 It is in the records of the French Academy, that, upon March 17, 1669, and the town of Châtillon-sur-Seine, fell a reddish substance that was thick, viscous, and putrid. American Journal of Science 141-404, story of a highly unpleasant substance that had fallen from the sky in Wilson County, Tennessee. We read that Dr. Troust visited the place and investigated. Later, we're going to investigate some investigations, but never mind that now. Dr. Troust reported that the substance was clear blood and portions of flesh scattered upon tobacco fields. He argued that a whirlwind might have taken an animal up from one place, mauled it around, and have precipitated its remains somewhere else. But, in Volume 44, Page 216 of the Journal, there is an apology. The whole matter is, upon newspaper authority, said to have been a hoax by Negroes who had pretended to have seen the shower for the sake of practicing upon the cardulity of their masters, that they had scattered the decaying flesh of a dead hog over the tobacco fields. If we don't accept this datum, at least we see the sociologically necessary determination have all falls accredited to earthly origins. Even when there falls, that don't fall. Annual Register 1821-687, that, upon the thirteenth of August, 1819 something had fallen from the sky at Amherst, Massachusetts. It had been examined and described by Professor Graves, formerly Lecturer, at Dartmouth College. It was an object that had upon it a nap, similar to that of milled cloth. Upon removing this nap, a buff-colored, pulpy substance was found. It had an offensive odor, and upon exposure to air, turned to a vivid red. This thing was said to have fallen with a brilliant light. Also see the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, 5295, in the Anal de Kimmi, 1821-67, accepts the datum, and gives four instances of similar objects or substances said to have fallen out of the sky, two of which we shall have with our data of gelatinous or viscous matter, and two of which I omit, because it seems to me that the dates given are too far back. In the American Journal of Science, 1, 2, 335 is Professor Graves' account, communicated by Professor Dewey. That, upon the evening of August 13, 1819, a light was seen in Amherst, a falling object, sound as if of an explosion. In the home of Professor Dewey, this light was reflected upon a wall of a room in which were several members of Professor Dewey's family. The next morning, in Professor Dewey's front yard, in what is said to have been the only position from which the light that had been seen in the room the night before could have been reflected, was found a substance unlike anything before observed by anyone who saw it. It was a bowl-shaped object, about eight inches in diameter, and one inch thick, bright buff-colored, and having upon it a fine nap. Upon removing this covering, a buff-colored pulpy substance of the consistency of soft soap was found of an offensive, suffocating smell. A few minutes of exposure to the air changed the buff-color to a livid color resembling Venus blood. It absorbed moisture quickly from the air and liquefied. For some of the chemical reactions, see the journal. There's another lost quasi-soul of a datum that seems to me to belong here. London Times, April 19th, 1836, fall of fish that had occurred in the neighborhood of Alhabad, India. It is said that the fish were of the Chalwa species, about a span in length and a sear in weight. You know, they were dead and dry, or they had been such a long time out of the water that we can't accept that they had been scooped out of a pond by a whirlwind, even though they were so definitely identified as of a known local species, or they were not fish at all. I incline myself to the acceptance that they were not fish, but slender fish-shaped objects of the same substance as that which fell in Amherst. It is said that whatever they were they could not be eaten, that in the pan they turned into blood. For details of this story, see the journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1834-307, May 16th or 17th, 1834 is the date given in the journal. In the American Journal of Science, 125-362, occurs the inevitable damnation of the Amherst object. Professor Edward Hitchcock went to live in Amherst. He says that years later, another object like the one said to have fallen in 1819 had been found at nearly the same place Professor Hitchcock was invited by Professor Graves to examine it. Exactly like the first one, corresponded in size and color and consistency, the chemical reactions were the same. Professor Hitchcock recognized it in a moment. It was a gelatinous fungus. He did not satisfy himself as to just the exact species it belonged to, but he predicted that similar fungi might spring up within 24 hours. But before evening, two others sprang up. Or we have arrived at one of the oldest of the Exclusionists' Conventions, or Nostoc. We shall have many data of gelatinous substance said to have fallen from the sky. Almost always the Exclusionists argue that it was only Nostoc and algae, or in some respects a fungus growth. The rival convention is spawn of frogs or fishes. These two conventions have made a strong combination. In instances where testimony was not convincing that gelatinous matter had been seen to fall, it was said that the gelatinous substance was Nostoc and had been on the ground in the first place. When the testimony was too good that it had fallen, it was said to be spawn that had been carried from one place to another in a whirlwind. Now I can't say that Nostoc is always greenish. Any more than I can say that Blackbirds are always black having seen a white one. We shall quote a scientist who knew a flesh-colored Nostoc when, so to know, was convenient. When we come to reported falls of gelatinous substances, I'd like it to be noticed how often they are described as whitish or grayish. In looking up the subject myself, I read only of greenish Nostoc. Said to be greenish in Webster's dictionary. Said to be blue-green in the new international encyclopedia. From bright green to olive green, Science Gossip 10114. Green, Science Gossip 7-260. Greenish, notes and queries 111-219. It would seem acceptable that, if many reports of white birds should occur, the birds are not Blackbirds, even though there have been white Blackbirds. Or that, if often reported, grayish or whitish gelatinous substance is not Nostoc and is not spawn if occurring in times unseasonable for spawn. The Kentucky Phenomenon So it was called in its day, and now we have an occurrence that attracted a great deal of attention in its own time. Usually, these things of the accursed have been hushed up or disregarded, suppressed like the seven black rains of slains, but upon March 3rd, 1876 something occurred in Bath County, Kentucky that brought many newspaper correspondence to the scene. The substance that looked like beef that fell from the sky. Upon March 3rd, 1876, at Olympian Springs, Bath County, Kentucky, flakes of a substance that looked like beef fell from the sky, from a clear sky. We'd like to emphasize that it was said that nothing but this falling substance was visible in the sky. It fell in flakes of various sizes, some two inches square, one, three, or four inches square. The flake formation is interesting. Later, we shall think of it as signifying pressure, somewhere. It was a thick shower on the ground, on trees, on fences, but it was narrowly localized, or upon a strip of land, about a hundred yards long, and about fifty yards wide. For the first account, see the Scientific American, 34197, and the New York Times, March 10th, 1876. Then the Exclusionists. Something that looked like beef, one flake of it, the size of a square envelope. If we think of how hard the exclusionists have fought to reject the coming of ordinary looking dust from this earth's externality, we can sympathize with them in this sensational instance, perhaps. Newspaper correspondents wrote broadcast and witnesses were quoted, and this time there is no mention of a hoax, and except by one scientist, there is no denial that the fall did take place. It seems to me that the Exclusionists are still more emphatically conservators. It is not so much that they are inimical to all data of externally derived substances that fall upon this earth, as that they are inimical to all data discordant with a system that does not include such phenomena, or the spirit or hope or ambition of the cosmos which we call attempted positivism not to find out the new, not to add to what is called knowledge, but to systematize. Scientific American supplement 2, 426, that the substance reported from Kentucky had been examined by Leopold Brandius. At last we have a proper explanation of this much talked about phenomenon. It has been comparatively easy to identify the substance and to fix its status, the Kentucky wonder is no more or less than Nostark, or that it had not fallen, that it had been upon the ground in the first place, and had swollen in rain, and attracting attention by greatly increased volume, had been supposed by unscientific observers to have fallen in rain. What rain I don't know. Also, it is spoken of as dried several times, that's one of the most important of the details. But the relief of outraged propriety, expressed in the supplement, is amusing to some of us, who I fear may be a little improper at times. Very spirit of the Salvation Army, when some third-rate scientist comes out with an explanation of the Vermiformathendics, or the Oscossics, that would have been acceptable to Moses, to give completeness to the proper explanation, it is said that Mr. Brandius had identified the substance as flesh-colored Nostark. Professor Lawrence Smith of Kentucky, one of the most resolute of the exclusionists, New York Times, March 12, 1876. That, the substance had been examined and analyzed by Professor Smith, according to whom it gave every indication of being the dried spawn of some reptile, doubtless of the frog, or up from one place and down in another, as to dried, that may refer to the condition when Professor Smith received it. In the Scientific American Supplement, 2473, Dr. A. Mead Edwards, President of the Newark Scientific Association, writes that when he saw Mr. Brandius' communication, his feeling was of conviction that propriety had been re-established, or that the problem had been solved, as he expresses it, knowing Mr. Brandius well, he had called upon that upholder of respectability to see the substance that had been identified as Nostark. But he had also called upon Dr. Hamilton, who had a specimen, and Dr. Hamilton had declared it to be lung tissue. Dr. Edwards writes