IS IT A METEORITE?

Waipa Post, Volume 32, Issue 1785, 22 July 1926, Page 6

IS IT A METEORITE?

INTERESTING- FIND AT FITZHERBERT WEST. One of the most interesting 'finds of recent years has been made by Mr S'chaw on his property at No. 4 Line, Fitzherbert West. While stumping in a paddock he wa s surprised to discover what at first looked like a huge boulder embedded in the clay; but itfe peculiar condition led him to investigate further, when it was found to have a peculiar sponge like appearance, and to be identical with the refusethat is removed periodically from the furnace of a destructor.

The huge boulder, from its appearance, had certainly been through fire, and must have been red when i't fell in the paddock in which it was found, as the clay all round was burnt and baked to brick hardness, and there were also ashes. The weight of the boulder is\ estimated at about three hundredweight.

The only feasible explanation of the presence of the boulder is that it was once a meteorite. These bodies travel in their millions around a planet, or more generally in orbits of their own around the sun. Occasionally something causes them to stray from their accustomed path, and they are seen to flash through the atmosphere at incredible sped and glowing with the heat generated by friction with the atmosphere. This heat causes them to be conteumed, but sometimes the bigger ones, coming within the force of gravity exerted by the earth, reach the ground. There is a huge pit in Arizona one quarter of a mile wide that is supposed to have been formed by a meteorite that had buried itself deep down owing to the speed at which it struck the earth.

If the find at Fitzherbert is a meteorite it must have been of a light nature not to have buried itself more deeply, unless the top soil has been gradually worn away by the action of water, and finally left the boulder exposed—Manawatu Times.