hundred feet in depth -- that is, from the rim to the visible floor or
bottom of the crater. There is no evidence that volcanic action has
ever taken place in the immediate neighborhood of Coon Butte. The rock
in which the crater has been made is composed of horizontal sandstone
and limestone strata. Between three hundred and four hundred million
tons of rock fragments have been detached, and a large portion hurled
by some cause out of the crater. These fragments lie concentrically
distributed around the crater, and in large measure form the elevation
known as Coon Butte. The region has been famous for nearly twenty
years on account of the masses of meteoric iron found scattered about
and known as the ``Canyon Diablo'' meteorites. It was one of these
masses, which consist of nickel-iron containing a small quantity of
platinum, and of which in all some ten tons have been recovered for
sale to the various collectors throughout the world, that as before
mentioned destroyed the grinding-tool at Philadelphia through the
cutting power of its embedded diamonds. These meteoric irons are
scattered about the crater-hill, in concentric distribution, to a
maximum distance of about five miles. When the suggestion was first
made in 1896 that a monster meteorite might have created by its fall
this singular lone crater in stratified rocks, it was greeted with
incredulous smiles; but since then the matter has assumed a different
aspect. The Standard Iron Company, formed by Messrs. D. M. Barringer,
B. C. Tilghman, E. J. Bennitt, and S. J. Holsinger, having become, in
1903, the owner of this freak of nature, sunk shafts and bored holes
to a great depth in the interior of the crater, and also trenched the
slopes of the mountain, and the result of their investigations has
proved that the meteoric hypothesis of origin is correct. (See the
papers published in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences
of Philadelphia, December, 1905, wherein it is proved that the United
States Geological Survey was wrong in believing this crater to have