of the substance that it's so completely, or beautifully, if beauty is completeness, been identified as Nostark. It turned out to be lung tissue also. He wrote to other persons who had specimens and identified other specimens as masses of cartilage or muscular fibers. As to whence it came, I have no theory. Nevertheless, he endorses the local explanation, and a bizarre thing it is. A flock of gorged, heavy-weighted buzzards, but far up and invisible in the clear sky. They had disgorged. Professor Fassig lists the substance in his bibliography as Fish Spawn. McCatty, Monthly Weather Review, May 1918, lists it as a jelly-like material, supposed to have been the dried spawn either of fishes or of some batrachian. Or, this is why, against the seemingly insuperable odds against all things new, there can be what is called progress. That nothing is positive in the aspects of homogeneity and unity. If the whole world should seem to combine against you, it is only unreal combination, or intermediateness, to unity and disunity. Every resistance is itself divided into parts, resisting one another. The simplest strategy seems to be, never bother to fight a thing, set its own parts, fighting one another. We are merging away from carnal to gelatinous substance, and here there is an abundance of instances or reports of instances. These data are so improper they are obscene to the science of today, but we shall see that science, before it became so rigorous, was not so prudish. Chladny was not, and Gregg was not. I shall have to accept myself that gelatinous substance has often fallen from the sky. Or that, far up or far away, the whole sky is gelatinous. That meteors tear through and detach fragments, that fragments are brought down by storms, that the twinkling of stars is penetration of light through something that quivers. I think, myself, that it would be absurd to say that the whole sky is gelatinous. It seems more acceptable that only certain areas are. Humboldt Cosmos 1-119 says that all our data in this respect must be classed among the mystical fables of mythology. He is very sure, but just a little redundant. We shall be opposed by the standard resistances. There in the first place, up from one place, in a whirlwind, and down in another. We shall not bother to be very convincing one way or the other because of the overshadowing of the datum, with which we shall end up. It will mean that something had been in a stationary position for several days over a small part of a small town in England. This is the revolutionary thing that we have alluded to before, whether the substance were Nostok or Spawn or some kind of a larval nexus doesn't matter so much. If it stood in the sky for several days, we rank with Moses as a chronicler of improprieties. Or was that story, or datum, we mean, told by Moses? Then we shall have so many records of gelatinous substance said to have fallen with meteorites, that between the two phenomena, some of us will have, 47 out of 48, to accept connection. Or that there were at least vast gelatinous areas aloft, and that meteorites tear through, carrying down some of the substance. Contrandu, 3,554, that, in 1836, Monsieur Vaillot, member of the French Academy, placed before the Academy some fragments of a gelatinous substance said to have fallen from the sky, and asked that they be analyzed. There is no further allusion to the subject. Contrandu, 23,542, that, in Wilna, Lithuania, April 4th, 1846, in a rainstorm, fell nut-sized masses of a substance that is described as both resinous and gelatinous. It was odorless until burned. Then it spread a very pronounced, sweetish odor. It is described as like gelatin, but much firmer. But, having been in water 24 hours, it swelled out, and looked altogether gelatinous. It was grayish. We are told that in 1841 and 1846, a similar substance had fallen in Asia Minor. In notes and queries, 8, 6, 190, it is said that, early in August 1894, thousands of jellyfish, about the size of a shilling, had fallen at Bath, England. I think it is not acceptable that they were jellyfish, but it does look as if this time, frog spawn did fall from the sky, and may have been translated by a whirlwind, because, about the same time, small frogs fell at Wigan, England. Nature, 87, 10, that, June 24th, 1911, at Eaton, Bucks, England, the ground was found covered with masses of jelly, the size of peas, after a heavy rainfall. We are not told of Nostoc this time. It is said that the object contained numerous eggs of some species of Chironomus, from which larvae soon emerged. I inclined then to think that the objects that fell at Bath were neither jellyfish nor masses of frog spawn, but something of a larval kind. This is what had occurred at Bath, England, 23 years before. London Times, April 24th, 1871, that, upon the 22nd of April, 1871, a storm of glutinous drops, neither jellyfish nor masses of frog spawn, but something of a railroad station at Bath. Many of them soon developed into a worm-like chrysalis about an inch in length. The account of this occurrence in the zoologist 262686 is more like the Eaton datum of 48 or 49 minute forms, said to have been infusoria, not forms about an inch in length. Transent Society of London, 1871, 22. That the phenomenon has been investigated by the Reverend L. Genus of Bath. His description is of minute worms in filmy envelopes. He tries to account for their segregation. The mystery of it is, what could have brought so many of them together? Many other falls we shall record of, and in most of them segregation, is the great mystery. A whirlwind seems anything but a segregated force. Segregation of things that have fallen from the sky has been avoided, as most deep died of the damned. Mr. Genens conceives of a large pool, in which were many of these spherical masses of the pool drying up and concentrating all in a small area of a whirlwind, then scooping them all up together. But several days before, more of these objects fell in the place. That such marksmanship is not attributable to whirlwinds seems to me to be what we think we mean by common sense. It may not look like common sense to say that these things had been stationary over the town of Bath several days. The seven black rains of slains. The four red rains of Sienna. An interesting sidelight on the mechanics of orthodoxy is that Mr. Genens dutifully records the second fall, but ignores it in his explanation. R. P. Gregg, one of the most notable catalogers of meteoric phenomena, records, Philosophy Magazine 48463 falls a viscid substance in the years 1652, 1686, 1718, 1796, 1811, 1819, 1844. He gives earlier dates, but I practice exclusions myself. In the report of the British Association 1860-63, Gregg records a meteor that seemed to pass near the ground between Barsdorf and Freberg, Germany. The next day, a jelly-like mass was found in the snow. Unreasonableness for either spawn or nostok. Gregg's comment in this instance is curious, if true, but he records without modification the fall of a meteorite at Gotha, Germany, September 6, 1835, leaving a jelly-like mass on the ground. We are told that this substance fell only three feet away from an observer. In the report of the British Association 1855-94, according to a letter from Gregg to Professor Baden-Powell at night, October 8, 1844, near Koblenz, a German who was known to Gregg and another person saw a luminous body fall close to them. They returned the next morning and found a gelatinous mass of grayish color. According to Chladney's account, Annals of Philosophy NS 1294, a viscous mass fell with a luminous meteorite between Siena and Rome, May 1652, viscous matter found after the fall of a fireball in Lusatia, March 1796, fall of a gelatinous substance after the explosion of a meteorite near Heidelberg, July 1811. In the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal 1234, the substance that fell at Lusatia is said to have been the color and odor of dried brown varnish. In the American Journal of Science 126-133, it is said that gelatinous matter fell with a globe of fire upon the island of Lethy, India, 1718. In the American Journal of Science 125-396, in many observations upon the meteors of November 1833 are reports of falls of gelatinous substance. That, according to newspaper reports, lumps of jelly were found on the ground at Raleway, New Jersey, the substance was whitish or resembled the coagulated white of an egg. That, Mr. H. H. Garland of Nelson County, Virginia had found a jelly-like substance of about the circumference of a twenty-five cent piece. That, according to a communication from A. C. Twining to Professor Olmstead, a woman at West Point, New York had seen a mass the size of a teacup. It looked like boiled starch. That, according to a newspaper of Newark, New Jersey, a mass of gelatinous substance like soft soap had been found. It possessed little elasticity and, on the application of heat, evaporated as readily as water. It seems incredible that a scientist would have such a hardyhood or infidelity as to accept that these things had fallen from the sky. Nevertheless, Professor Olmstead, who collected these lost souls, says, The fact that the supposed deposits were so uniformly described as gelatinous substance forms a presumption in favor of the supposition that they had the origin ascribed to them. In contemporaneous scientific publications considerable attention was given to Professor Olmstead's series of papers upon the subject of the November meteors. You will not find one mention of the part that treats of gelatinous matter. And of recording, this recording is in the public domain. Chapter 5 I shall attempt not much of correlation of dates. A mathematic-minded positivist with his delusion that in an intermediate state twice to our fore, whereas if we accept continuity, we cannot accept that there are anywhere two things to start with would search our data for periodicities. It is so obvious to me that the mathematic or the regular is the attribute of the universal that I have not much inclination to look for it in the local. Still, in this solar system as a whole, there is considerable approximation to regularity, or the mathematic is so nearly localized that eclipses, for instance, can with rather high approximation be foretold, though I have notes that would deflate a little the astronomer's vain glory in this respect, or would if that were possible. An astronomer is poorly paid, uncheered by crowds, considerably isolated. He lives upon his own inflations, deflate a bear, and it couldn't hibernate. This solar system is like every other phenomenon that can be regarded as a whole, or the affairs of a ward are interfered with by the