Transcribe Ward-Coonley Collection of Meteorites

                                              PREFACE. 
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Meteorites, as Humboldt pointed out, are the only medium through which the inhabitants of the earth are brought into interplanetary and also interstellar space. They have, therefore, a fascination for the ordinary man's mind which nothing terrestrial can have.

A survey of the heavens, with the naked eye or by the aid of a telescope, fills out minds with wonder and awe, mingled with intense curiosity as to what the brilliant celestial bodies may possibly mean. But when the meteoric globe sails across the sky and falls as a solid mass, our awe is non the less, but our curiosity is largely satisfied; the meteorite has told us one of the tales of other worlds than ours. The writer has for more than half a century felt the fascination of this subject. and for more than twenty years past he has given much time to collecting and studying these interesting cosmic bodies in every part pf the world where he has travelled, and where they have been found. The collection enumerated on the following pages is the result of these activities. It represents 511 distinct "falls" and "finds," about five-sixths of all the meteorites known to science, and which are stored mainly in the great museums of the world, as well as in the cabinets of private amateur collectors. It contains specimens of the oldest falls those of the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries- which were observed and collected at those early periods, as well as those which at the commencement of the nineteenth century, first challenged and secured from European savants acceptance of their extraterrestrial character. Among the former are prominent Elbogen and Ensisheim; among the latter the Pallas Iron and l' Aigle.

The collection contains more than the usual quantity of notable specimens. Among those are represented by particularly large and choice specimens are Ballinoo and Roebourne (Australia), Costilla Peak, Luis Lopez and Oscuro Mountains (New Mexico), St. Genevieve and Central (Missouri), Oakley and Brenham (Kansas), MacKinney (Texas), and Veramin (Persia). The four masses of Canon Diablo (diamoniferous) weigh together a full ton. The rare, curved octahedral structure is well brought out in sections of the Toluca and Glorieta Irons; "Slickenside" surfaces, which occur prominently in some few AErolites, show well in the Stalldalen, Manbhoom and Lixna specimens. The Puquois Iron (first brought by us from Chili), alone among meteorites shows a clear faulting in some of the Kamacite bands. In the Brenham (Haviland) section, one end of a lice represents a typical Siderite, while