May, 1902. METEORITE STUDIES, I—FARRINGTON. 2gI 
it has followed cracks and fissures, is usually scarcely a millimeter, the 
color changing beyond this through reddish to black before the dark 
green of the unstained stone is seen. 
Over a large part of the surface of the stone as found appeared a 
white amorphous coating which adhered very firmly. It could be 
removed by treatment with weak acid and most of it has been taken 
off in this way since the arrival of the stone at the Museum. When 
its substance is examined chemically it is found to be carbonate of 
lime containing a small percentage of clay. There can be little doubt 
that this coating is derived from the calcareous soil in which the stone 
lay for an unknown period, the carbonate of lime from the soil doubt- 
less spreading over the meteorite surfaces through capillary attraction 
and cementing upon the stone some ofthe surrounding clay. In 
some cavities of the stone a much greater proportion of soil is held, 
and at many points the cementing agent is iron oxide, derived doubt- 
less from the oxidation of the metallic grains of the meteorite. 
The unaltered stone when exposed by fresh fracture is of a dark 
green color, varying to black, although the latter shade may be due to 
staining from terrestrial oxidation. The stone is fine-grained, tough 
and compact. Occasional portions exhibit a slight porosity, giving a 
slag-like appearance. Such areas are however small and the pores of 
small size. The proportion of metallic ingredients is not large but 
they are quite uniformly distributed. 
The metallic grains show most plainly on a polished surface, the 
distribution and quantity being illustrated in Fig. 3. Occasionally 
well-marked aggregations of these may be seen. None of the 
surfaces that I have examined show arrangement of the grains in lines 
or systems of lines such as have been noted in a number of stone 
meteorites by Reichenbach* and Newton}. The largest metallic 
grain I have seen in the Long Island meteorite has a diameter of 1.5 
mm. From this size all gradations may be found down to the minut- 
est grains, examination with a lens bringing out many not visible 
to the naked eye. 
The bronze-yellow color and comparative softness of many of the 
grains as exhibited on a polished surface mark them as troilite, in con- 
trast to the silver-white color and greater hardness of those composed 
of nickel-iron. Further identification of the grains can be obtained by 
isolating them or by treating a polished surface of the meteorite with 
copper sulphate. On the polished surfaces examined thé number of 
troilite grains is evidently much in excess of those of nickel-iron. 
*Ueber das Geflige der Steinmeteoriten. Poggendorff’s Annalen 1859, vol. 108, pp. 291-311. 
tAmer. Jour. of Science, 1893, 3rd ser., vol. 45, pp. 152-3. 
