Arizona republican., 1891-09-30
A METEORIC MINE.
Tho Strange Discovery of on Oro-
 gon Man.
some fnNcS<eein. Tacts Conoornins Me- teors-Tweuty Millions of Them Fau Upon the Earth An.
 nualiy.


 A handful of small mctooritos was re- ceived tho other day at the office of the geological survey in Washington from a man out in the northeast corner of Oregon. He said that they were loose specimens from a nickel mine that he had discovered and he wanted them as saved, because there were vast quan- titles more in the place he got them from. Mincralogist Day is under the impression that, for the firs' time in scientific history, mine of mcteorites has been struck.
 It is not surprising, says tho Wash ington Star. that the finder should sup pose he had lighted upon surface indi- cations of nickel, after a rude assay, in- asmuch as these projcctiles from the heavens, though consisting mostly of iron, contain usually large percentage of the substance so commonly used as metallic veneer. The handful in qucs- ton arc about sixty-five per cent. iron, thirty per cent. nickel and the rest cobalt. which last is metal somewhat resembling nickel. The proportion of
  teorites-
 Dr. Day believes that the Oregon man must have come upon a gully, into which, under very extraordinary con ditions, a great number of mcteorites had been drifted by the action of water from vast cXpanse of hillside where they had fallen. Hailstones are often similarly piled up There is no diff culty in determining the fact that the specimens discussed are meteortcs, in- asmuch as such bodies are nearly al- ways composed of just about the same materials in definite proportions, though why no one has ever been able to explain.
 Meteors arc very curious things. The ordinary ones, called shooting" or falling stars" mostly are consumed be- fore they reach the earth. They take fire in passing through the atmosphere by friction with the air. On any fine night one may sec an average of eight or ten of them in an hour, while practiced observer will catch sight of twice that number At intervals the earth passes through great meteor trains on it's passage through space in the tremendous journey the solar sys- tenn is making toward the constellation Hercules, in the north, and on such oc- casions the display of celestial fire works is amazing. As many as ten thousand meteors have been observed within two hours.
 But the most interesting metcors are the big ones, naturally. One such is an event. It traverseS the sky in flame. usually ezplodes with detonation, and finally bu~ics itself in the ground Sometimes it cxplodes before reaching the earth. The gigantic meteor known historically as LAigle, burst over France in 1898 and scattered its material over seven miles square. The average di'.1ca from the earth to the meteors called shooting stars" is about sixty nils, and their rapidity of motion varies from ton to fifty miles a second. The carth's rate of progress in its orbit is nineteen miles per second. There is upon tho earth continuous rain of mcteoritcs always, and it has been esti- | mated that twenty million such. big | enough to be called shooting stars if | seen at night, fall upon this planet every | twcnty-fOur hours.
 The appearance of really big me- | tcorite is always an event worth record | ing From time to time such mon | sters from outer space alight upon the ] earth and occasion sensation. For eX- | ample, on the evening of December ?, 1S1G, people in Kansas saw a bright ! ball of fire at about nine o'clock rush. ing in the western sky near where the moon was setting. It grew in brilliancy | as it rose drawing everybody out of | doors. Suddenly it passed overhead, | dropping into the southeast and talk ing about two minutes for it's passage.
 It was seen to pass by the inhabit- ants of Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, Wis consin, Illinois, Michigan, Kentucky. Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. In the meteor's path, four or five minutes after it's passage, were heard loud explosions. like distant cannonading, thunder or the rattling of empty wagons over stone roads. So loud were these sounds that beasts were frightened. Over central Illinois the fire ball was seen to break into fragments like a rocket, and over In- diana and Ohio it formed flock or clus- ter of mctcors, forty miles long and five miles broad.
 Ordinarily such great meteors as these drop stones, of which six or eight each year are big enough to find places in the museums of the world. The biggest one ever picked up is mass of iron and nickel weighing twelve hun dred pounds.