Chapter 7A of the Book of the Damned The living things that have come down to this earth attempt to preserve the system. That small frogs and toads, for instance, never have fallen from the sky but were on the ground in the first place. Or that there have been such falls, up from one place in a whirlwind, and down in another. Were there some especially froggy place near Europe, as there is an especially sandy place, the scientific explanation would, of course, be that all small frogs falling from the sky in Europe come from that center of froggyity. To start with, I'd like to emphasize something that I am permitted to see because I am still primitive, or intelligent, or in a state of maladjustment. That there is not one report findable of a fall of tadpoles from the sky, as to, there in the first place. See leisure hours 3-779 for accounts of small frogs or toads said to have been seen to fall from the sky. The writer says that all observers were mistaken, that the frogs or toads must have fallen from trees or other places overhead. Tremendous number of little toads, one or two months old, that were seen to fall from a great thick cloud that appeared suddenly in a sky that had been cloudless. August 1804 near Toulouse, France, according to a letter from Professor Pontus to M. Aragot. Comptes rendus 3-54. Many instances of frogs that were seen to fall from the sky, notes and queries 8-6-104. Accounts of such falls, signed by witnesses, notes and queries 8-6-190. Scientific American, July 12, 1873. A shower of frogs which darkened the air and covered the ground for a long distance is the reported result of a recent rainstorm at Kansas City, Missouri. As to having been there in the first place, little frogs found in London after a heavy storm, July 30, 1838, notes and queries 8-7-437. Little toads found in a desert after a rainfall, notes and queries 8-8-493. To start with, I do not deny positively the conventional explanation of up and down. I think that there may have been such occurrences. I omit many notes that I have upon indistinguishables. In the London Times, July 4, 1883, there is an account of a shower of twigs and leaves and tiny toads in a storm upon the slopes of the Apennines. These may have been the ejectamenta of a whirlwind. I add, however, that I have notes upon two other falls of tiny toads in 1883, one in France and one in Tahiti. Also, a fish in Scotland. But in the phenomena of the Apennines, the mixture seems to me to be typical of the products of a whirlwind. The other instances seem to me to be typical of something like migration, the great numbers and their homogeneity. Over and over in these annals of the dammed occurs the datum of segregation. But a whirlwind is thought of as a condition of chaos, quasi-chaos, not final negativeness, of course. Monthly Weather Review, July 1881. A small pond in the track of the cloud was suck-dry, the water being carried over the adjoining fields together with a large quantity of soft mud, which was scattered over the ground for half a mile around. It is so easy to say that small frogs that have fallen from the sky had been scooped up by a whirlwind. But here are the circumstances of a scoop. In the exclusionist imagination there is no regard for mud, debris from the bottom of a pond, floating vegetation, loose things from the shores, but a precise picking out of frogs only. Of all instances I have that attribute the fall of small frogs or toads to whirlwinds, only one definitely identifies or places the whirlwind. Also, as has been said before, a pond going up would be quite as interesting as frogs coming down. Whirlwinds we read of over and over, but where and what whirlwind? It seems to me that anybody who had lost a pond would be heard from. Simon's meteorological magazine, 32-106, a fall of small frogs near Birmingham, England, June 30th, 1892, is attributed to a specific whirlwind, but not a word as to any special pond that had contributed. And something that strikes my attention here is that these frogs are described as almost white. I'm afraid there is no escape for us. We shall have to give to civilization upon this earth some new worlds. Places with white frogs in them. Upon several occasions we have had data of unknown things that have fallen from somewhere. But something not to be overlooked is that if living things have landed alive upon this earth, in spite of all we think we know of the accelerative velocity of falling bodies, and have propagated why the exotic becomes the indigenous, or from the strangest of places we'd expect the familiar, or if hosts of living frogs have come here from somewhere else, every living thing upon this earth may, ancestrally, have come from somewhere else. I find that I have another note upon a specific hurricane, Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 1-3-185. After one of the greatest hurricanes in the history of Ireland, some fish were found as far as 15 yards from the edge of a lake. Have another. This is a good one for the exclusionists. A fall of fish in Paris said that a neighboring pond had been blown dry, living age 52-186. Date not given, but I have seen it recorded somewhere else. The best known fall of fishes from the sky is that which occurred at Mountain Ash in the valley of Aberdeyr, Glamorganshire, February 11, 1859. The editor of The Zoologist, 2-677, having published a report of a fall of fishes, writes, I am continually receiving similar accounts of frogs and fishes, but in all the volumes of The Zoologist, I can find only two reports of such falls. There is nothing to conclude other than that hosts of data have been lost because orthodoxy does not look favourably upon such reports. The Monthly Weather Review records several falls of fishes in the United States, but accounts of these reported occurrences are not findable in other American publications. Nevertheless, the treatment by The Zoologist of the fall reported from Mountain Ash is fair. First appears in the issue of 1859-6493, a letter from the Reverend John Griffith, Vicar of Aberdeyr, asserting that the fall had occurred chiefly upon the property of Mr. Nixon of Mountain Ash. Upon page 6540, Dr. Gray of the British Museum, wrestling with exclusionism, writes that some of these fishes, which had been sent to him alive, were very young minnows. He says, on reading the evidence it seems to me most probably only a practical joke, that one of Mr. Nixon's employees had thrown a pail full of water upon another who had thought fish in it had fallen from the sky, had dipped up a pail full from a brook. Those fishes, still alive, were exhibited at the zoological gardens, Regents Park. The editor says that one was a minnow and that the rest were sticklebacks. He says that Dr. Gray's explanation is no doubt right. But, upon page 6564, he publishes a letter from another correspondent who apologizes for opposing so high an authority as Dr. Gray, but says that he had obtained some of these fishes from persons who lived at a considerable distance apart or considerably out of range of the playful pail of water. According to the annual register, 1859-14, the fishes themselves had fallen by pail fulls. If these fishes were not upon the ground in the first place, we base our objections to the whirlwind explanation upon two data, that they fell in no such distribution as one could attribute to the discharge of a whirlwind, but upon a narrow strip of land, about 80 yards long and 12 yards wide. The other datum is again the suggestion that it first seems so incredible, but for which support is piling up, a suggestion of a stationary source overhead. That ten minutes later, another fall of fishes occurred upon this same narrow strip of land. Even arguing that a whirlwind may stand still actually, it discharges tangentially. Wherever the fishes came from, it does not seem thinkable that some could have fallen and that others could have whirled even a tenth of a minute, then falling directly after the first of fall. Because of these evil circumstances, the best adaptation was to laugh the whole thing off and say that someone had sowed someone else with a pail full of water in which a few very young minnows had been caught up. In the London Times, March 2nd, 1859, is a letter from Mr. Aaron Roberts, Curate of St. Peter's Karmathon. In this letter, the fishes are said to have been about four inches long, but there is some question of species. I think, myself, that they were minnows and sticklebacks. Some persons, thinking them to be sea fishes, place them in salt water, according to Mr. Roberts. The effect is stated to have been almost instantaneous death. Some were placed in fresh water. These seemed to thrive well. As to narrow distribution, we are told that the fishes fell in and about the premises of Mr. Nixon. It was not observed at the time that any fish fell in any other part of the neighborhood, save in the particular spot mentioned. In the London Times, March 10th, 1859, Victor Griffith writes an account. The roofs of some houses were covered with them. In this letter, it is said that the largest fishes were five inches long and that these did not survive the fall. Report of the British Association, 1859-158. The evidence of the fall of fish on this occasion was very conclusive. A specimen of the fish was exhibited and was found to be gastrosteus lyris. Gastrosteus is the stickleback. Altogether, I think we have not a sense of total perdition when we're damned with the explanation that someone soused someone else with a pail full of water in which were thousands of fishes four or five inches long. Some of which covered roofs of houses and some of which remained ten minutes in the air. In a