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VII.—A Chapter in the History of Meteorites

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2009

Walter Flight
Affiliation:
Of the Department of Mineralogy, British Museum.

Extract

This remarkable siderolite was found in Bohemia, at a spot not very far distant from the Saxon frontier or indeed from Rittersgrün, in Saxony, where a mass closely resembling it was almost contemporaneously found. So far back as 1751 at Steinbach, a village about midway between Breitenbach and Rittersgrün, a meteorite in all respects similar was discovered; the three masses are so similar to one another and so dissimilar to any others preserved in collections that there can be little doubt that they belong to the same fall. In 1825 Stromeyer examined a siderolite in which he found 61·8 per cent, of silica; this also appears to have been a member of this shower of meteorites, believed by Breithaupt to have been the “Eisenregen” which occurred at Whitsuntide, 1164, in Saxony, when a mass of iron fell near the town of Meissen.

Type
Original Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1875

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References

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page 549 note 1 About the time that von Lang published these results vom Rath measured some crystals of terrestrial bronzite, found in a sanidine bomb from the Laachersee, and arrived at results which accord very exactly with those of von Lang. (Pogg. Ann., cxxxviii. 529.)

page 549 note 2 Eammelsberg, C.. Pogg. Ann., cxl. 311.Google Scholar Rammelsberg draws attention to the remarkable accordance between the angles of bronzite and olivine, which would explain the fact of G. Rose having regarded the silicate in the siderolites of Rittersgrün and Steinbach as olivine. (See note to page 313.)

page 550 note 1 Asman is the Sanscrit term, corresponding to the Greek ⋯κμων, for the thunderoolt of Indra.

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page 553 note 3 Troilite in large nodules is abundantly present in this meteoric iron.

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