894 
DR. W. FLIGHT OH THE METEORITES OF 
Carbonic acid 
0-12 
31*88 
45-79 
4-55 
17-66 
Carbonic oxide. 
Hydrogen . 
Marsb gas . 
Nitrogen 
100-00 
X. The Rowton Siderite, 
The metallic mass which I shall next proceed to describe is one of unusual interest 
in more than one respect: in the first place, before it fell only one iron meteorite was 
known to have fallen in Great Britain, while eight stony meteorites that have fallen 
in the British islands are in the national collection ; and, secondly, of the more than 
300 meteorites which are contained in the collection in the Natural History Museum, 
more than 100 are unquestionably iron meteorites, and of these the fall of seven only 
has been witnessed. 
The circumstances attending the fall of the Rowton iron are as follows. At about 
20 minutes to 4 o’clock on the afternoon of the 20th of April, 1876, a strange 
rumbling noise was heard in the atmosphere, followed almost instantaneously by a 
startling explosion resembling a discharge of heavy artillery. There was neither 
lightning nor thunder, but rain was falling heavily, the sky being obscured with dark 
clouds for some time both before and after the incident related. About an hour after 
the explosion Mr. George Brooks had occasion to go to a turf field in his occupation 
adjoining the Wellington and Market Drayton Railway, about a mile north of the 
Wrekin, when his attention was attracted to a hole cut in the ground. The land 
where it fell, it should be stated, is part of the property of the Duke of Cleveland, at 
Rowton, near Wellington, in Shropshire; and Mr. Ashdown, the agent of the Duke, 
exerted himself in the matter, and obtained his Grace’s assent to the meteorite being 
presented to the trustees of the British Museum. 
As regards the hole which was found in the field, Mr. Brooks probed the opening 
with a stick and discovered a lump of metal of irregular shape, which proved to be a 
meteorite, weighing 7 J lbs. It had penetrated to a depth of 18 inches, passing through 
4 inches of soil and 14 inches of solid clay down to the gravel. The hole is nearly 
perpendicular, but the stone appears to have fallen in a south-easterly direction. Some 
men were at work at the time within a short distance, and they, together with many 
other people in the neighbourhood, heard the noise of explosion. According to other 
observers, the sound was heard as of something falling during a heavy shower of rain, 
accompanied by a hissing and then a rumbling noise. It is, moreover, stated that 
when Mr. Brooks found the mass “ it was quite warm.” Mr. Wills described it as 
being black on the surface and apparently covered with a scale of metallic oxides; but 