way of contrast we offer our own acceptance that the bottom of a super geographical pond had dropped out. I have a great many notes upon the fall of fishes despite the difficulty these records have in getting themselves published but I pick out the instances that especially relate to our super geographical acceptances or to the principles of super geography or data of things that have been in the air longer than acceptably could a whirlwind carry them that have fallen with the distribution narrower than is attributable to a whirlwind that have fallen for a considerable length of time upon the same narrow area of land. These three factors indicate somewhere not far aloft a region of inertness to this earth's gravitation, of course. However, a region that, by the flux and variation of all things must at times be susceptible but afterward our heresy will bifurcate. Inamiable accommodation to the crucifixion it'll get, I think. But so impressed are we with the datum that though there have been many reports of small frogs that have fallen from the sky not one report upon a fall of tadpoles is findable that to these circumstances another adjustment must be made. Apart from our three factors of indication an extraordinary observation is the fall of living things without injury to them. The devotees of Saint Isaac explained that they fall upon thick grass and so survive. But Sir James Emerson Tennant in his history of Ceylon tells of a fall of fishes upon gravel by which they were seemingly uninjured. Something else apart from our three main interests is a phenomena that looks like what one might call an alternating series of falls of fishes whatever the significance may be. Maroot, India, July 1824 Living Age, 52-186 Fusher, Scotland, Summer of 1824 Rhenarian Natural History Society Translations, 5-575 Moradabad, India, July 1826 Living Age, 52-186 Rossher, Scotland, 1828 Living Age, 52-186 Moradabad, India, July 20th, 1829 Lin Society Translations, 16-764 Perthshire, Scotland, Living Age, 52-186 Argyllshire, Scotland, 1830 March 9th, 1830 Recreative Science, 3-339 Faridpur, India, February 19th, 1830 Journal Asiatic Society of Bengal, 2-650 A cyclotropism that arises here disregarding serial significance or mechanical, unintelligent repulsive reflex is that the fishes of India did not fall from the sky that they were found upon the ground after torrential rains because streams had overflowed and had then receded. In the region of inertness that we think we can conceive of or a zone that is to this earth's gravitation very much like the neutral zone of a magnet's attraction we accept that there are bodies of water and also clear spaces bottoms of ponds dropping out very interesting ponds having no earth at bottom vast drops of water afloat in what is called space fishes and deluges of water falling but also other areas in which fishes were they got there, a matter that we'll consider remain and dry or even putrify then sometimes falling by atmospheric dislodgement. After a tremendous deluge of rain one of the heaviest falls on record all the year round, 8-255 at Rajkote, India, July 25th, 1850 the ground was literally covered with fishes. The word found is agreeable to the repulsions of the conventionalists and their concept of an overflowing stream but according to Dr. Bruist some of these fishes were found on the tops of haystacks. Farrell, a popular treatise, page 414 tells of a fall of living fishes some of them having been placed in a tank where they survived that occurred in India about 20 miles south of Calcutta, September 20th, 1839 a witness of this fall says the most strange thing which ever struck me was that the fish did not fall helter-skelter or here and there, but they fell in a straight line not more than a cubit in breadth see Living Age 52-186 American Journal of Science 132-199 that according to testimony taken before a magistrate it occurred February 19th, 1830 near Faridpur, India of many fishes of various sizes some, whole and fresh, and others mutilated and putrefying our reflex to those who would say that in the climate of India it would not take long for fishes to putrefy is that high in the air the climate of India is not torrid another peculiarity of this fall is that some of the fishes are larger than others or to those who hold out for segregation in a whirlwind or that objects say twice as heavy as others would be separated from the lighter we point out that some of these fishes were twice as heavy as others in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal 2-650 deposition of witnesses are given some of the fish were fresh but others were rotten and without heads the number which I got, five were fresh and the rest stinking and headless they remind us of his grace's observation of some pages back according to Dr. Bruis some of these fishes weighed one and a half pounds each and others three pounds a fall of fishes at Phutipur, India, May 16th, 1833 they were all dead and dry Dr. Bruis living age 52-186 India is far away about 1830 was long ago Nature, September 19th, 1918-46 a correspondent writes from the Dove Marine Laboratory, Cuttercoats, England that at Hinden, a suburb of Sunderland August 24th, 1918 hundreds of small fishes identified as sand eels had fallen, again the small area about 60 by 30 yards the fall occurred during a heavy rain that was accompanied by thunder or indications of disturbances aloft but by no visible lightning the sea is close to Hinden but if you try to think of these fishes having described a trajectory and a whirlwind from the ocean consider this remarkable datum that, according to witnesses, the fall upon this small area occupied ten minutes we will not think of a clearer indication of a direct fall from a stationary source and the fish were all dead and indeed stiff and hard when picked up immediately after the occurrence by all of which I mean that we have only begun to pile up our data of things that fall from a stationary source overhead, we'll have to take up the subject from many approaches before our acceptance which seems quite as rigorously arrived at as ever has been a belief can emerge from the accursed I don't know how much the horse and the barn will help us to emerge but if ever anything did go up from this earth's surface and stay up, those damn things may have monthly weather review, May, 1878 in a tornado in Wisconsin, May 23rd, 1878 a barn and a horse were carried completely away and neither horse nor barn nor any portion of either have since been found after that, which would be a little strong were it not for a steady improvement in our digestions that I note as we go along there is little of the bizarre or the unassimilable in the turtle that hovered six months or so over a small town in Mississippi monthly weather review, May, 1894 that, May 11th, 1894 at Vicksburg, Mississippi fell a small piece of alabaster that, at Bovina, eight miles from Vicksburg fell a gopher turtle they fell in a hailstorm this item was widely copied at the time for instance Nature, one of the volumes of 1894 page 430 and Journal of the Royal Metropolitan Society 20-273 as to discussion, not a word or science and its continuity with Presbyterianism data like this are damned at birth the weather review does sprinkle or baptize or attempt to save this infant but in all the meteorological literature that I have gone through after that date, not a word except mention once or twice, the editor of the review says an examination of the weather map shows that these hailstorms occur on the south side of a region of cold northerly winds and were but a small part of a series of similar storms some special local whirls or gusts carried heavy objects from the earth's surface up to the cloud regions of all incredibilities that we have to choose from I give first place to a notion of a whirlwind pouncing upon a region and scrupulously selecting a turtle and a piece of alabaster this time, the other mechanical thing there in the first place cannot rise in response to its stimulus it is resisted in that these objects were coated with ice month of May in a southern state if a whirlwind at all, there must have been very limited selection there is no record of the fall of other objects but there is no attempt in the review to specify a whirlwind these strangely associated things were remarkably separated they fell 8 miles apart then, as if there were real reasoning they must have been high to fall with such divergence or one of them must have been carried partly horizontally 8 miles farther than the other but either supposition argues for power more than that of a local whirl or gust or argues for a great specific disturbance of which there is no record for the month of May, 1894 nevertheless, as if I really were reasonable I do feel that I have to accept that this turtle had been raised from the earth's surface somewhere near Vicksburg because the gopher turtle is common in the southern states End of Chapter 7A Recording by Don Bot www.flacker.ca Chapter 7B 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 Don Bot www.flacker.ca The Book of the Damned Chapter 7B Then I think of a hurricane that occurred in the state of Mississippi weeks or months before May 11, 1894 No, I don't look for it and inevitably find it or that things can go up so high in hurricanes that they stay up indefinitely but may, after a while be shaken down by storms Over and over we have noted the occurrence of strange falls in storms so then that the turtle and the piece of alabaster may have had far different origins from different worlds perhaps have entered a region of suspension over this earth wafting near each other long duration final