Abstract
THE British Museum (Natural History) Catalogue of Meteorites was issued in 1923 and a first appendix appeared in 1927. A second appendix, compiled by M. H. Hey, has now been published by the Trustees of the Museum (1940, pp. 136, price 5s. net). It includes particulars of all meteorites described since the appearance of the first appendix up to the end of September 1939. Additions and corrections to some of the earlier entries have been made and a separate list of meteorite craters has been included. It is interesting to note that the catalogue and its appendixes now contain entries for 1,251 reasonably well-authenticated falls, of which 758 are represented in the Museum collections, and for a further 98 ‘doubtful’ and ‘paired’ falls, of which there are 24 in the collections. Of the 51 ‘doubtful’ falls, a few may not be meteorites, others have never been adequately confirmed or described, and others may have names that may be synonymous with those of falls otherwise recorded. The 47 ‘paired’ falls are pairs or groups of falls which are possibly or probably identical; these have been counted only once in the totals. Falls reported in ancient histories and objects of worship in ancient temples thought to have been meteorites have not been included, except in the case of Jalandhar, which fell in the Punjab in 1621 and was forged into sword blades; in other cases the data are too vague and uncertain.
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Catalogue of Meteorites. Nature 146, 196 (1940). https://doi.org/10.1038/146196a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/146196a0