CRANBOURHE, ROWTON, AND MIDDLESBROUGH. 
897 
in the air followed in a second or two by a sudden blow of a body striking the ground 
not far from them : the spot was found to be 48 yards from where they stood. 
The fall took place on the 14th March, 1881, at 3-35 p.m. The wind was from the 
north-east, and it was a clear and bright but rather cold afternoon. At more distant 
places, as Northallerton and four miles to the eastward, the sound resembled the boom 
of a gun; no luminous or cloud-forming phenomena are reported. The character of 
the hole, according to Professor Alexander Herschel, who at once visited the spot, 
points to the fall having been vertical or nearly so. The stone was “new milk warm” 
when found, and weighed 3 lbs. 8J oz. ; the dark surface is entirely fused and crusted, 
and has scarcely suffered by the fall. The stone forms a low pyramid, slightly scolloped, 
6^ inches in length, 5 inches wide, and 3 inches in height. The rounded summit and 
sloping sides are scored and grooved deeply with a polish like black lead, in waving 
furrows running to the base, showing that this side came foremost during the fusing 
action of the atmosphere which the meteorite underwent in its flight. The rear or 
base is equally fused or branded by heat, but is rough, dull brown in colour, and not 
scored or furrowed. 
The meteorite penetrated the soil to a depth of 11 inches, and the penetration line 
apparently slopes about 10° from the vertical from the S.S.E.; it passed through 7 or 
8 inches of coke-ballast, and thereafter brick-earth or coarse clay to the remaining 
depth. From experiments made by Professor Herschel on the power of penetration 
of a cast-iron model of the meteorite, it is calculated that the actual velocity of fall 
with which the stone struck the ground must have been 412 feet per second. As it 
would acquire this velocity by falling freely through half-a-mile, it is clear how little of 
the original planetary speed with which it entered the atmosphere can have remained 
to affect its fall. 
The interior of the stone has a greyish-white appearance, and is evidently for the 
most part composed of silicates : frequent bright metallic granules are to be seen, and 
they appear to be entirely or almost entirely granules of nickel-iron. The rocky 
portion varies from grey to pure white, of which there are patches, and while the 
greater part appears to be homogeneous in structure, there are many enclosed chondra 
of large size and of a darker grey than the body of the stone. 
In the well-developed markings of the exterior of the stone it bears a close resem¬ 
blance, as Professor Herschel points out, to the meteorite of Karakol (Kirgis 
Steppe, May 9th, 1840), of which Professor Goebel gives a figure in his paper of 1866 
in the ‘ Melanges physiques et ehimiques de lAcademie Imperiale de St. Petersbourg/ 
vii., 318-324. 
The railway company, who at the time this notice was written retained possession 
of the stone, kindly permitted a few fragments to be removed for examination; and I 
shall now proceed to describe the results of the chemical analysis of them. It has 
since been presented to the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, and is now preserved in 
the museum at York. 
5 y 2 