precipitation by atmospheric disturbance with hail or that hailstones too when large are phenomena of suspension of long duration that it is highly unacceptable that the very large ones could become so great only in falling from the clouds Over and over has the note of disagreeableness or of putrefaction been struck long duration other indications of long duration I think of a region somewhere above this earth surface in which gravitation is inoperative and is not governed by the square of the distance quite as magnetism is negligible at a very short distance from a magnet theoretically the attraction of a magnet should decrease with the square of the distance but the falling off is found to be almost abrupt at a short distance I think that things raised from this earth surface to that region have been held there until shaken down by storms the super Sargasso sea derelicts, rubbish, old cargos from interplanetary wrecks things cast out into what is called space by convulsions of other planets things from the times of the Alexanders Caesars and Napoleon's of Mars and Jupiter and Neptune things raised by this earth's cyclones horses and barns and elephants and flies and dodos, moas and pterodactyls leaves from modern trees and leaves of the Carboniferous era all, however, tending to disintegrate into homogenous looking muds or dusts red or black or yellow treasure troves for the paleontologists and for the archeologists accumulations of centuries cyclones of Egypt, Greece and Assyria stride and hard there a short time others there long enough to putrify but the omnipresence of heterogeneity or living fishes also ponds of fresh water, oceans of salt water as to the law of gravitation I prefer to take one simple stand orthodoxy accepts the correlation and equivalence of forces gravitation is one of these forces all other forces have phenomena of repulsion and of inertness irrespective of distance as well as of attraction but Newtonian gravitation admits attraction only then Newtonian gravitation can be only one-third acceptable even to the orthodox or there is denial of the correlation and equivalence of forces or still simpler, here are the data make what you will yourself of them in our intermediateist revolt against homogenous or positive explanations the acceptance that the all sufficing cannot be less than universality besides which however there would be nothing to suffice our expressions upon the super sargasso sea though it harmonizes with data of fishes that fall as if from a stationary source and of course with other data too is inadequate to account for two peculiarities of the fall of frogs that never has a fall of tadpoles been reported that never has a fall of full grown frogs been reported always frogs a few months old it sounds positive but if there be such reports they are somewhere out of my range of reading but tadpoles would be more likely to fall from the sky than would frogs, little or big if such falls be attributed to whirlwinds and more likely to fall from the super sargasso sea if though very tentatively and provisionally we accept the super sargasso sea before we take up in a special expression upon the fall of immature and larval forms of life to this earth and the necessity then of conceiving of some factor besides mere stationariness or suspension or stagnation there are other data that are similar to data of falls of fishes science gossip 1886-238 that small snails of a land species had fallen near Redruth Cornwall July 8th, 1886 during a heavy thunderstorm roads and fields strewn with them so that they were gathered up by the hat full none seemed to fall by the writer of this account snails said to be quite different to any previously known in this district but upon page 282 we have better orthodoxy another correspondent writes that he had heard of the supposed fall of snails that he had supposed that all such stories had gone the way of witch stories that to his astonishment there is an account of this absurd story in a local newspaper of great and deserved repute I thought I should for once like to trace the origin of one of these fabulous tales our own acceptance is that justice cannot be in an intermediate existence in which there can be approximation only to justice or to injustice that to be fair is to have no opinion at all that to be honest is to be uninterested that to investigate is to admit prejudice that nobody has ever really investigated anything but has always sought positively to prove or to disprove something that was conceived of or suspected in advance as I suspected says this correspondent I found that the snails were of a familiar land species that they had been upon the ground in the first place he found that the snails had appeared after the rain that astonished rustics had jumped to the conclusion that they had fallen and met one person who said that he had seen the snails fall this was his error says the investigator in the philosophical magazine 58-310 there's an account of snails had to have fallen at Bristol in a field of three acres in such quantities that they were shoveled up it is said that the snails may be considered as a local species upon page 457 another correspondent says that the numbers had been exaggerated and that in his opinion they had been upon the ground in the first place but that there had been some unusual condition aloft comes out in his observation upon the curious azure blue appearance of the sun at the time nature 47-278 that according to Daswether December 1892 upon August 9th 1892 a yellow cloud appeared over Padderborn, Germany from this cloud fell a torrential rain in which were hundreds of mussels there's no mention of whatever may have been upon the ground in the first place nor of a whirlwind lizards said to have fallen on the sidewalks of Montreal, Canada December 28th 1857 notes and queries 8-6-104 in the scientific American 3-112 a correspondent writes from South Granville, New York that during a heavy shower July 3rd 1860 he heard a peculiar sound at his feet and looking down saw a snake lying as if stunned by a fall it then came to life gray snake about a foot long these data have any meaning or lack of meaning or degree of damnation you please but in the matter of the fall that occurred at Memphis, Tennessee occurs some strong significances Arquasi reasoning upon this subject applies to all segregation so far considered monthly weather review January 15th 1877 that in Memphis, Tennessee January 15th 1877 rather strictly localized or in a space of two blocks and after a violent storm in which the rain fell and torrents snakes were found they were crawling on sidewalks in yards and in streets and in masses but none were found on roofs or any other elevation above ground and none were seen to fall if you prefer to believe that the snakes had always been there or had been upon the ground in the first place and that it was only that something occurred to call special attention to them in the streets of Memphis January 15th 1877 why? that's sensible that's the common sense that has been against us from the first it is not said whether the snakes were of a known species or not but that when first seen they were of a dark brown almost black black snakes I suppose if we accept that these snakes did fall even though not seen to fall by all the persons who were outside seeing in a violent storm and had not been in the streets crawling loose or in thick tangled masses in the first place if we try to accept that these snakes had been raised from some other part of this earth's surface in a whirlwind if we try to accept that a whirlwind could segregate them if we accept the segregation of other objects raised in that whirlwind then near the place of origin there would have been a fall of heavier objects that had been snatched up with the snakes stones, fence rails, limbs of trees say that the snakes occupied the next gradation and would be the next to fall still further would there have been separate falls of lightest objects leaves, twigs, tufts of grass in the monthly weather review there is no mention of other falls said to have occurred anywhere in January 1877 again ours is the objection against such selectiveness by a whirlwind conceivably a whirlwind could scoop out a den of hibernating snakes with stones and earth and an infinitude of other debris snatching up dozens of snakes I don't know how many to a den, hundreds maybe but according to the account of this occurrence in the New York Times there were thousands of them alive from one foot to 18 inches in length the scientific American 36-86 records the fall and says that there were thousands of them the usual whirlwind explanation is given but in what locality snakes exist in such abundance is yet a mystery this matter of enormous of numbers suggests to me something of a migratory nature but that snakes in the United States do not migrate in the month of January as to falls or flutterings of winged insects from the sky prevailing notions of swarming would seem explanatory enough nevertheless in instances of ants there are some peculiar circumstances L'Astronomie 1889-353 Fall of Fishes June 13th 1889 in Holland Ants August 1st 1889 Strasbourg Little Toads August 2nd 1889 Savoy Fall of Ants Cambridge, England Summer of 1874 Some were wingless Scientific American 30-193 Enormous Fall of Ants Nancy, France July 21st 1887 Most of them were wingless Nature 36-349 Fall of Enormous Unknown Ants Size of Wasps Tobah, June 1895 Scientific American 72-385 However, our expression will be that wingless larval forms of life in numbers so enormous that migration from some place external to this earth is suggested have fallen from the sky that these