* Astronomy

The Vishnupur Meteorite.

Two fragments of this meteorite were received : the first, weighing 670.4 grammes, which fell at Kheraibani village (lat. 23° 6', long. 87° 26'), was presented by Babu Atal Behari Bose, Subdivisional Officer, Vishnupur; the second, which fell near Ramsagar (lat. 23° 6', long. 87° 20'), weighed 1,767 grammes and was presented by Mr. Kumar Ramendra Krishna Deb, Magistrate of Bankura. The latter officer forwarded an interesting account of the fall, recorded by the Rev. J. Mitchell of the Wesleyan Mission. I cannot do better than quote his report in full :--

"On Saturday, the 22nd December, at the request of the District Magistrate, Bankura, I visited the place where a meteorite fell near Ramsagar, a station on the Bengal-Nagpur Railway in the District of Bankura, and gathered the following particulars :--

" The exact place where the stone fell is not Ramsagar, but by the side of a house in the Banshipara (para=quarter: G. deP. C.) of a village called Mathura, 2 miles south-east by east of Ramsagar and 2½ miles north-west of Vishnupur. A round hollow 4 inches deep and 5½ inches in diameter was formed in the ground -- ordinary soil -- by the falling of the meteorite. This hollow I asked the village people to preserve, and this I think they have done. I questioned the people carefully with reference to the fall. Babu Umesh Chandra Rai, a leading man in the village, stated that about 9:20 A.M. (standard time) on Friday, the 15th December 1906, he heard two loud sounds in the air, sharp and sudden as if two cannons had been fired; then a loud rumbling sound which continued for some 10 minutes, when it ceased at the moment the stone fell. That a loud continuous sound followed the first two reports was borne out by all the villagers whom I saw, and one man insisted that the rumbling sound lasted fully an hour. Thus from the Babu's statement the stone must have fallen about 9:30 A.M

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