astonished at its large size; various sums of money were offered 
Mr. Bruce for the splendid block, but his one answer-to all such offers was: “ No! 
I have bought it for a sovereign ; and I am going to give it to the British Museum.” 
As has been stated, a point only of the iron was above the surface. Its position in the 
ground is well shown in a photograph taken on the spot by my late friend, Mr. R. 
Daintree, the Agent-General for Queensland, after the tertiary sandstone enclosing it 
had been removed. It is the same sandstone which crops out at Broughton; with 
basalt from 12 to 15 feet below, as on the coast at Western Port. Bruce states that 
the lower bed is silurian, and that the block of iron penetrated a foot or more into it. 
* W. Haidinger, ‘Sitzungsberichte Akad, Wien/ xliv., 18th April, 6th June, and 17th October, 1861; 
xlv., 65, 9th January, 1862. 