migrations, if such can be our acceptance have occurred at a time of hibernation and burial far in the ground of larvae in the northern latitudes of this earth that there is significance in recurrence of these falls in the last of January or that we have the square of an incredibility in such a notion as that of selection of larvae by whirlwinds compounded with selection of the last of January I accept that there are snow worms upon this earth whatever their origin may have been In the Academy Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 1899-125 there is a description of yellow worms and black worms that have been found together on glaciers in Alaska almost positively were there no other forms of insect life upon these glaciers and there was no vegetation to support insect life except microscopic organisms Nevertheless, the description of this probably polymorphic species fits a description of larvae said to have fallen in Switzerland and less definitely fits another description There is no opposition here if our data of falls are clear Frogs of everyday ponds look like frogs said to have fallen from the sky except the whitish frogs of Birmingham However, all falls of larvae have not positively occurred in the last of January London Times, April 14, 1837 That, in the parish of Bramford Speak, Devonshire a long number of black worms about three-quarters of an inch in length had fallen in a snowstorm In Times' yearbook 1877-26 it is said that, in the winter of 1876 at Christiana, Norway worms were found crawling upon the ground The occurrence is considered a great mystery because the worms could not have come up from the ground in as much as the ground was frozen at the time and because they were reported from other places also in Norway A immense number of black insects in a snowstorm in 1827 at Pakrov, Russia Scientific American, 30-193 Fall with snow at Orenberg, Russia, December 14, 1830 of a multitude of small black insects said to have been gnats but also said to have had flea-like motions 1-22-375 Large number of worms found in a snowstorm upon the surface of snow about four inches thick near Sangerfield, New York November 18, 1850 Scientific American, 6-96 The writer thinks that the worms had been brought to the surface of the ground by rain which had fallen previously Scientific American, February 21, 1891 A puzzling phenomena has been noted frequently in some parts of the Valley Bend District Randolph County, Virginia, this winter The crust of the snow has been covered two or three times with worms resembling the ordinary cut worms where they come from unless they fall with the snow is inexplicable In the Scientific American, March 7, 1891 the editor says that similar worms had been seen upon the snow near Utica, New York and in Oneida and Herkimer counties that some of the worms had been sent to the Department of Agriculture at Washington again two species or polymorphism According to Professor Riley, it was not polymorphism but two distinct species which, because of our data, we doubt one kind was larger than the other color difference is not distinctly stated one is called the larvae of the common soldier beetle and the other seems to be a variety of the bronze cut worm no attempt to explain the occurrence in snow Fall of great numbers of larvae of beetles near Mortain, France, May 1858 The larvae were inanimate as if with cold Analys, Société entomologique de France, 1858 Society of London, 1871-183 records snowing of larvae in Silesia, 1806 appearance of many larvae on the snow in Saxony, 1811 larvae found alive on the snow, 1828 larvae and snow which fell together in the Eiffel, January 30, 1847 Fall of insects, January 24, 1849 in Lithuania occurrence of larvae estimated at 300,000 on the snow in Switzerland in 1856 the compiler says that most of these larvae live underground or at the roots of trees that whirlwinds uproot trees and carry away the larvae conceiving of them as not held in masses of frozen earth all as neatly detachable as currents in something in a review a magazine de Zoology, 1849-72 there's an account of the fall in Lithuania, January 24, 1849 that black larvae had fallen in enormous numbers larvae thought to have been of beetles but described as caterpillars not seen to fall but found crawling on the snow after a snowstorm at Warsaw, January 20, 1850 all year round, 8-253 Flormarian, the Atmosphere, page 414 tells of a fall of larvae that occurred in January 30, 1869 in a snowstorm in Upper Savoy they could not have been hatched in the neighborhood, 4 during the days preceding the temperature had been very low said to have been of a species common in the south of France in La Science-Portue, 14-183 it is said that with these larvae there were developed insects L'Astronomie, 1890-313 that, upon the last of January, 1890 there fell in a great tempest in Switzerland incalculable numbers of larvae some black and some yellow numbers so great that hosts of birds were attracted altogether we regard this as one of our neatest expressions for external origins and against the whirlwind explanation if an exclusionist says that in January larvae were precisely and painstakingly picked out of frozen ground in incalculable numbers he thinks of a tremendous force disregarding its refinements then, if origin and precipitation be not far apart what becomes of an infinitude of other debris conceiving of no time for segregation if he thinks of a long translation all the way from the south of France to Upper Savoy he may think then of a very fine sorting over by differences of specific gravity but in such a fine selection larvae would be separated from developed insects as to differences in specific gravity the yellow larvae that fell in Switzerland January 1890 were three times the size of the black larvae that fell with them in accounts of this occurrence there is no denial of the fall or that a whirlwind never brought them together and held them together and precipitated them and only them together that they came from genocisterine there's no escape from it will be persecuted for it take it or leave it genocisterine yet there is somewhere aloft a place of origin of life relatively to this earth whether it's the planet genocisterine or the moon or a vast amorphous region super-jacent to this earth or an island in the super-sargasso sea should perhaps be left to the researchers of other super or extra geographers that the first unicellular organisms may have come here from genocisterine or that men or anthropomorphic beings may have come here before amoeba that upon genocisterine there may have been an evolution expressible in conventional biologic terms but that evolution upon this earth has been like evolution in modern Japan induced by external influences that evolution as a whole upon this earth has been a process of population by immigration or by bombardment some notes I have upon remains of men and animals insisted or covered with clay or stone as if fired here as projectiles I admit now because it seems best to regard the whole phenomena as a tropism as a geotropism probably atavistic or vestigial as it were or something still continuing long after expiration of necessity that once upon a time all kinds of things came here from genocisterine but that now only a few kinds of bugs and things at long intervals feel the inspiration not one instance have we have tadpoles that have fallen to this earth it seems reasonable that a whirlwind could scoop up upon frogs and all and cast down the frogs somewhere else but then more reasonable that a whirlwind could scoop up upon tadpoles and all because tadpoles are more numerous in their season than our frogs and theirs but the tadpole season is earlier in the spring or in a time that is more tempestuous thinking in terms of causation as if there were real causes our notion is that if X is likely to cause Y but is more likely to cause Z but does not cause Z X is not the cause of Y upon this quasi sorotate we base our acceptance that the little frogs that have fallen to this earth are not products of whirlwinds that they came from externality or from genocisterine I think of genocisterine in terms of biologic mechanics not that somewhere there are persons who collect bugs in or about the last of January and frogs in July and August and bombard this earth any more than do persons go through northern regions catching and collecting birds every autumn and then casting them southward but atavistic or vestigial geotropism in genocisterine or a million larvae start crawling and a million little frogs start hopping knowing no more what it's all about than we do when we crawl to work in the morning and hop away at night I should say myself that genocisterine is a region in the super sargasso sea and that parts of the super sargasso sea have rhythms of susceptibility to this earth's attraction End of Chapter 7b Recording by Don Bott www.flacker.ca Chapter 8a 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 Acacia Wood The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort Chapter 8a I accept that when there are storms the damness of excluded X communicated things, things that are leprous to the faithful are brought down from the super sargasso sea or from what for convenience we call the super sargasso sea which by no means has been taken into full acceptance yet by storms just as from the depths of the sea things are brought up by storms. To be sure it is orthodoxy that storms have little if any effect below the ways of the ocean, but of course only to have an opinion is to be ignorant of or to disregard a contradiction or something else that modifies an opinion out of distinguishability. Simon's