affairs of the city of which it is a part, city by county, county by state, state by nation, nation by other nations, all nations by climatic conditions, climatic conditions by solar circumstances, sun by general planetary circumstances, solar system as a whole by other solar systems, so the hopelessness of finding the phenomena of entirety in the ward of a city. But positivists are those who try to find the unrelated in the ward of a city. In our acceptance, this is the spirit of cosmic religion. Objectively, the state is not realisable in the ward of a city. But if a positivist could bring himself to absolute belief that he had found it, that would be a subjective realisation of that which is unrealisable objectively. Of course, we do not draw a positive line between the objective and the subjective, or that all phenomena called things or persons are subjective within one all-inclusive nexus, and that thoughts within those that are commonly called persons are subsubjective. It is rather as if intermediateness drove for regularity in this solar system and failed, then generated the mentality of astronomers, and in that secondary expression strove for conviction that failure had been success. I have tabulated all the data of this book, and a great deal besides card system, and several proximities, thus emphasised, have been revelations to me. Nevertheless, it is only the method of theologians and scientists, worst of all, of statisticians. For instance, by the statistic method, I could prove that a black rain has fallen regularly every seven months, somewhere upon this earth. To do this, I'd have to include red rains and yellow rains, but conventionally, I'd pick out the black particles in red substances and in yellow substances, and disregard the rest. Then too, if here and there a black rain should be a week early, or a month late, there would be acceleration, or retardation. This is supposed to be legitimate in working out the periodicities of comets. If black rains, or red or yellow rains with black particles in them, should not appear at all near some dates, we have not read Darwin in vain, the records are not complete. As to other, interfering black rains, they'd be either gray or brown, or for them we'd find other periodicities. Still, I have had to notice the year 1819, for instance. I shall not note them all in this book, but I have records of 31 extraordinary events in 1883. Someone should write a book upon the phenomena of this one year, that is, if books should be written. 1849 is notable for extraordinary falls, so far apart that a local explanation seems inadequate. Not only the black rain of Ireland may 1849, but a red rain in Sicily, and a red rain in Wales. Also it is said, Tim's yearbook 1850, 241, that upon April 18th or 20th 1849, Shepherds near Mount Ararat found a substance that was not indigenous upon areas measuring 8 to 10 miles in circumference. Presumably it had fallen there. We have already gone into the subject of science and its attempted positiveness, and its resistances in that it must have relations of service. It is very easy to see that most of the theoretic science of the 19th century was only a relation of reaction against theologic dogma, and has no more to do with truth than has a wave that bounds back from ashore. Or, if a shop girl, or you or I, should pull out a piece of chewing gum about a yard long, that would be quite a scientific a performance, as was the stretching of this earth's age several hundred millions of years. All things are not things, but only relations, or expressions of relations. But all relations are striving to be the unrelated, or have surrendered to, and subordinated to, higher attempts. So there is a positivist aspect to this reaction that is itself only a relation, and that is the attempt to assimilate all phenomena under the materialist explanation, or to formulate a final, all-inclusive system upon the materialist basis. If this attempt could be realised, that would be the attaining of realness. But this attempt can be made only by disregarding psychic phenomena, for instance. Or if science shall eventually give in to the psychic, it would be no more legitimate to explain the immaterial in terms of the material than to explain the material in terms of the immaterial. Our own acceptance is that material and immaterial are of a oneness, merging, for instance, in a thought that is continuous with a physical action, that oneness cannot be explained, because the process of explaining is the interpreting of something in terms of something else. All explanation is a simulation of something in terms of something else that has been taken as a basis. But in continuity, there is nothing that is any more basic than anything else, unless we think that delusion built upon delusion is less real than its pseudo-foundation. In 1829, Tim's yearbook 1848, 235, in Persia fell a substance that the people said they had never seen before. As to what it was, they had not a notion, but they saw that the sheep ate it. They ground it into flour and made bread, said to have been passable enough, though insipid. That was a chance that science did not neglect. Manor was placed upon a reasonable basis, or was assimilated and reconciled with the system that had ousted the older, and less nearly real, system. It was said that, likely enough, Manor had fallen in ancient times, because it was still falling, but that there was no tutelary influence behind it, that it was a lichen from the steppes of Asia Minor, from one place in a whirlwind, and down in another place. In the American Ormanac, 1833, 71, it is said that this substance, to the inhabitants of the region, was immediately recognised by scientists who examined it, and that their chemical analysis also identified it as a lichen. This was back in the days when chemical analysis was a god. Since then, its devotees had been shocked and disillusioned. Just how a chemical analysis could so botanise, I don't know. But it was chemical analysis who spoke, and spoke dogmatically. It seems to me that the ignorance of inhabitants, contrasting with the local knowledge of foreign scientists, is overdone. If there's anything good to eat, within any distance conveniently covered by a whirlwind, inhabitants know it. I have data of other forms, in Persia, and Asiatic Turkey, of edible substances. They are all dogmatically said to be Manor, and Manor is dogmatically said to be a species of lichens from the steppes of Asia Minor. The position that I take is that this explanation was evolved in ignorance of the fall of vegetable substances, or edible substances, in other parts of the world. That it is the familiar attempt to explain the general in terms of the local. That, if we shall have data of falls of vegetable substances in, say, Canada or India, they were not of lichens from the steppes of Asia Minor. That, though all falls in Asiatic Turkey and Persia are sweepingly and conveniently called showers of Manor, they have not been even all of the same substance. In one instance, the particles are said to have been seeds. Though, in Comte Rondeau, the substance that fell in 1841 and 1846 is said to have been gelatinous, in the Balsai Nat de Noctel it is said to have been of something, in lumps the size of a filbert, that had been ground into flour. That of this flour had been made bread, very attractive looking, but flavourless. The great difficulty is to explain segregation in these showers. But deep sea fishes and occasional falls down to them of edible substances, bags of grain, barrels of sugar, things that had not been whirled up from one part of the ocean bottom, in storms or submarine disturbances, and dropped somewhere else. I suppose one thinks, but green in bags never has fallen. Object of Amherst, it's covering like milled cloth. Or barrels of corn, lost from a vessel, would not sink. But a host of them clashing together after a wreck, they burst open, the corn sinks or does when saturated, the barrel staves float longer. If there be not an overhead traffic in commodities similar to our own commodities carried over this earth's oceans, I'm not the deep sea fish I think I am. I have no data other than the mere suggestion of the Amherst object of bags or barrels, but my notion is that bags and barrels from a wreck on one of this earth's oceans, would, by the time they reach the bottom, no longer be recognisable as bags or barrels, that if we can have data of the fall of vibrous material that may have been cloth or paper or wood, we shall be satisfactory and grotesque enough. Procloi, Irish Accad, 1 at 379. In the year 1686, some workmen who had been fetching water from a pond, 7 German miles from Memmel, on returning to their work after dinner, during which there had been a snowstorm, found the flat ground around the pond covered with a cold black leafy mass, and a person who lived near said he had seen it fall like flakes with the snow. Some of these flake-like formations were as large as a tabletop. The mass was damp and smelled disagreeably, like rotten seaweed, but when dried the smell went off. It tore fibrously, like paper. Classic explanation, up from one place and down in another, but what went up from one place in a whirlwind? Of course our intermediatist acceptance is that had this been the strangest substance conceivable from the strangest other world that could be thought of. Somewhere upon this earth there must be a substance similar to it, or from which it would at least subjectively, or according to description, not be easily distinguishable. Or that everything in New York City is only another degree or aspect of something, or combination of things, in a village of Central Africa. The novel is a challenge to vulgarization. Write something that looks new to you. Someone will point out that the twice-accursed Greeks said it longer ago. Existence is appetite, the gnaw of being, the one attempt of all things to assimilate all other things if they have not surrendered and submitted to some higher attempt. It was cosmic that these scientists who had surrendered to and submitted to the scientific system should, consistently with the principles of that system, attempt to assimilate the substance that fell at Memmel with some known terrestrial product. At the meeting of the Royal Irish Academy, it was brought out that there is a substance of rather rare occurrence that has been known to form in thin sheets upon marsh land. It looks like greenish felt. The substance of Memmel, damp, called black, leafy mass. But if broken up, the marsh substance is flake-like and it tears vibrously. An elephant can be identified as a sunflower. Both have long stems. A camel is