The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1895-11-15
GREENLAND METEoRITES.
The Peary Party's Discovery of the Lars
est Known Specimen.

GREENLAND Me Eo.
The Peary Party's Discovery of the Lars~
est Known Specimen.
The scientists on the Kite seem to
have found something. if Peary didn't.
Besides an uneoualed collection of arc
tic birds, eggs, skins, bears, walrus,
ETC., they found, and bring back, two
huge meteorites- One weighs half a
ton-the other, it is said, three tons
Moreover, they found far bigger one.
which they estimated at forty tons,
and which seemed to consist nearly OF
pure iron They couldn't break off a
piece even after drilling holes for that
purpose.
This, undoubtedly, is the greatest
meteorite that has been found-at
least in modern times The ancient
legends of some such bodies falling
upon that part of the earth now known
as Turkey and Greece, are, at best,
mythical and vague; they are not
borne out by any discovery of such
ponderous bodies. This one Greenland
is the jumbo of all meteorites. 1t has
been the belief of some biologists that
there is vast meteorite in Greenland;
one, the enthusiastic Prof. Denton,
who lost his life in exploring the great
tropical island of New Guinea, going
even to the fancifully absurd extreme
of believing that all north Greenland
was covered by meteoric mass, whose
laundering impact knocked the globe
back and produced the obliquity of the
ecliptic; an absurdly inadequate cause
for so stupendous an effort. But the
actual bringing back of Greenland me-
teorites weighing half ton, and three
tons, is a new revelation of the state
of things in that great island of the
far north. We have no such enormous
meteorites in any college or govern.
ment collection in this country-nor,
we think, are any such to be found in
any country, outside OF Greenland.
These fallen meteoric masses come
from "other worlds than ours" What
ever relationship or kinship they may
bear to the little shooting stars of
the August and November night, very
little is actually known about their
origin. But astronomers, after much
disputation, have seemingly settled
down to an agreement on at least one
point. There is one, and perhaps more
than one, great meteor stream, having
an orbit around the sun, somewhat
(perhaps very much) inclined to that of
the earth-possibly as eccentric as the
asteroids-and that this orbit forms
ring, or belt, of innumerable fragments
of matter, mostly small, but possibly
larger bodies; the vast mass being un-
equally distributed along the entire
orbit-an orbit, it is needless to add,
outside of the earth's. 1t seems to be
agreed also that the motion of this
meteor ring around the sun is retro
grade; that the earth's orbit, at the
point our planet reaches about the 18th
of November, intersects this meteor
ring. The period of this ring is be-
lieved to be about thirty-three years.
The November star shower is apt to be
seen to some extent on two successive
nights, and after that is little seen for
an interval of about thirty three years;
indicating that, although the earth
may pass through the orbit every year,
the meteors are so grouped at intervals
along the ring. and their periodic time
differs so much from that of the earth,
that it requires nearly thirty-three
years for this accommodating difference
to amount to a complete revolution OF
the ring, bringing back the group that
supplies, owing to the earth's attrac-
ton, such Q star shower as that grand
one of 1888. or the lesser one of 1886
1t is also found that there is close re-
Iation of the meteor ring to some, at
least, of the comets The orbits of
some of the comets seem to coincide
with that of the ring; and the actual
disappearance of at least one of our
short period comets, that broke up and
joined that ring, is a suggestive fact
as to the possible formation of at least
part of the bodies in that great
meteor ring. -Hartford Times