Target State

Last week Harvey Harlow Nininger, Colorado meteorite expert, revealed discovery of a 700-lb. aerolite by a farmer near Hugoton, Kans. Buried a yard deep in the ground, it was the most massive aerolite ever turned up in that State.* Mr. Nininger bought the ponderous stone on the spot, and the finder hoisted it into his trailer, started hauling it to Denver where Mr. Nininger is curator of meteorites at the Colorado Museum of Natural History.

From the rich soil of Kansas as many meteorites have been recovered as from Illinois, Oklahoma, Louisiana. Washington, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Minnesota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Idaho, Oregon and Nevada combined. To many a Kansan his State seems to be the favorite landing place for footloose fragments of the universe.

Hypotheses have been advanced attributing the extraordinary number of Kansas meteorites to some twist of gravitational or magnetic attraction. Expert Nininger chuckles at such notions, believes that Kansas has received no more than a normal quota of falls, of which an unusually high proportion has come to the notice of Science. Reasons:

1) The Kansas soil is practically free of terrestrial rock, and stones from outer space are therefore more conspicuous than in naturally rocky terrains.

2) Kansas has been "meteorite-conscious" for nearly half a century. In 1885 a farmer named Kimberly and his wife moved to a farm in Kiowa County. They found curious black stones used for weighting haystacks, rain-barrel covers and dugout roofs, for plugging gaps in pigpens. Mrs. Kimberly, who in childhood had been shown a meteorite by a teacher, told her husband what the black stones were. He snorted. Despite his gibes and those of the neighborhood, Mrs. Kimberly started collecting the meteorites. For five years she wrote to scientists, met discouraging skepticism. Finally an optimistic savant arrived, examined the collection with enthusiasm, paid several hundred dollars for it. The story spread over the countryside until today hardly a farmer turns up a stone in his field without thinking of meteorites and the prices paid for them.

*Aerolite: a meteorite composed chiefly of stone.

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