People find a great many meteorites that were not seen to fall. Most of
these landed on the surface of the earth at some time in the remote past
or happened to fall in an originally unpopulated portion of the land
area of the globe. Generally, such meteorites are discovered entirely by
accident, although in recent years quite a few recoveries of unwitnessed
falls have been made by design. This has been the case during the
systematic surveys with meteorite detectors conducted around such
recognized meteorite crater areas as Canyon Diablo, Arizona; Odessa,
Texas; and Wolf Creek, Australia.
The different modes of discovery of meteorites not seen to fall are
interesting in themselves. The largest percentage of finds has
unquestionably been made by farmers. The Plymouth, Indiana, meteorite,
for example, was plowed up or, as the farmer nursing the rib bruised by
his bucking plow would probably prefer to say, “plowed into.” So were
such meteorites as the Algoma, Wisconsin; the Bridgewater, North
Carolina; the Carlton, Texas; and the Chesterfield, South Carolina, to
name only a few. A farmer found the Kenton, Kentucky, iron while he was
cleaning out a spring. Another farmer was removing debris from an
abandoned water well in an attempt to revive it when he discovered the
Richland, Texas, iron. A field drainage project brought the Seeläsgen,
Poland, iron to light. A man planting an apple tree near his house dug
out the Mount Joy, Pennsylvania, iron, and a farmer hoeing tobacco
turned up the Scottsville, Kentucky, iron.
The second largest percentage of finds probably has been made by miners.
Prospectors and placer miners have mistaken numerous iron meteorites for
lumps of silver ore. Among these are the Murfreesboro, Tennessee; Lick
Creek, North Carolina; and Illinois Gulch, Montana, irons. The Aggie
Creek, Alaska, iron was raised by a gold dredge. The gold miners
recognized this meteorite as an unusual “haul” when it announced its
presence by clanging loudly on the metallic screen of the dredge.
Men at work on road construction are also to be thanked for chancing
upon meteorites of unwitnessed fall, for example, the irons found by
road crews at Bear Lodge, Wyoming, and at Bald Eagle, Pennsylvania.
Some meteorites have been “found twice.” At Opava, Czechoslovakia,
archeologists discovered seven pieces of meteoritic iron in a buried
Stone Age campsite—the oldest meteorite collection so far on record!
Apparently the paleolithic inhabitants of the Opava region had gathered
the heavy masses together and used them to bolster the fireplaces in
their rude encampment.
Investigators discovered the Mesaverde, Colorado, iron in the Sun Shrine
on the north side of the Pipe Shrine House, and the Casas Grandes,
Mexico, iron in the middle of a large room of the Montezuma temple
ruins, carefully wrapped in linen cloth like a mummy. Members of an
early archeological survey found the small Anderson Township, Ohio,
meteoritic specimens on altars in mounds of the Little Miami Valley
group of prehistoric earthworks. Some scientists believe that the
American Indians transported these specimens to Ohio from the site of
the Brenham meteorites in Kiowa County, Kansas.
[Illustration: The Lake Murray, Oklahoma, iron meteorite in place,
just as it was found. See p. 80.]
Other modes of discovery fall into no pattern and must be regarded as
merely curious. A farmer plowing his field near Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, came across a snake. In looking for a suitable stone with
which to kill it, he first seized upon a mass of iron too heavy to lift.
After he had killed the snake with a handy rock, the farmer’s attention
was drawn back to the small but remarkably heavy mass he had first tried
to pick up. He carted it off to the city, where eventually it was
recognized as a meteorite.
In another unusual recovery, fishermen brought the Lake Okeechobee,
Florida, stone up from the waters of the lake in a net—the only such
recovery recorded in the whole literature of meteoritics, although
three-fourths of all meteorites must necessarily fall into water on our
ocean-covered globe. Again, the members of the Australasian Antarctic
Expedition of 1911-1914 were surprised to find the Adelie Land,
Antarctica, stone lying on the snow some 20 miles west of Cape Denison.
Because the true nature of meteorite finds has often been
unrecognized—sometimes for many years—these masses have been put to some
rather lowly uses. The finder of the Rafrüti, Switzerland, iron
meteorite used it as a footwarmer, and many of the heavy irons have been
employed as haystack, fence, and barrel-cover weights, or as anvils,
nutcrackers, and doorstops.
[Illustration: It’s a whopper! See p. 80.]
Some have fared better, as did the 1,375-pound La Caille, France,
meteorite, which the people of the village used for two centuries as a
seat in front of their church. Others, however, have fared even worse.
Blacksmiths and assayers have smelted up and destroyed a number of iron
meteorites either in the making of tools (like plowshares, axe-heads,
and knife-blades) or in the quest for precious metals. Nearly all of the
iron meteorite that was found by the farmer near Pittsburgh was worked
up by a blacksmith and lost to science. Even the stone meteorites have
occasionally fallen victims to man’s greed for gold. Miners who believed
that the 80-pound San Emigdio, California, stony meteorite was
gold-bearing mashed it to powder in an ore-crusher.
On the contrary, people who, in one way or another, have become
acquainted with the characteristics of meteorites have brought a number
of these objects to the attention of scientists. For example, one of the
University of Nebraska men who worked on the excavation and removal of
the large Furnas County stone meteorite (see Chapter 2) became keenly
interested at that time in meteorites in general, and took the trouble
to learn as much as he could about them. Several years later, after he
had become director of a state park museum in southern Oklahoma, a large
metallic mass was reported to him. The finder of this mass of metal had
known of its existence for some 20 years, but had never succeeded in
getting anyone to examine it carefully. The former field worker took one
look at the object and, on the basis of his knowledge of meteorites,
concluded that it probably was a huge iron meteorite. He immediately
called the Institute of Meteoritics by long distance and was able to
give such a wealth of significant details that a field party left at
once for the site. In this way, the Lake Murray, Oklahoma, meteorite was
identified and recovered.
[Illustration: The Lake Murray core mounted on the meteorite saw
which cut it in half. One of the worn soft iron saw-blades is held
above the meteorite by the saw guides. See pp. 167, 168.]
The unoxidized central core of this iron weighed more than 600 pounds.
Before excavation this core was surrounded by a “shell” of oxidized
meteoritic material several inches thick, as shown on page 77. Such a
shell of oxide clearly indicated that the meteorite had been subjected
to weathering in the ground for many thousands of years.
In general, meteorites _seen to fall_—possibly because of the magnitude
and impressiveness of the light and sound effects connected with their
descent—have received respectful treatment after recovery. Most of them
have been presented to men of science for study and eventual display in
some museum collection. Even when kept by their finders, the specimens
usually have been well cared for. After the fall of the Flows, North
Carolina, meteorite in 1849, the owner of the land on which it came down
set the stone in a place of honor on top of a barrel fixed to a post. On
the post he put up the notice:
“_Gentlemen, sirs—please not to break this rock, which fell from the
skies and weighs 19.5 pounds._”
This landowner obviously realized that nearly everyone has the
unfortunate urge to hammer on strange rocks.
Of course, there have been exceptions to the respectful treatment of
meteorites seen to fall. The finder of one fragment of the Zhovtnevy
Hutor, Russia, fall tossed it into the stove, and a farm woman lost
another by throwing it at an unruly horse. A peasant who thought
meteorites possessed miraculous powers powdered up a piece of the
diamond-bearing Novo-Urei, Russia, stone and ate it!
[Illustration: A polished and etched face of the Lake Murray
meteorite. The length of the cut is a good 23 inches.]