The Delaware register, or, Farmers', manufacturers' & mechanics' advocate. [volume] (Wilmington, Del.) 1828-1829, 1829-07-04

These bodies have a peculiar aspect, and peculiar
combination of properties, differing from all the solid
substances ON the face of the globe. They have fall
len from various points of the heavens at all periods
IN all seasons of the year, at all hours both of the day
and the night, also in all countries of the world on
mountains and in plains, and without any particular
relation to VOLCANOES, and without any chemical identi-
ty with the matter which they disembogue They are
composed chiefly of secia, magnesia, iron and nick
ell, with their oxides and sulphures giving to the
whole mass the appearance of pale ash-grey argila-
ceous stone, with granulated metallic points, and is
common marble in weight about to 8.
| Our attention is called to this subject by most
startling phenomenon of this which is said to have
been witnessed the eighth instant, near FORSYTH in
Monroe county of this State. The evening was Sc
rene, and a more than ordinary stiffness prevailed in
the air. There appearance of storm or of
clouds that could produce even momentary shower,
when the rebaii which are going to describe was
discovered 1t was moving with immense velocity,
involved IN mass of smoke that marked its fight,
like an enormous she'll from a mortar, emitting an
audible Kissing sound resembling the ignition of ros-
Sn, and, IN few seconds, exploded, like shock of
thunder, and fell to the earth, about one mile from
Forsyth in MIR Uriah Dunn's field, where his overseer
and servants were at work. Though considerably
alarmed at first, they ventured the spot denoted by
the breach it had made through the surface, and, af
ter turning up the earth about two feet in Depth they
came upon the stone that had faen about the size of
Ia Clilu Hedu, ana weighing tnlrty-SX pounds! The
exterior of the stone covered with black and
ieguginous ncrustation equally the whole
showed that 1t must have been in state of fusion
On breaking the mass, its internal structure closely
resembed almost every other meteoric stone that we
have seen having the usual characteristics of color
and grain, except that it slightly specked with
yelowish substance, with larger proportion of nick
ell perhaps in tire composition than is usual. The
fragment which we have examined now iii Office,
abounds with brilliant metallic points, and is about 90
per cent heavier than the celebrated Meeorite which
fell in Weston, Conn., in 1907 and now in the cabinet
of Minerals at Yale College. Its specific gravity is
Ala, allowing that of water to be |. The medium
specific gravity of meteorites that have fallen in the
last century IS about $50.
The conclusion produced in the atmosphere by the
great explosion which preceded the descent of this stone
was felt for some distance round, nsomuch that the
crockery and windows sensiby affected. 1t is
quite probable that several other portions of this stone
fell in the neighborhood, for there were several
successive and lesser explosions before the reach
ed the earth. We learn that fragment struck on a
rock at mill there, and was dashed into thousand
atoms.
There are doubtless many of our readers who have
regarded fabulous the idea of cast iron tunderbol
and hailsones of iron globes,' the harmless
irrigation of stony showers and metallic SHOWS vet
them that all these things are strictly real
But how these meteorc connections are formed in the
atmosphere, by what laws they sustained in motion,
how they came there at all, unsettled questions
among the best theories of the terrestrial pheno
mena. The French Academicans of the last century