Meteorological Magazine 47-180 That along the coast of New Zealand in regions not subject to submarine volcanic action, deep sea fishes are often brought up by storms. Iron and stones that fall from the sky and atmospheric disturbances, there is absolutely no connection between the two phenomena. Simon's Meteorological Magazine The orthodox beliefs is that objects moving at planetary velocity would upon entering this arse atmosphere be virtually unaffected by hurricanes. Might as well think of a bullet swerved by someone fanning himself. The only trouble with the orthodox reasoning is the usual trouble. It's phantom dominant, it's basing upon a myth, data we've had, and more we'll have of things in the sky having no independent velocity. There are so many storms and so many meteors and meteorites that it would be extraordinary if there were no concurrences. Nevertheless, so many of these concurrences are listed by Professor Baden-Powell, report of the British Association 1850-54 that no one notices. See the report of the British Association 1860, other instances. The famous fall of stones at Siena Italy 1794 in a violent storm. See Gregg's catalogs many instances. One that stands out is bright fire and light in a hurricane in England September 2nd, 1786. The remarkable datum here is that this phenomenon was visible 40 minutes. That's about 800 times the duration that the orthodox give to meteors and meteorites. See the annual register many instances. In nature October 25th, 1877 and the London Times October 15th, 1877 something that fell in a gale of October 14th, 1877 is described as a huge ball of green fire. This phenomenon is described by another correspondent in nature, 1710 and an account of it by another correspondent was forwarded to nature by W. F. Denning. There are so many instances that some of us will revolt against the insistence of the faithful that it is only coincidence that they can accept that there is connection of the kind called causal. If it is too difficult to think of stones when metallic masses swerve from their courses by storms if they move at high velocity we think of low velocity or things having no velocity at all hovering a few miles above this earth dislodged by storms and falling luminously. But the resistance is so great here and co-incident that we better have some more instances. March, 1886 Meteorite in a storm at St. Leonard's on St. England September 19th, 1899 Nature, 61111 Fall of a meteorite in a storm July 7th, 1883 near Lesheen, Quebec Monthly weather review, July 1883 Same phenomenon noted in Nature, 28319 Meteorite in a whirlwind Sweden, September 24th, 1883 Nature, 2915 London Royal Society Proceedings, 6276 A triangular cloud that appeared in a storm December 17th, 1852 A red nucleus about half the apparent diameter of the moon and a long tail visible 13 minutes explosion of the nucleus Nevertheless, in Science Gossip NS, 665 It is said that though meteorites have fallen in storms, no connection is supposed to exist between the two phenomena except by the ignorant peasantry. But some of us peasants have gone through the report of the British Association, 1852. Upon page 239 Dr. Buist, who had never heard of the Super Circus OC says that, though it is difficult to trace connection between the phenomena, three aerolites had fallen in five months in India during thunderstorms in 1851, may have been 1852, for accounts by witnesses see page 229 of the report, or we are on our way to account for thunderstorms. It seems to me that, very strikingly here, is born out the general acceptance that ours is only an intermediate existence in which there is nothing or nothing final to take as a positive standard to judge by. Peasants believed in meteorites. Scientists excluded meteorites. Peasants believe in thunderstorms. Scientists exclude thunderstorms. It is useless to argue that peasants are out in the fields and that scientists are shut up in laboratories and lecture rooms. We cannot take for a real base that, as to phenomena that which they aren't more familiar, peasants are more likely to be right than are scientists. A host of biologic and meteorologic fallacies of peasants rises against us. I should say that our existence is like a bridge, except that that comparison isn't static terms, but like the Brooklyn Bridge upon which multitudes of bugs are seeking a fundamental coming to a girder that seems firm and final, but the girder is built upon supports, a support that seems final, but it is built upon underlying structures. Nothing final can be found in all the bridge because the bridge itself is not a final thing in itself that is a relationship between Manhattan and Brooklyn. If our existence is a relationship between the positive absolute and the negative absolute, the quest for finality in it is hopeless. Everything in it must be relative if the whole is not a whole but is itself a relation. In the attitude of acceptance our pseudo-base is, cells of an embryo are in the reptilian era of the embryo. Some cells feel stimuli to take on new appearances. If it be of the design of the whole that the next era be mammalian, those cells that turn mammalian will be sustained against resistance by inertia of all the rest, and will be relatively right, though not finally right, because they too in time will have to give way to characters of other eras of higher development. If we are upon the verge of a new era in which exclusionism must be overthrown, it will avail me not to call us base-born and frowsy peasants. In our crude, bucolic way, we now offer an outrage upon common sense that we think will someday be in unquestioned common place that manufactured objects of stone and iron have fallen from the sky, that they have been brought down from a state of suspension in a region of inertness to this earth's attraction by atmospheric disturbances. The thunderstorm is usually a beautifully polished wedge-shaped piece of greenstone, says a writer in the Corn Hill Magazine, 50, 517. It isn't. It's likely to be of almost any kind of stone, but we call attention to the skill with which some of them have been made. Of course this writer says it's all superstition, but it implies he be one of us crude and simple sons of the soil. Conventional damnation is that stone implements already on the ground, on the ground in the first place, are found near where lightning was seen to strike, that are supposed by astonish rustics or by intelligence of a low order to have fallen in or with lightning. Throughout this book we class a great deal of science with bad fiction. When is fiction bad? Cheap. Low. If coincidence is overworked. That's one way of deciding. But when single writers coincide seldom is overworked, we find the excess in the subject at large. Such a writer as the one in the Corn Hill Magazine tells us vaguely of beliefs of peasants, there is no massing of instance after instance after instance. Here ours will be the method of mass formation. Conceivably lightning may strike the ground near where there was a wedge shaped object in the first place. Again and again and again. Lightning striking ground near wedge shaped objects in China. Lightning striking ground near wedge shaped object in Scotland. Lightning striking ground near wedge shaped object in Central Africa. Coincidence in France. Coincidence in Java. Coincidence in South America. We grant a great deal but not a tendency to restlessness. Nevertheless, this is the psychotropism of science to all thunderstorms said to have fallen luminously. As to greenstone, it is in the island of Jamaica where the notion is general that axis of a hard greenstone fall from the sky during the rains. Journal of the Institute of Jamaica 24. Some other time we shall inquire into this localization of objects of a specific material. There are the stone nowhere else to be found in Jamaica. Notes and queries 2. 8. 2. 4. In my own tendency to exclude or in the attitude of one peasant or savage who thinks he is not to be classed with other peasants or savages I am not very much impressed with what natives think. It would be hard to tell why. If the word of a Lord Kelvin carries no more weight upon a scientific subject than the word of a sitting bull unless it be an agreement of conventional opinion, I think it must be because savages have bad table manners. However my snobbishness in this respect loosens up somewhat before very widespread beliefs by savages and peasants, and the notion of thunderstorms is as wide as geography itself. The natives of Burma, China, Japan according to Blinkenberg Thunder Weapons page 100 not of course that Blinkenberg accepts one word of it, think that thunderstorm objects have fallen from the sky because they think they have seen such objects fall from the sky. Such objects are called thunderbolts in these countries. They are called thunderstorms in Moravia, Holland, Belgium, France, Cambodia, Sumatra, and Siberia. They are called storm stones in Lausitz, sky arrows in Slavonia, thunder axes in England and Scotland, lightning stones in Spain and Portugal, sky axes in Greece, lightning flashes in Brazil, thunder teeth in Ambonia. The belief is as widespread as is belief in ghosts and witches, which only the superstitious deny today. As to beliefs by North American Indians Tyler gives a list of references Primitive Culture 2 237. As to South American Indians, certain stone hatchets are said to have fallen from the heavens, Journal of American Folklore 17203. If you too revolt against coincidence after coincidence after coincidence, but find our interpretation of thunderstorms just a little too strong or rich for digestion, we recommend the explanation of one Talius written