indistinguishable from a peanut, if only the humps be considered. Trouble with this book is that we'll end up a lot of intellectual ways. We'll be incapable of being astonished with anything. We knew to start with that science and imbecility are continuous. Nevertheless, so many expressions of the merging point are at first startling. We did think that Professor Hitchcock's performance in identifying the Amherst phenomenon as a fungus was rather notable as scientific Forderville, if we acquit him of the charge of seriousness, or that in a place where fungi were so common that, before a given evening, two of them sprang up. Only he, a stranger in this very fungiferous place, knew a fungus when he saw something like a fungus, if we disregard its quick liquid faction, for instance. It was only a monologue, however. Now we have an all-star cast, and they're not only Irish, they're royal Irish. The royal Irishmen excluded called blackness, and included fibrousness, so then that this substance was marsh paper, which had been raised into the air by storms of wind, and had again fallen. Second Act. It was said that according to Monsieur Ehrenberg, the meteor paper was found to consist partly of vegetable matter, chiefly of conififi. Third Act. Meeting of the royal Irishmen. Chairs, tables, Irishmen. Some flakes of marsh paper were exhibited. Their composition was chiefly of conififi. This was a double inclusion, or it's the method of agreement that logicians make so much of. So no logician would be satisfied with identifying a peanut as a camel because both have humps. He demands accessory agreement, that both can live a long time without water, for instance. Now it's not so very unreasonable, at least to the free and easy Vorderville standards that throughout this book we are considering, to think that a green substance could be snatched up from one place in a whirlwind, and fall as a black substance somewhere else. But the royal Irishmen excluded something else, and it is a datum that was as accessible to them as it is to me. That according to Schlagney, this was no little local deposition that was seen to occur by some indefinite person living near a pond somewhere. It was a tremendous fall from a vast sky area. Likely enough all the marsh paper in the world could not have supplied it. At the same time this substance was falling in great quantities in Norway and Pomerania, or see Kirkwood Meteoric Astronomy page 66, substance like charred paper fell in Norway and other parts of northern Europe January 31st 1686. Or a whirlwind, with a distribution as wide as that, would not acceptably, I should say, have so specialised in the rare substance called marsh paper. There had been falls of fence rails, roofs of houses, parts of trees. Nothing is said of the occurrence of a tornado in northern Europe in January 1686. There is record only of this one substance having fallen in various places. Time went on, but the conventional determination to exclude data of all falls to this earth, except of substances of this earth, and of ordinary meteoric matter, strengthened. Annals of Philosophy 1668 The substance that fell in January 1686 is described as a mass of black leaves, having the appearance of burnt paper, but harder and cohering and brittle. Marsh paper is not mentioned, and there is nothing said of the knifvi, which seems so convincing to the royal Irishman. Vegetable composition is disregarded, quite as it might be, by someone who might find it convenient to identify a crook-necked squash as a big fishhawk. Meteorites are usually covered with a black crust, more or less scare-like. The substance of 1686 is black and scare-like. If so be convenient, leaf likeness is scare likeness. In this attempt to assimilate with the conventional, we are told that the substance is a mineral mass, that it is like the black scales that cover meteorites. The scientist who made this identification was von Grothus. He had appealed to the god Chemical Analysis, or the parent glory of mankind, with which we are not always so impressed, but the gods must tell us what we want them to tell us. We see again that, though nothing has identity of its own, anything can be identified as anything, or there is nothing that is not reasonable if one snoopeth not into its exclusions. But here the conflict did not end. Basilius examined the substance. He could not find nickel in it. At that time the presence of nickel was the positive test of meteoritic matter, whereupon with a superstitious positive standard of judgment against him, von Grothus revoked his identification. Annals and Mag of Nathist, 13185. This equalization of eminences permits us to project with our own expression, which otherwise would be subdued into invisibility. That it's too bad that no one ever looked to see, how regliphics, something written upon these sheets of paper. If we have no very great variety of substances that have fallen to this earth, if upon this earth's surface there is infinite variety of substances detachable by whirlwinds, two falls of such rare substance as marsh paper would be remarkable. A writer in the Edinburgh Review, 87194, says that at the time of writing he had before him a portion of a sheet of 200 square feet of a substance that had fallen in Caroluth, Silesia in 1839, exactly similar to cotton felt, of which clothing might have been made. The God microscopic examination had spoken, the substance consisted chiefly of conifervae. Jur Asiatic Sock of Bengal, 1847, Part 1, 193. That March 16th, 1846, about the time of a fall of edible substance in Asia Minor, an olive grey powder fell at Shanghai. Under the microscope it was seen to be an aggregation of hairs of two kinds, black ones and rather thick white ones. They were supposed to be mineral fibres, but when burned they gave out the common ammoniacal smell and smoke of burnt hair or feathers. The writer described the phenomenon as a cloud of 3,800 square miles of fibres, alkali and sand. In a post script he says that other investigators, with more powerful microscopes, gave opinion that the fibres were not hairs, that the substance consisted chiefly of conifervae, or the pathos of it perhaps, or the dull and uninspired but courageous persistence of the scientific. Everything seemingly found out is doomed to be subverted by more powerful microscopes and telescopes, by more refined, precise searching means and methods, the new pronouncements irrepressibly bobbing up, their reception always as truth at last, always the illusion of the final, very little of the intermediateist spirit, that the new that has displaced the old will itself someday be displaced, that it too will be recognised as misstuff, but that if phantoms climb, spooks of ladders are good enough for them. Annual register 1821 681, that according to a report by Monsieur Léonet, French consul at Pernambuco, early in October 1821, there was a shower of a substance resembling silk. The quantity was as tremendous as might be a whole cargo, lost somewhere between Jupiter and Mars, having drifted around perhaps for centuries, the original fabric slowly disintegrating. In Anal de Chamy, 215 427, it is said that samples of this substance were sent to France by Monsieur Léonet, and that they proved to have some resemblances to silky filaments which at certain times of the year are carried by the wind near Paris. In the annals of philosophy, NS 1293, there is mention of a fibrous substance like blue silk that fell near Nuremberg, March 23 1665. According to Schladney, Anal de Chamy, 231 264, the quantity was great. He places a question mark before the date. One of the advantages of intermediateism is that in the oneness of quiesiness, there can be no mixed metaphors. Whatever is acceptable of anything is, in some degree or aspect, acceptable of everything. So it is quite proper to speak, for instance, of something that is as firm as a rock, and that sails in a majestic march. The Irish are good monists, they have of course been laughed at for their quina perceptions. So it's a book we're writing, or it's a procession, or it's a museum, with a chamber of horrors rather overemphasized. A rather horrible correlation occurs in the Scientific American 1859-178. What interests us is that a correspondence or a silky substance fall from the sky. There was an aura borealis at the time. He attributes the substance to the aurora. Since the time of Darwin, the classic explanation has been that all silky substances that fall from the sky are spiderwebs. In 1832, aboard the Beagle at the mouth of La Plata River, 60 miles from land, Darwin saw an enormous number of spiders, of the kind usually known as Gossamer spiders, little aeronauts that cast out filaments by which the wind carries them. It's difficult to express that silky substances that have fallen to this earth were not spiderwebs. My own acceptance is that spiderwebs are the merger, that they have been falls of an externally derived silky substance, and also of the webs or strands, rather of aeronautic spiders indigenous to this earth. That in some instances it is impossible to distinguish one from the other. Of course, our expression upon silky substances will merge away into expressions upon other seeming textile substances, and I don't know how much better off we'll be, except that if fabricable materials have fallen from the sky. Simply to establish acceptance of that may be doing well enough in this book of first and tentative explorations. In all the year round, 8254, it's described a fall that took place in England's September 21st, 1741, in the towns of Bradley, Selbourne and Allsford, and in a triangular space included by these three towns. The substance is described as cobwebs, but it fell in flick formation, or in flicks or rags about one inch broad and five or six inches long. Also these flakes were of a relatively heavy substance. They fell with some velocity. The quantity was great. The shortest side of the triangular space is eight miles long. In the Wernherian Nathist sock trans 5386 it is said that there were two falls, that there were some errors apart, a datum that is becoming familiar to us, a datum that cannot be taken into the fold unless we find it repeated over and over and over again. It is said that the second fall lasted from nine o'clock in the morning until night. Now the hypnosis of the classic, that what we call intelligence is only an expression of an equilibrium, that when mental adjustments are made, intelligence ceases, or of course that intelligence is the confession of ignorance. If you have intelligence upon any subject, that is something you're still learning. If we agree that that which is learned is always mechanically