* Astronomy

This meteorite was first mentioned by Wohler 1 as a gift to the University collection at Gottingen received from Bremen. It was a stone brought from Mexico by Julius Hildebrand, who lived several years at Durango. According to a verbal statement made by Hildebrand to Wohler, he obtained the stone soon after its fall in the summer of 1855 or 1856 from an ac- quaintance who lived at Cuencame', about 30 miles northwest of Durango. This gentleman had heard from the natives of that place that stones had fallen from heaven upon the estate of Avilez in the vicinity of Cuencame, and lay buried deep in the earth. This stone was still hot when dug up, but as it was supposed to be of no value, it was thrown away again. At the instance of this gentleman one of the pieces was found again and brought to him, and he sent it to Hildebrand. The usual fire-phenomena seem not to have been observed by the people.
The stone obtained by Hildebrand weighed 146 grams. It was evidently a fragment of a larger stone, apparently broken from the corner of the original. It was covered on three sides with a black, dull, wavy crust. The interior was gray, fine grained, and enclosed here and there brighter particles and chondri. It contained unequally distributed grains of metallic iron and strongly affected the magnetic needle.
Burkart 3 pointed out that Cuencame' does not lie northwest, but 20 leagues northeast of Durango, and that it was not an estate, as Buchner stated, but a mining village and chief place of the region of the same name, which, according to the map of Garcia y Cubas, lies 24 40' N. and 4 8' W. of Mexico.
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