in 1649. The natural assay they are generated in the sky by numerous exhalation con globed in a cloud by the circumfused humor. Of course the paper in the Corn Hill magazine was written with no intention of trying really to investigate the subject, but to derive the notion that work stone objects have ever fallen from the sky. A writer in the American Journal of Science, 121.325 read this paper and thinks it remarkable that any man of ordinary reasoning powers should write a paper to prove that Thunderbolts do not exist. I confess that we're a little flattered by that over and over. It is scarcely necessary to suggest to the intelligent reader that thunderstorms are a myth. We contend that there is a misuse of a word here. We admit that only we are intelligent upon the subject if by intelligence is meant the inquiry of inequilibrium and that all other selection is only mechanical reflex. Of course that intelligence too is mechanical, but less orderly and confined, less obviously mechanical. That as an acceptance of ours becomes firmer and firmer established, we pass from the state of intelligence to reflexes and ruts. An odd thing is that intelligence is usually supposed to be credible. It may be in the sense that it is mental activity trying to find out, but it is confession of ignorance. The bees, the theologians, the dogmatic scientists are the intellectual aristocrats. The rest of us are plebians not yet graduated to Nirvana or to the instinctive and suave as differentiated from the intelligent and crude. Blinkenberg gives many instances of the superstition of vendor stones, which flourishes only where mentality is in a lamentable state or universally. In Malacca, Sumatra and Java, natives say that stone axes have often been found under trees that have been struck by lightning. Blinkenberg does not dispute this, but says it is coincidence that the axes were of course upon the ground in the first place that the natives jumped to the conclusion that these carved stones had fallen in or with lightning. In Central Africa, it is said that often have wood-shaped, highly polished objects of stone described as axes been found sticking in trees that have been struck by lightning or what seemed to be lightning. The natives, rather like the unscientific persons of Memphis, Tennessee when they saw snakes after a storm, jumped to the conclusion that the axes had not always been sticking in the trees. Living Stone, Last Journal, pages 83, 89, 442, 448 says that he had never heard stone implements to use by natives of Africa. A writer in the report of the Smithsonian Institution 1877-308 says that there are a few that they are said by the natives to have fallen in thunderstorms. As to luminosity, it is my lamentable acceptance that bodies falling through this earth's atmosphere, if not warmed even, often fall with a brilliant light, looking like flashes of lightning. This matter seems important and we'll take it up later, with data. In Prussia, two stone axes were found in the trunks of trees, one under the bark, Blinkenberg, Thunder Weapons, page 100. The finders jumped to the conclusion that the axes had fallen there. Another stone axe, or wedge-shaped object of workstone said to have been found on a tree that had been struck by something that looked like lightning, Thunder Weapons, page 71. The finder jumped to the conclusion. Story told by Blinkenberg of a woman who lived near Kilsberg in Sweden, who found a flint near an old willow near her house. I emphasize near her house because that means familiar ground. The willow had been split by something. She jumped. Cow killed by lightning, or by what looked like lightning, Isle of Sark near Guernsey. A resident who owned the cow dug up the ground at the spot and found a small greenstone axe. Blinkenberg says that he jumped to the conclusion that it was this object that had fallen luminously, killing the cow. Reliquary 1867-208. A flint axe found by a farmer after a severe storm described as a fearful storm by a signal staff which had been split by something. It seems to a signal staff may be considered familiar ground. Whether he jumped or arrived at the conclusion by a more leisurely process, the farmer thought that the flint object had fallen in the storm. In this instance we have a lamentable scientist with us. It's impossible to have positive difference between orthodoxy and hearsay. Somewhere there must be emerging into each other, but as the subject is this, it does seem a little shocking. In most works upon meteorites the peculiar sulfurous odor of things that fall from the sky is mentioned. Sir John Evans, Stone Implements, page 57, says, with extraordinary reasoning powers, if he could never have thought such a thing with ordinary reasoning powers, that this flint object proved to have been the bolt by its peculiar smell when broken. If it did so prove to be, that settles the whole subject. If we prove that only one object of work stone has fallen from the sky, all piling up of further reports is unnecessary. However, we have already taken the stand that nothing settles anything, that the disputes of ancient Greece are no nearer solution now than they were several thousand years ago, all because in a positive sense nothing to prove or settle or solve. Our object is to be more nearly real than our opponents. Wideness is an aspect of the universal. We go on widely. According to us the fat man is nearer godliness than is the thin man. Eat, drink and approximate to the positive absolute. Beware of negativeness by which we mean indigestion. The vast majority of thunder stones are described as axes, but Mournier, La Nature, 1892 II, 381 tells us of one that was in his possession, said to have fallen at Gardia, Algeria contrasting profondement parachaped with the angular outlines of ordinary meteorites. The conventional explanation that it had been formed as a drop of molten matter from a larger body seems reasonable to me, but with less agreeableness I note it's fall in a thunder storm. The datum that turns the orthodox meteorologist pale with rage or induces a slight elevation of his eyebrows if you mention it to him. Mournier tells of another thunder stone said to have fallen in North Africa. Mournier too is a little lamentable here. He quotes a soldier of experience that such objects fall most frequently in the deserts of Africa. Rather miscellaneous now Thunder stone said to have fallen in London April 1876 weight about eight pounds, no particulars as to shape. Tim's yearbook 1877- 246. Thunder stone said to have fallen at Cardiff September 26, 1916 London Times September 28, 1916 According to Nature in 1898-1995 it was coincidence only lightning flash had been seen. Stone that fell in a storm near St. Albans, England accepted by the Museum of St. Albans said at the British Museum not to be of true meteoritic material. Nature 1834. London Times April 26, 1876 that April 20, 1876 near Wolverhampton fell a mass of iron during a heavy fall of rain an account of this phenomenon in Nature 14-272 by H.S. Maskeline who accepts it as authentic also see Nature 13-531 for three other instances see the Scientific American 47-194 52-83 68-325 as to wedge shape larger than could very well be called an axe Nature 3300 that May 27, 1884 at Tisnes, Norway a meteorite had fallen that the turf was torn up at the spot where the object had been supposed to have fallen that two days later a very peculiar stone was found nearby the description is in shape and size very like the fourth part of a large silt and cheese it is our acceptance that many objects and different substances have been brought down by atmospheric disturbance from what only is a matter of convenience now and until we have more data we call this Super Sargazzo C however our chief interest is in objects that have been shaped by means similar to human handicraft description of the Thunderstones of Burma proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bingle 1869 183 said to be of a kind of stone unlike any other found in Burma called Thunderbolts by the natives I think there is a good deal of meaning in such expressions as unlike any other found in Burma but that if they had said anything more definite there would have been unpleasant consequences to writers in the 19th century more about the Thunderstones of Burma in the proceedings of the Society of Antiquities of London 1892 197 one of them described as an ads was exhibited by Captain Duff who wrote that there was no stone like it in its neighborhood of course it may not be very convincing to say that because a stone is unlike neighboring stones it had foreign origin also we fear it is a kind of plagiarism we got it from the geologists who demonstrate by this reasoning the foreign origin of erratics we fear we're a little gross and scientific at times but it's my acceptance that a great deal of scientific literature must be read between the lines it's not everyone who has the lamentableness of Sir John Evans just as a great deal of Voltaire's meaning was interlinear we suspect that a Captain Duff merely hints rather than to risk having a Professor Lawrence Smith fly at him and call him an often saying man whatever Captain Duff's meaning may have been and whether he smiled like a Voltaire when he wrote it Captain Duff writes of the extremely soft nature of the stone rendering equally useless as an offensive or defensive weapon story by a correspondent in Nature 3453 of a Malay of considerable social standing and one thing about our dad is that even though they be they do so often bring us into awful good company who knew of a tree that had been struck about a month before by something in a thunderstorm he searched