done. In quasi terms, of course, because nothing is ever finally learned. It was decided that this substance was spider's webs. That was adjustment. But it's not adjustment to me. So I'm afraid I shall have some intelligence in this matter. If I ever arrive at adjustment upon this subject, then upon this subject, I shall be able to have no thoughts except routine thoughts. I haven't yet quite decided absolutely everything. So I am able to point out that this substance was of quantity so enormous that it attracted wide attention when it came down. That it would have been equally noteworthy when it went up. That there is no record of anyone in England or elsewhere having seen tons of spider webs going up September 1741. Further confession of intelligence upon my part. That if it be contested then, that the place of origin may have been far away, but still terrestrial, then it's that other familiar matter of incredible marksmanship again, hitting a small triangular space for hours, interval of hours, then from nine in the morning until night, same small triangular space. These are the disregards of the classic explanation. There is no mention of spiders having been seen to fall, but a good inclusion is that, though this substance fell in good sized flakes of considerable weight, it was viscous. In this respect it was like cobwebs. Dogs nosing it on grass were blindfolded with it. This circumstance does strongly suggest cobwebs. Unless we can accept that in regions aloft there are vast viscous or gelatinous areas, and that things passing through become daubed. Or perhaps we clear up the confusion in the descriptions of the substance that fell in 1841 and 1846 in Asia Minor, described in one publication as gelatinous, and in another as a cereal, that it was a cereal that had passed through a gelatinous region. That the paper-like substance of memel may have had such an experience, may be indicated in that Ehrenberg found in it gelatinous matter, which he called nostok, annals and mag of Nathist 13185, scientific American 45337. Fall of a substance described as cobwebs, latter part of October 1881, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and other towns. Other towns mentioned are Green Bay, Vesburg, Fort Howard, Sheboygan and Ozorkey. The erinotic spiders are known as gossamer spiders because of the extreme likeness of the filaments that they cast out to the wind. Of the substance that fell in Wisconsin it is said, in all instances the webs were strong in texture and very white. The editor says, curiously enough there is no mention in any of the reports that we have seen of the presence of spiders. So our attempt to divorce a possible external product from its terrestrial merger, then our joy of the prospector who thinks he's found something. The monthly weather review 26566 quotes the Montgomery Aller advertiser, that upon November 21st 1898 numerous batches of spider web-like substance fell in Montgomery in strands at an occasional masses several inches long and several inches broad. According to the writer it was not spider's web but something like asbestos, also that it was phosphorescent. The editor of the review says that he sees no reason for doubting that these masses were cobwebs. La nature 1883 342, a correspondent writes that he sends a sub-lover substance said to have fallen at Montoussaint, Chiron, October 16th 1883. According to a witness quoted by the correspondent a thick cloud accompanied by rain and a violent wind had appeared. This cloud was composed of a woolly substance in lumps the size of a fist which fell to the ground. The editor, Tissantier, says of this substance that it was white but was something that had been burned. It was fibrous. Monsieur Tissantier astonishes us by saying that he cannot identify this substance. We thought that anything could be identified as anything. He can say only that the cloud in question must have been an extraordinary conglomeration. Annual register 1832 447. That, March 1832, there fell in the fields of Kurianov, Russia, a combustible yellowish substance covering at least two inches thick an area of 600 or 700 square feet. It was resonance and yellowish so one inclines to the conventional explanation that it was pollen from pine trees. But when torn it had the tenacity of cotton. When placed in water it had the consistency of resin. This resin had the color of amber was elastic like into a rubber and smelled like prepared oil mixed with wax. So in general our notion of cargoes and our notion of cargoes of food supplies In philosophical transactions 19224 is an extract from a letter by Mr Robert Vance of Kilkenny Ireland dated November 15 1695 that there had been of late in the counties of Limerick and Tipperary shares of a sort of matter like butter or grease having a very stinking smell. There follows an extract from a letter by the Bishop of Kloyne upon a very odd phenomenon which was observed in Munster and Leinster that for a good part of the spring of 1695 there fell a substance which the country people called butter soft clammy and of a dark yellow that cattle fed indifferently in fields where this substance lay. It fell in lumps as big as the end of one's finger. It had a strong ill scent. His grace calls it a stinking dew. In Mr Vance's letter it is said that the butter was supposed to have medicinal properties and was gathered in pots and other vessels by some of the inhabitants of this place. And in all the following volumes of philosophical transactions there is no speculation upon this extraordinary subject, ostracism. The fate of this datum is a good instance of damnation not by denial and not by explaining away but by simple disregard. The fall is listed by Shladny and is mentioned in other catalogs but from the absence of all inquiry and of all but formal mention we see that it has been under excommunication as much as was ever anything by the preceding system. The datum has been buried alive. It is as irreconcilable with the modern system of dogmas as ever were geologic strata and vermouth form appendix with the preceding system. If intermittently or for a good part of the spring this substance fell in two Irish provinces and nowhere else we have stronger than before a sense of a stationary region overhead or a region that receives products like this earth's products but from external sources. A region in which this earth's gravitational and meteorological forces are relatively inert if for many weeks a good part of this substance did hover before finally falling. We suppose that in 1685 Mr Vance and the Bishop of Cloyne could describe what they saw as well as could witnesses in 1885. Nevertheless it is going far back we shall have to have many modern instances before we can accept. As to other falls or another fall it is said in the Amir Jersai 128-361 that April 11th 1832 about a month after the fall of the substance of Coryanoff fell a substance that was wine yellow transparent soft and smelling like rancid oil. Monsieur Hermann, a chemist who examined it, named it sky oil. For analysis and chemical reactions see the journal the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 13368 mentions an unctuous substance that fell near Rotterdam in 1832. In Compte Rondeau 13215 there is an account of an oily reddish matter that fell at Genoa February 1841. Whatever it may have been altogether most of our difficulties are problems that we should leave to later developers of super geography I think. A discovery of America should leave Long Island to someone else. If there be plank back and forth from Jupiter and Mars and Venus super constructions that are sometimes wrecked we think of fuel as well as cargoes. Of course the most convincing data would be of coal falling from the sky. Nevertheless one does suspect that oil burning engines were discovered ages ago in more advanced worlds but as I say we should leave something to our disciples so we'll not especially wonder whether these butterlike or oily substances were food or fuel. So we merely note that in this scientific American 24 323 is an account of hail that fell in the middle of April 1871 in Mississippi in which was a substance described as turpentine. Something that tasted like orange water in hailstones about the first of June 1842 near Nîmes France identified as nitric acid to farm in sea 1845 to 173. Hail and ashes in Ireland 1755. Psy-Amer 5168. That at Elizabeth NJ June 9th 1874 fell hail in which was a substance said by Professor Leeds of Stevens Institute to be carbonate of soda. Psy-Amer 3262. We are getting a little away from the lines of our composition but it will be an important point later that so many extraordinary falls have occurred with hail or if they were of substances that had had origin upon some other part of this earth's surface had the hail too that origin. Our acceptance here will depend upon the number of instances. Recently enough some of the things that fall to this earth should coincide with falls of hail. As to vegetable substances in quantities so great as to suggest lost cargos we have a note in the Intellectual Observer 3468 that upon the first of May 1863 a rain fell out perpendicular bringing down with it a red substance which proved on examination to be a red meal mixed with fine sand. At various points along the Mediterranean this substance fell. There is in Philosophical Transactions 16281 an account of a seeming cereal said to have fallen in Wiltshire in 1686 said that some of the wheat fell enclosed in hailstones but the writer in Transactions says that he had examined the grains and that they were nothing but seeds of ivy berries dislodged from holes and chinks where birds had hidden them. If birds still hide ivy seeds and if winds still blow I don't see why the phenomenon has not repeated in more than 200 years since. Or the red matter in rain at Siena Italy May 1830 said by Arago to have been vegetable matter Arago over 12468. Somebody should collect data of falls at Siena alone. In the monthly weather review 29465 a correspondent writes that upon February 16th 1901 at Porpoor, Michigan upon a day that was so calm that his windmill did not run fell a brown dust that looked like vegetable matter. The editor of the review concludes that this was no widespread fall from a tornado because it had been reported from nowhere else. Rancidness, putridity, decomposition, a note that has been struck many times. In a positive sense of course nothing means anything or every meaning is continuous with all other meanings or that all evidences of guilt for instance are just as good evidences of innocence. But this condition seems to mean things lying around among the stars a long