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On the supposed fall of a Meteoric Stone at Chartres, Eure-et-Loir, France, in September 1810

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2018

L. Fletcher*
Affiliation:
British Museum

Extract

In a list of the known falls of meteorites published by Meunier in 1884, is a record of the fall of a meteoric stone at Chartres, Eure-et-Loir, France, in September 1810, and as authority is quoted the catalogue of the meteorites of the Muséum d'histoire Naturelle at Paris. No stone of that name is mentioned in the printed list of the Paris collection published in 1882, but according to a later manuscript five grams were in the Museum in the year 1885. The authenticity of the fall is accepted in the lists since published at Vienna and at Harvard College. No representative of the fall, however, appears in any other list of the better known meteorite collections, and it seemed that only the fragment at Paris had escaped destruction. Lately, however, on receiving from Professor Lewis a manuscript list of the meteorites under his charge, I was agreeably surprised to find that a piece weighing no less than 60 grams of a Chartres stone was in the Cambridge collection. The specimen and its label were sent to me for inspection, and they suffice in my opinion to prove that the Chartres fall of September 1810 is mythical, and owes its origin to a simple error of memory.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland 1889

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References

page 146 note 1 Encyclopédic chimique, Tome 2; Appendice, 2me cahier, p. 510.

page 147 note 1 Mémoire historique et physique sur les chutes de pierres. Orleans, 1812.