The crust or
rind of a?‘rolites is peculiarly characteristic of these bodies, being only
a few tenths of a line in thickness, often glossy and pitch-like, and
occasionally veined.*
[footnote] *The peculiar color of their crust was observed even as early as
in the time of Pliny (ii., 56 and 58): "colore adusto." The phrase
"lateribus pluisse" seems also to refer to the burned outer surface of
a?‘rolites.
There is only one instance on record, as far as I am aware (the a?‘rolite of
Chantonnay, in La Vend??e), in which the rind was absent, and this meteor,
like that of Juvenas, presented likewise the peculiarity of having pores and
vesicular cavities. In all other cases the black crust is divided from the
inner light-gray mass by as sharply-defined a line of separation as is the
black leaden-colored investment of the white granit blocks* which I brought
from the cataracts of the Orinoco, and which are also associated with many
other cataracts, as, for instance, those of the Nile and of the Congo River.
[footnote] * Humb., 'Rel. Hist.', t. ii., chap xx., p. 299-302.
The greatest heat employed in our porcelain ovens would be insufficient to
produce any thing similar to the crust of meteoric stones, whose interior
remains wholly unchanged.
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