time. Horrible disaster in the time of Julius Caesar remains from it not reaching this earth till the time of the Bishop of Cloyne. We leave to later research the discussion of bacterial action and decomposition and whether bacteria could survive in what we call space of which we know nothing. Chemical news 35183. Dr. A. T. Machete, F. C. S. writes that at London, Ontario February 24th 1868 in a violent storm fell with snow a dark coloured substance estimated at 500 tons over a belt 50 miles by 10 miles. It was examined under a microscope by Dr. Machete who found it to consist mainly of vegetable matter far advanced in decomposition. The substance was examined by Dr. James Adams of Glasgow who gave his opinion that it was the remains of cereals. Dr. Machete points out that for months before this fall the ground of Canada had been frozen so that in this case a more than ordinarily remote origin has to be thought of. Dr. Machete thinks of origin to the south however he says this is mere conjecture. A major sigh 1841 40 that March 24th 1840 during a thunderstorm at Rajkid India occurred a fall of grain. It was reported by Colonel Sykes of the British Association. The natives were greatly excited because it was grain of a kind unknown to them. Usually comes forward a scientist who knows more of the things that natives know best than the natives know but it so happens that the usual thing was not done definitely in this instance. The grain was shown to some botanists who did not immediately recognise it but thought it to be either a spartium or a vicar. End of chapter five. Chapter six of the book of the damned. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by J. C. Iguan. The book of the damned by Charles Fort. Chapter six. Lead. Silver. Diamonds. Glass. They sound like the occursed. But they're not. They're now of the chosen. That is when they occur in metallic or stony masses that science has recognised as meteorites. We find that resistance is to substances not so mixed in or incorporated. Of a cursed data it seems to me that punk is pretty damnable. In the report of the British Association 1876-376 there is a mention of a light chocolate brown substance that has fallen with meteorites. No particulars given. Not another mention anywhere else that I can find. In this English publication the word punk is not used. The substance is called amadu. I suppose if the datum has anywhere been invented to French publications the word amadu has been avoided and punk used. Or oneness of oneness. Scientific works and social registers. A goldstein who can't get in as goldstein gets in as Jackson. The fall of sulfur from the sky has been especially repulsive to the modern orthodoxy. Largely because of its associations with the superstitions or principles of the preceding orthodoxy. Stories of devils. Sulfurous exhalations. Several writers have said that they have had this feeling. So the scientific reactionists who have rapidly fought the preceding because it was the preceding and the scientific prudes who ensure exclusionism have held lean hands over pale eyes the dying falls of sulfur. I have many notes upon the sulfurous order of meteorites and many notes upon the phosphorescence of things that come from externality. Someday I shall look over old stories of demons that have appeared sulfurously upon this earth with the idea of expressing that we have often had undesirable visitors from other worlds. Or that an indication of external derivation is sulfurousness. I expect someday to rationalize demonology. But just at present we are scarcely far enough advanced to go so far back. For a circumstantial account of a mass of burning sulfur about the size of a man's fist that fell at Poltusk, Poland, January 30, 1868, upon a road where it was stumped out by a crowd of villagers, see Report of the British Association, 1874-272. The power of the exclusionists lie in that, in their stand, are combined both modern and archaic systematists. Folds of sandstone and limestone are repulsive to both theologians and scientists. Sandstone and limestone suggest other worlds upon which occur processes like geological processes. But limestone, as a fossiliferous substance, is of course especially of the unchosen. In Science, March 9, 1888, reread of a block of limestone said to have fallen near Middelburg, Florida. It was exhibited at the subtropical exposition at Jacksonville. The writer, in Science, denies that it fell from the sky. His reasoning is, there is no limestone in the sky. Therefore, this limestone did not fall from the sky. Better reasoning I cannot conceive of, because we see that a final major premise, universal, true, would include all things, that then would leave nothing to reason about. So then that all reasoning must be based upon something not universal, or only a phantom intermediate to the two finalities of nothingness and allness, of negativeness and positiveness. The Nature, 1890-2-127. Fall at Pele-Héder, Loeb, France, June 6, 1890, of limestone pebbles, identified with limestone at Château-Landon, or up and down in a whirlwind. But they fell with hail, which in June could not very well be identified with eyes from Château-Landon, coincidence perhaps. Upon page 70, Science Gossip, 1887, the editor says of a stone that was reported to have fallen at Little Leaver, England, that a sample had been sent to him. It was sandstone. Therefore, it had not fallen, but had been on the ground in the first place. But upon page 140, Science Gossip, 1887, is an account of a large, smooth, water-worn, gritty sandstone pebble, that had been found in the wood of a full-ground beach-tree. Looks to me as if it had fallen red-hot, and had penetrated the tree with high velocity. But I have never heard of anything falling red-hot from a whirlwind. The wood around the sandstone pebble was black, as if charred. Dr. Farrington, for instance, in his books, does not even mention sandstone. However, the British Association, though reluctant, is less exclusive. Report of 1860, page 197, substance about the size of a dog's egg that fell at Raphael, Ireland, June 9, 1860, date questioned. It is not definitely said that this substance was sandstone, but that it resembled friable sandstone. Falls of salt have occurred often. They have been avoided by scientific writers, because of the decton that only water and not substances held in solution can be raised by evaporation. However, falls of salty water have received attention from Dalton and others, and have been attributed to whirlwinds from the sea. This is so reasonably contested, quasi-reasonably, as to places not far from the sea. But the fall of salt that occurred high in the mountains of Switzerland, we could have predicted that that datum could be found somewhere. Let anything be explained in local terms of the coast of England, but also has it occurred high in the mountains of Switzerland. Large crystals of salt fell in a hillstorm August 20, 1870, in Switzerland. The orthodox explanation is a crime, whoever made it should have had his fingerprints taken. We are told, annual record of science, 1872, that these objects of salt, quote, came over the Mediterranean from some part of Africa, end quote. Or the hypnosis of the conventional provided a big lib. One reads such an assertion, and provided it be suave and brief and conventional, one seldom questions or thinks very strange and then forgets. One has an impression from geography lessons. Mediterranean, not more than three inches wide on the map, Switzerland, only a few more inches away. These sizable masses of salt are described in the American Journal of Science, 3-3-239, as quote, essentially imperfect cubic crystals of common salt, end quote. As to occurrence with hill, that can, in one or ten or twenty instances, be called a coincidence. Another datum. Extraordinary year, 1883. London Times, December 25, 1883. Translation, from a Turkish newspaper. A substance that fell at Skutari, December 2, 1883. Described as an unknown substance in particles, or flakes, like snow, quote, it was found to be saltish to the taste, and to dissolve readily in water, end quote. Miscellaneous, quote, black capillary matter, end quote, that fell November 16, 1857, at Charleston. South Carolina, American Journal of Science, 2-31-459. Fall of small, friable, vesicular masses, from the size of a pea, to the size of a walnut, at Lobo, January 18, 1835. Report of the British Association, 1860-85. Objects that fell at Peshawar, India, June, 1893, during a storm. Substance that looked like crystallized niter, and that tasted like sugar. Nature, July 13, 1893. I suppose sometimes deep-sea fishes have their noses bumped by cinders. If their regions be subjacent to conard or wide-star routes, they're especially likely to be bumped. I conceive of no inquiry, their deep-sea fishes, or the slag of slains, that it was a furnace product. The Reverend James Rest seemed to feel bumped. He tried in vain to arouse inquiry. As to a report from Chicago, April 9, 1879, that slag had fallen from the sky, Professor E. S. Bastion, American Journal of Science, 3-18-78, says that the slag, quote, had been on the ground in the first place, end quote. It was furnace slag, quote. A chemical examination of the specimens has shown that they possess none of the characteristics of true media rights, end quote. Over and over and over again, the universal delusion, hope and despair of attempted positivism, that there can be real criteria or distinct characteristics of anything. If anybody can define, not merely suppose, like Professor Bastion, that he can define, the true characteristics of anything, or so localized trueness anywhere, he makes the discovery for which the cosmos is librarying. He will be instantly translated, like Elijah, into the positive absolute. My own notion is that, in a moment of super-concentration, Elijah became so nearly a real prophet that he was translated to heaven, or to the positive absolute, with such velocity that he left an incandescent train behind him. As we go along, we shall find the, quote, true test of meteoritic material, end quote, which in the past has been taken as an absolute, dissolving into almost utmost nebulosity. Professor Bastion explains mechanically, or in terms of the usual reflexes of all reports, of unwelcome substances, that near where the slag had been found, telegraph from wires had been struck by lightning, that particles of melted wire had been seen to fall near the slag, which had been on the ground in the first place. But according to The New York Times, April 14, 1879, about two bushels of this substance had fallen. Something that was said to have fallen at Darmstadt, June 