among the roots of this tree and found a thunderstorm not said whether he jumped or leaped to the conclusion that it had fallen processed likely to be more leisurely in tropical countries also I'm afraid his way of reasoning was not very original just so were fragments of the bath furnace meteorite accepted by orthodoxy discovered we shall now have an unusual experience we shall read of some reports of extraordinary circumstances that were investigated by a man of science not of course that they were really investigated by him but that his phenomena occupied a position approximating higher to real investigation than to utter neglect over and over we read of extraordinary occurrences no discussion not even a comment afterwards findable mere mention occasionally burial and damnation the extraordinary in how quickly it is hidden away burial and damnation or the obscurity of the conspicuous we did read of a man who in the matter of snails did travel some distance to assure himself of something that he had suspected in advance and we remember Professor Hitchcock who had only to smite amherst with the wand of his botanical knowledge and lo too fungi sprung up before night and we did read of Dr. Gray and his thousands of fishes from one pail full of water but these instances stand out more frequently there was no investigation we now have a good many reported occurrences that were investigated of things said to have fallen from the sky we make in the usual scientific way two divisions miscellaneous objects and substances and symmetric objects attributable to beings like human beings subdividing into wedges spheres and discs the Journal of the Royal Meteorologic Society 14-207 that July 2nd 1866 a correspondent to a London newspaper wrote that something had fallen from the sky during a thunderstorm of June 30th 1866 at Notting Hill Mr. GT Simons of Simons Meteorologic magazine investigated about as fairly and with about as unprejudiced a mind as anything ever has been investigated he says that the object was nothing but a lump of coal that next door to the home where coal had been unloaded the day before with the uncanny wisdom of the stranger upon unfamiliar ground that we have noted before Mr. Simons saw that the coal reported to have fallen from the sky and the coal unloaded more prosaically the day before were identical persons in the neighborhood unable to make this simple identification had bought from the correspondent pieces of the object reported to have fallen from the sky as to credulity I know of no limits for it but when it comes to paying out money for credulity oh no standards to judge by of course just the same the trouble with efficiency is that it will merge away into excess with what seems to me to be superabundance of convincingness Mr. Simons then lugs another character into his little comedy which was all a hoax by a chemist's pupil who had filled a capsule with an explosive and during the storm had thrown the burning mass into the getter so making an artificial thunderbolt or even Shakespeare with all his in artistry did not lug in King Lear to make Hamlet complete whether I'm lugging in something that has no special meaning myself or not I find that this storm of June 30th 1866 was peculiar it is described in the London Times July 2nd 1866 that during the storm the sky in many places remained partially clear while hail and rain were falling that may have more meaning when we take up the possible extra mundane origin of some hailstones especially if they fall from a cloudless sky mere suggestion, not worth much that there may have been falls of extra mundane substances in London, June 30th, 1866 clinkers said to have fallen during a storm at Kilburn, July 5th, 1877 according to the Kilburn Times July 7th, 1877 quoted by Mr. Simons a street had been literally strewn during the storm with a mass of clinkers estimated at about two bushels sizes from that of a walnut to that of a man's hand pieces of the clinkers can be seen at the Kilburn Times office if these clinkers or cinders were refuse from one of the super mercantile constructions from which coke and coal and ashes occasionally fall to this earth or rather to the Super Circazo sea from which dislodgement by tempest occurs it is intermediastic to accept that they must merge away somewhere with local phenomena of the scene of precipitation if a red hot stove should drop from a cloud into Broadway someone would find that at about the time of the occurrence a moving van had passed and that the moving men had tired of the stove or something that it had not been really red hot but it had been rouged instead of blacked by some absent-minded housekeeper compared with some of the scientific explanations that we have encountered there's considerable restraint I think, in that one Mr. Simons learned that in the same street he emphasizes that it was a short street there was a fire engine station I had such an impression of him hustling and bustling around Notting Hill searching cellars until he found one with newly-rived coal in it ringing doorbells in the neighborhood calling up to second-story windows stopping people in the streets hotter and hotter on the trail of a wretched imposter of a chemist's pupil after his efficiency at Notting Hill we'd expect to hear that he went to the station and something like this it is said that clinkers fell in your street at about ten minutes past four o'clock afternoon of July 5th will you look over your records and tell me where your engine was at about ten minutes past four July 5th Mr. Simons says I think that most probably they had been raked out of the steam fire engine June 20th, 1880 it was reported that a thunderstorm had struck the house at 180 Oakley Street, Chelsea falling down the chimney into the kitchen grate Mr. Simons investigated he describes the thunderstorm as an agglomeration of brick, soot, unburned coal, and cinder he says that in his opinion, lightning had flashed down the chimney and had fused some of the brick of it he does think it remarkable that the lightning did not then scatter the contents of the grate which were disturbed only as heavy body had fallen if we admit that climbing up the chimney to find out is too rigorous a requirement for a man who may have been large, dignified and subject to expansions the only unreasonableness we find in what he says as judged by our more modern outlook is I suppose that no one would suggest that bricks are manufactured in the atmosphere sounds a little unreasonable to us because it is so of the positivistic spirit of former times when it was not so obvious that the highest incredibility and laughability must emerge away with the proper as a scientific American supplement would say the preposterous is always interpretable in terms of the proper with which it must be continuous or clay-like masses such as fallen from the sky tremendous heat generated by their velocity they bake bricks we begin to suspect that Mr. Simons exhausted himself at Notting Hill it's a warning to efficiency fanatics End of Chapter 8A Recording by Acacia Wood Chapter 8B of the Book of the Damned by Charles Fort Chapter 8B Then the instance of three lumps of earthy matter found upon a well-frequented path after a thunderstorm at Reading, July 3rd, 1883 There are so many records of the fall of 1883 that it was the first of all the books that were published in the book of the Damned by Charles Fort There are so many records of the fall of earthy matter from the sky that it would seem almost uncanny to find resistance here where we not so accustomed to the uncompromising stands of orthodoxy which in our metaphysics represents good as attempts but evil in their insufficiency If I thought it necessary I'd list 150 instances of earthy matter said to have fallen from the sky It is his antagonism to atmospheric disturbance associated with the fall of things from the sky that blinds and hypnotizes a Mr. Simons here This special Mr. Simons rejects the reading substance because it was not of true meteoritic material It's uncanny or it's not uncanny at all but universal If you don't take something for a standard of opinion you can't have any opinion at all but if you do take a standard in some of its applications it must be preposterous The carbonaceous meteorites which are unquestioned that were avoided as we have seen by orthodoxy are more glaringly of untrue meteoritic material than was the substance of reading Mr. Simons says that these three lumps were upon the ground in the first place Whether these data are worth preserving that the appeal that this special Mr. Simons makes is worthy of a place in the museum we're riding He argues against belief in all external origins for our credit as Englishmen He is a patriot but I think that these foreigners had a small chance in the first place for hospitality from him Then comes a small lump of iron two inches in diameter set to a fallen during a thunderstorm August 17, 1887 Mr. Simons says at present I cannot trace it He was at his best at Notting Hill there's been a marked falling off of his later manner In the London Times February 1, 1888 it is said that a roundish object of iron had been found after a violent thunderstorm in a garden at Brixton August 17, 1887 It was analyzed by chemist who could not identify it as true meteoritic material Whether a product of workmanship like human workmanship or not this object is described as an oblate spheroid about two inches across its major diameter the chemist's name and address are given Mr. J. James Morgan Ebblevale Garden, familiar ground I suppose that a Mr. Simons opinion this symmetric object had been upon the ground in the first place but we do