7, 1846, listed by Greg, report of the British Association, 1867-416, as quote, only slag, end quote. Philosophical magazine, 4-10-381. That, in 1855, a large stone was found far in the interior of a tree in battery-sea fields. Sometimes cannonballs are found embedded in trees. Doesn't seem to be anything to discuss. Doesn't seem disposable, that anyone would cut a hole in a tree and hide a cannonball, which one could take to bed, and hide on one's pillow, just as easily. So with the stone of battery-sea fields. What is there to say, except that it fell with high velocity and embedded in the tree? Nevertheless, there was a great deal of discussion. Because, at the foot of the tree, as if broken off the stone, fragments of slag were found. I have nine other instances. Slag, and cinders, and ashes, and you won't believe, and neither will I, that they came from the furnaces of vast aerial super-constructions. We'll see what looks acceptable. As to ashes, the difficulties are great, because we'd expect many falls of terrestrial-derived ashes, volcanoes, and forest fires. In some of our acceptances, I have felt a little radical. I suppose that one of our main motives is to show that there is, in quasi-existence, nothing but a preposterous, or something intermediate to absolute preposterousness and final reasonableness, that the new is the obviously preposterous, that it becomes the established and disguisedly preposterous, that it is displaced after a while and is again seen to be the preposterous, or that all progress is from the outrageous to the academic or sanctified, and back to the outrageous, modified, however, by a trend of higher and higher approximation to the impreposterous. Sometimes I feel a little more uninspired than at other times, but I think we're pretty well accustomed now to the oneness of allness, or that the methods of science in maintaining its system are as outrageous as the attempts of the diamond to break in. In the annual record of science, 1875-241, Professor Dorbray is quoted that ashes that had fallen in the Azores had come from the Chicago fire, or the damned and the saved, and there's little to choose between them, and angels are beings that have not obviously barbed tails to them, or never have such bad manners as to stroke an angel below the waistline. However, this special outrage was challenged. The editor of the record returns to it in the issue of 1876, considers it, quote, in the highest degree improper, to say that the ashes of Chicago were landed in the Azores, end quote, bulletin de la Société d'Astrologie de France, 22-245. Account of a white substance, like ashes, that fell at Annoy, France, March 27, 1908, simply called a curious phenomenon, no attempt to trace to a terrestrial source. Flake formations, which may signify passage through a region of pressure, are common, but spherical formations, as if of things that have rolled and roll along plainer regions somewhere, are commoner. Nature, January the 10th, 1884, quotes a Kimberley newspaper. That, toward the close of November 1883, a thick shower of ashy matter fell at Queenstown, South Africa. The matter was in marble-sized bowls, which were soft and pulpy, but which, upon drying, crumbled at touch. The shower was confined to one narrow streak of land. It would be only ordinarily preposterous to attribute this substance to Krakatoa. But, with the fall, loud noises were heard. But I'll omit many notes upon ashes. If ashes should sift down upon deep sea fishes, that is not to say that it came from the steamships. Data, of falls of cinders, have been especially damned by Mr. Simons, the meteorologist, some of whose investigations will investigate later, nevertheless. Notice of a fall in Victoria, Australia, April 14, 1875. Report of the British Association, 1875-242. At least, we are told, in the reluctant way, that someone, quote, thought, end quote, he saw matter fall near him at night, and the next day found something that looked like cinders. In the proceedings of the London Royal Society, 19-122, there is an account of cinders that fell on the deck of a light ship, January 9, 1873. In the American Journal of Science, 2-24-449, there is a notice that the editor had received a specimen of cinders set to have fallen in a shower-weather upon a farm near Ottawa, Illinois, January 17, 1857. But after all, ambiguous things they are, cinders or ashes or slag or clinkers, the high priest of the accursed that must be gel out for us is coal that has fallen from the sky or coke. The person who thought he saw something like cinders also thought he saw something like coke, we are told. Nature, 36-119, something that, quote, looked exactly like coke, end quote, that fell during a thunderstorm in the Orne, France, April 24, 1887, or charcoal. Dr. Angus Smith, in the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester Memoirs, 2-9-146, says that about 1827, like a great deal in Lyall's Principles and Darwin's Origin, this account is from hearsay. Something fell from the sky near Alport, England. It fell luminously with a loud report and scattered in a field. A fragment that was seen by Dr. Smith is described by him as having, quote, the appearance of a piece of common wood charcoal, end quote. Nevertheless, the reassured feeling of the faithful upon reading this is burdened with data of differences. The substance was so uncommonly heavy that it seemed as if it had iron in it. Also, there was, quote, a sprinkling of sulfur, end quote. This material is said by Professor Baden Powell to be, quote, totally unlike that of any other meteorite, end quote. Greg, in his catalogue, report of the British Association 1860-73, calls it, quote, a more than doubtful substance, end quote. But again, against reassurance, that is not doubt of authenticity. Greg says that it is the compact charcoal with particles of sulfur and iron pirates embedded. Reassurance rises again. Professor Baden Powell says, quote, it contains also charcoal, which might perhaps be acquired for matter among which it fell, end quote. This is a common reflex with the exclusionists. That substance is not, quote, truly meteoritic, end quote, did not fall from the sky, but were picked up by, quote, truly meteoritic, end quote, things. Of course, only on their surfaces, by impact with this earth. Rhythm of reassurances and their declines. According to Dr. Smith, this substance was not merely coated with charcoal. His analysis give 43.59% carbon. Our acceptance that coal has fallen from the sky will be via data of resonance substances and bituminous substances, which merge so that they cannot be told apart. Resonance substances set to have fallen at Kaba, Hungary, April 15, 1887. Report of the British Association, 1860-94. A resonance substance that fell after a fireball at Newhouse, Bohemia, December 17, 1824. Report of the British Association, 1860-70. Fall, July 28, 1885, at Lötzchen, during a storm, a Vibranish substance, verifiable carbonaceous matter. When burned, it gave out a resonance odor. Controndue 103-837. Substance that fell February 17, 1819, 1841, at Genoa, Italy, said to have been resonance, said by Arogo, of 12-469, to have been bituminous matter and sand. Fall, during its under storm, July 1681, near Cape Cod, upon the deck of an English vessel, the Albemarle, of quote, Burning Bituminous Matter, end quote, Edenburg New Philosophical Journal, 26-86. A fall at Christiana, Norway, June 13, 1822, of Bituminous Matter, listed by Greg as doubtful. Fall of Bituminous Matter in Germany, March 8, 1798, listed by Greg. Locker, the Meteoritic Hypothesis, page 24, says that the substance that fell at the Cape of Good Hope, October 13, 1833, about five cubic feet of it, substance so soft that it was cuttable with a knife, quote, after being experimented upon, it left a residue, which gave out a very bituminous smell, end quote. And this inclusion of lockers, so far as findable in all books that I have read, is in books, about as close as we can get to our desideratum, that coal has fallen from the sky. Dr. Farrington, except with a brief mention, ignores the whole subject of the fall of carbonaceous matter from the sky. Proctor, in all of his books that I have read, is in books about as close as we can get to the admission that carbonaceous matter has been found in meteorites, quote, in very minute quantities, or my own suspicion, is that it is possible to damn something else only by losing one's own soul, quasi-soul, of course. Scientific American, 35-120, that the substance that fell at the cave of Good Hope, quote, resembled a piece of enthrased coal more than anything else, end quote. It's a mistake, I think. The resemblance is to bituminous coal, but it is from the periodicals that we must get our data. To the writers of books upon meteorites, it would be as wicked, by which we mean departure from the characters of an established species, quasi-established, of course, to say that coal has fallen from the sky, as would be, to something in a barnyard, a temptation that it climbed a tree and catch a bird, domestic things in a barnyard, and how wild things from forests outside sea to them, or the homeopathist, but we shall shovel data of coal. And if over and over, we shall learn of masses of soft coal that have fallen upon this earth, if in no instance has it been asserted that the masses did not fall, but were upon the ground in the first place. If we have many instances, this time we turn down good and hard the mechanical reflex that these masses were carried from one place to another in whirlwinds, because we find it too difficult to accept that whirlwinds could so select, or so specialise, in a peculiar substance. Among writers of books, the only one I know of who makes more than brief mention is Sir Robert's Bowl. He represents a still more antique orthodoxy, or is an exclusionist of the old type, still holding out against even meteorites. He cites several foals of carbonaceous matter, but with this regard, that make for reasonableness that earthly matter may have been caught up by whirlwinds and flung down somewhere else. If he had given a full list, he would be called upon to explain the special affinity of whirlwinds for a special kind of coal. He does not give a full list. We shall have all that's findable, and we shall see that against this disease, we're writing, the homeopathists' prescription availeth not. Another exclusionist was Professor Lawrence Smith. His psychotropism was to respond to all reports of carbonaceous matter falling from the sky, by saying that this damned matter had been deposited upon things of the chosen by impact with this earth. Most of our data antidates him, or were contemporaneous with him, or were as accessible to him as to us. In his attempted positivism, it is simply, and beautifully, disregarded, that according to Bertelot, Brazilius, Clois, Vola, and others, these masses are not merely coated with carbonaceous matter, but are carbonaceous throughout, or are permeated throughout. How any one could so resolutely, and dogmatically, and beautifully, and blindly, hold out with puzzle-less, were it not, for our acceptance, that only to think is to exclude and include, and to exclude some things that have as much right to come in as have the included, that to have an opinion upon any subject is to be a Lawrence Smith, because there is no definite subject. Dr. Walter Flight, Eclectic Magazine, 89-71, says of the substance that fell near Allée France, March 15, 1806, that it, quote, emits a faint bituminous substance, end quote, when heated, according to the observations of Brazilius, and a commission appointed by the French Academy. This time we have not the reluctance expressed in such words as, quote, like, end quote, end quote, resembling, end quote. We are told that this substance is, quote, an earthly kind of coal, end quote. As to, quote, minute quantities, end quote, we are told that the substance that fell at the Cape of Good Hope has, in it, a little more than a quarter of organic matter, which in alcohol gives the familiar reaction to yellow resinous matter. Other instances given by Dr. Flight are carbonaceous matter that fell in 1840 in Tennessee, Cranbourne, Australia, 1861, Montauban, France, May 14, 1864, 20 masses, some of them as large as a human head, of a substance that, quote, resembled a dull-coloured earthly lignite, end quote, Guelpara, India, about 1867, about 8% of hydrocarbon, at Ornant, France, July 11, 1868, substance with, quote, an organic combustible ingredient, end quote, at Hesley, Sweden, January 1, 1860, knowledge 4-134, that according to Mr. Dobré, the substance that had fallen in the Argentine Republic, quote, resembled certain kinds of lignite and boghead coal, end quote. In Contrandu, 96, 1764, it is said that this mass fell June 30, 1880, in the province of Entre Rios, Argentina, that it is like brown coal, that it resembles all the other carbonaceous masses that had fallen from the sky. Something that fell at Krasak, France, August 10, 1885, when burned, it gave out a bituminous odor. Contrandu, 104-1771, carbonaceous substance that fell in Ranchpunta, India, January 22, 1911, verifiable, 50% of it soluble in water, records geological survey of India, 44th part, 1-41, a combustible carbonaceous substance that fell with sand at Naples, March 14, 1818, American Journal of Science, 1-1-309, Scientific American Supplement, 29-11798, that's June 9, 1889, a verifiable substance of a deep greenish black fell at Sumigiri, Russia. It contained 5% organic matter, which, when powdered and digested in alcohol, yielded after evaporation a bright yellow resin. In this mass was 2% of an unknown mineral, cinders and ashes and slag in coke and charcoal and coal, and the things that sometimes deep sea fishes are bumped by, reluctances and the disguises or covered retreats of such words as like and resemble or that conditions of intermediateness forbid abrupt transitions, but that the spirit animating all intermediateness is to achieve abrupt transitions, because if anything could finally break away from its origin and environment, that would be a real thing, something not merging away indistinguishably with the surrounding. So all attempt to be original, all attempt to invent something that is more than mere extension or modification of the preceding is positivism, or that if one could conceive of a device to catch flies positively different from or unrelated to all other devices, upheat shoot to heaven or the positive absolute, leaving behind such an incandescent train that in one age it would be said that he had gone aloft in a fiery chariot, and in another age that he had been struck by lightning. I'm collecting notes upon persons supposed to have been struck by lightning. I think that high approximation to positivism has often been achieved, instantaneous translation, residue of negativeness left behind, looking much like effects of a stroke of lightning. Someday I shall tell the story of the Mary Celeste, properly, as the scientific American supplement would say, mysterious disappearance of a sea captain, his family, and crew. Of positivists, by the root of abrupt transition, I think that Manet was notable, but that his approximation was held down by his intensive relativity to the public, or that it is quite as in-positive to flout and insult and defy as it is to crawl and placate. Of course, Manet began with continuity with Corbett and others, and then between him and Manet, there were mutual influences. But the spirit of abrupt difference is the spirit of positivism, and Manet's stance was against the dictum that all lights and shades must merge away suavely into one another, and prepare for one another. So a biologist, like the Rhys, represents positivism, or the breaking of continuity, by trying to conceive of evolution by mutation, against the dogma of indistinguishable gradations by minute variations. A corporonicus conceives of heliocentricity. Continuity is against him. He is not permitted to break abruptly with the past. He is permitted to publish his work, but only as an interesting hypothesis. Continuity, and that all that we call evolution or progress, is attempt to break away from it. That our whole solar system was at one time attempt, by planets, to break away from a parental nexus and set up as individualities, and failing, move in quasi-regular orbits that are expressions of relations with the sun and with one another, all having surrendered, being now quasi-incorporated in a higher approximation to system. Immediateness in its mineralogic aspect of positivism, or iron that strove to break away from sulfur and oxygen, and b-real homogenous iron, failing in as much as elemental iron exists only in textbook chemistry. Immediateness in its biologic aspect of positivism, or the wild, fantastic grotesque monstrous things it conceived of, sometimes in a frenzy of effort to break away abruptly from all preceding types, but failing in the giraffe effort, for instance, or only caricaturing an antelope. All things break one relation only by the establishing of some other relation. All things cut an umbilical cord only to clutch a breast. So the fight of the exclusiveness to maintain the traditional, or to prevent abrupt transition from the quasi-established, fighting so that here more than a century after meteorites were included, no other notable inclusion has been made except that of cosmic dust, data of which Norden's guild made more nearly real than data in opposition. So Proctor, for instance, fought and expressed his feeling of the preposterous against Sir W. H. Thompson's notions of a rival upon this earth of organisms on meteorites. Quote, I can only regard it as a jest, end quote, knowledge 1-302. Or that there is nothing but jest, or something intermediate to jest and tragedy, that ours is not an existence but an utterance, that moment is imagining us for the amusement of the gods, often with such success that some of us seem almost alive, like characters in something a novelist is writing, which often, to considerable degree, take their affairs away from the novelist. That moment is imagining us in our arts and sciences and religions, and is narrating or picturing us as a satire upon the gods' real existence, because with many of our data of coal that has fallen from the sky as accessible as they are now, and with the scientific pronouncement that coal is fossil, how, in a real existence, by which we mean a consistent existence, or a state in which there is real intelligence, or a form of thinking that does not indistinguishably merge away with imbecility, could there have been such a row as that which was raised about 40 years ago over Dr. Hahn's announcement that he has found fossils in meteorites. Accessible to anybody at that time. Philosophical magazine, 4-17-425, that the substance that fell at Kaba, Hungary, April 15, 1857, contains organic matter, quote, analogous to fossil boxes, end quote, or limestone. Of the block of limestone which was reported to have fallen at Middleburg, Florida, it is said, science 11-118, that though something had been seen to fall in, quote, an old cultivated field, end quote, the witnesses who ran to it picked up something that, quote, had been upon the ground in the first place, end quote. The writer who tells us this was the usual exclusion imagination known as stupidity, but unjustly, because there is no real stupidity, thinks he can think of a good-sized stone that had for many years been in a cultivated field, but that had never been seen before, had never interfered with plowing, for instance. He is earnest and unjared when he writes that this stone weighs 200 pounds. My own notion, founded upon my own experience in seeing, is that a block of stone weighing 500 pounds may be in one's parlor 20 years, virtually unseen, but not in an old cultivated field where it interfered with plowing, not anywhere if it interfered. Dr. Hahn said that he had found fossils in meteorites. There is a description of the corals, sponges, shells, and crinerates, all of them microscopic, which he photographed in popular science 20-83. Dr. Hahn is a well-known scientist. He was better known after that. Anybody may theorize upon other worlds and conditions upon them that are similar to our own conditions. If his notions be presented undisguisedly as fiction, or only as an, quote, interesting hypothesis, and, quote, he'll stir up no prude rages. But Dr. Hahn said definitely that he had found fossils in specified meteorites. Also, he published photographs of them. His book is in the New York Public Library. In the reproductions, every feature of some of the little shells is plainly marked. If they're not shells, neither are things under a noister counter. The striations are very plain. One sees even the hinges where the bibles are joined. Professor Lawrence Smith, knowledge 1-258, quote, Dr. Hahn is a kind of half-insane man whose imagination has run away with him, end quote. Conservation of continuity. Then Dr. Weinland examined Dr. Hahn's specimens. He gave his opinion that they are fossils and that they are not crystals or esthetites, as asserted by Dr. Smith, who had never seen them. The damnation of denial and the damnation of disregard. After the publication of Dr. Weinland's findings, silence. Ends of section 6. Read by J. C. Guan, Montreal, October 2008.