note that he described this object as a lump which does not suggest the spheroidal or symmetric it is our notion that the word lump was because of its meaning of amorphousness used purposely to have the next atom stand alone remote without similars If Mr. Simons had said that there had been a report of another round object that had fallen from the sky his readers would be attracted by an agreement he distracts his readers by describing in terms of the unprecedented Iron Cannonball It was found in a manure heap in Sussex, after a thunderstorm However Mr. Simons argues pretty reasonably it seems to me that given a cannonball in a manure heap in the first place lightning might be attracted by it and if seen to strike there the untutored mind or mentality being below the average or jump or proceed with less celerity to the conclusion that the Iron Object had fallen except that if every farmer isn't upon very familiar ground or if every farmer doesn't know his own manure heap as well as Mr. Simons knew his writing desk then comes the instance of a man his wife and his three daughters at Casterton, Westmoreland who were looking out at their lawn during a thunderstorm when they heard as Mr. Simons expresses it that they saw a stone fall from the sky, kill a sheep and bury itself in the ground they dug they found a stone ball Simons, coincidence it had been there in the first place this object was exhibited at a meeting of the Royal Meteorologic Society by Mr. C. Carys Wilson it is described in the Journal's List of Exhibits as a sandstone ball it is described as sandstone by Mr. Simons now a round piece of sandstone may be almost anywhere in the ground in the first place but by our more or less discredible habit of prying and snooping we find that this object was rather more complex and of material less commonplace and snooping through knowledge October 9th 1885 we read that this thunderstorm was in the possession of Mr. C. Carys Wilson who tells the story of the witness and his family the sheep killed the burial of something in the earth the digging and the finding Mr. C. Carys Wilson describes the object as a ball of hard, fruganous quartzite about the size of a coconut weight about 12 pounds whether we're feeling around for significance or not there is a suggestion not only of symmetry but of structure in this object it had an external shell made from a loose nucleus Mr. Carys Wilson attributes this cleavage to unequal cooling of the mass my own notion is that there is very little deliberate misrepresentation in the writings of scientific men that they are quite as guiltless in the intent as our other hypnotic subjects such a victim of induced belief reads of a stone ball said to have fallen from the sky mechanically in his mind arise impressions of globular lumps or nodules of sandstone which are common almost everywhere he assimilates the reported fall with his impressions of objects in the ground in the first place to an intermediates the phenomena of intellect are only phenomena of universal process localized in human minds the process called explanation is only a local aspect of universal assimilation it looks like materialism but the intermediates holds that interpretation of the immaterial as it is called in terms of the material as it is called is no more rational than interpretation of the material in terms of the immaterial that there is in quasi-existence neither the material nor the immaterial but approximations one way or the other but so hypnotic quasi-reasons that globular lumps of sandstone are common whether he jumps or leaps or whether only the frowsium baseborn or so athletic with the impression by assimilation that this special object is a ball of sandstone or human mentality its inhabitants are conveniences it may be that Mr. Simon's paper was written before this object was exhibited to the members of the society and with the charity with which for the sake of diversity we interspersal analysis we are willing to accept that he investigated something that he had never seen but whoever listed this object was uncareful as sandstone we're making excuses for them really as it were we're not so quite as damned as we were one does not apologize for the gods and at the same time feel quite utterly prostrate before them if this were real existence and all of us real persons with real standards to judge by I'm afraid we'd have to be a little severe with some of these Mr. Simon's as it is of course out of place we note an amusing little touch in the indefinite allusion to a man who with his unnamed family had considered that he had seen a stonefall the man was the Reverend W. Keras Wilson who was well known in his day the next instance was reported by W. B. Tripp F. R. M. S. that during a thunderstorm a farmer had seen the ground in front of him plowed up by something that was luminous Doug bronze axe my own notion is that an expedition to the North Pole could not be so urgent as that representative scientists should have gone to that farmer and there spent a summer studying this one reported occurrence as it is an unnamed farmer somewhere no date the thing must stay damned another specimen for our museum is a comment in nature upon these objects that they are of an amusing character that's clearly showing that they were of terrestrial and not a celestial character just why a celestiality or that of it which too is only of intermediateness should not be quite as amusing as terrestriality is beyond our reasoning powers which we have agreed are not ordinary of course there is nothing amusing about wedges and spheres at all or Archimedes and Euclid or humorists it is they who were described derisively if you'd like a little specimen of the standardization of orthodox opinion American Meteorolic Journal for 589 they are of an amusing character that's clearly showing that they were of a terrestrial and not a celestial character I'm sure not positively of course that we've tried to be as easy going and lenient with Mr. Simons as his obviously scientific performance would permit of course it may be but consciously we were prejudiced against him instinctively classing him with St. Augustine, Darwin St. Jerome and Lyle as to the thunderstorms I think that he investigated them mostly for the credit of Englishmen or in the spirit of the Royal Krakatoa committee or about as the commission from the French Academy investigated meteorites according to a writer in knowledge 5, 4, 18 the Krakatoa committee attempted not in the least to prove what had caused the atmospheric effects of 1883 but to prove that Krakatoa did it altogether I should think that the following quotations should be enlightening to anyone who still thinks that these occurrences were investigated not to support an opinion formed in advance in opening his paper Mr. Simons says that he undertook his investigation as to the existence of thunderstorms or thunderbolts as he calls them feeling certain that there was a weak point somewhere in as much as thunderbolts have no existence we have another instance of the reported fall of a cannonball it occurred prior to Mr. Simons investigations but it is not mentioned by him it was investigated however in the proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 3.147 is the report of a thunderstorm supposed to have fallen in Hampshire September 1852 it was an iron cannonball or it was a large nodule of iron pyrites or bisulfite of iron no one had seen it fall it had been noticed upon a garden path for the first time after a thunderstorm it was only a supposed thing because it had not the character of any known meteorite in the London Times September 16th 1852 appears a letter from Mr. George E. Bailey a chemist of Andover Hance he says that in a very heavy thunderstorm of the first week of September 1852 this iron object had fallen in the garden of Mr. Robert Dowling of Andover that it had fallen upon a path within six yards of the house it had been picked up immediately after the storm by Mrs. Dowling it was about the size of a cricket ball weight four pounds no one had seen it fall in the time September 15th 1852 there is an account of this thunderstorm because of unusual violence there are some other data relative to the ball of quartz of Westmoreland they're poor things they're so little to them that they look like ghosts of the damned however, ghosts when multiplied take on what is called substantiality if the solidest thing conceivable in quasi-existence is only concentrated phantomosity it is not only that there have been other reports of quartz that have fallen from the sky there is another agreement the round quartz object of Westmoreland if broken open and separated from its loose nucleus would be a round hollow quartz object my pseudo-position is that two reports of similar extraordinary occurrences one from England and one from Canada are interesting proceedings of the Canadian Institute 378 that at the meeting of the Institute of December 1st 1888 one of the members, Mr. Stone, exhibited a globular quartz body which he asserted had fallen from the sky it had been split open it was hollow but the other members of the Institute decided that the object was spurious because it was not of true meteoritic material no date, no place mentioned we note the suggestion that it was only a geode which had been upon the ground in the first place its crystalline lining was geode-like quartz is upon the index of the observatory of science a monk who would read Darwin would send no more than would a scientist who would admit that except by the up and down process quartz has ever fallen from the sky but continuity it is not excommunicated if part of or incorporated in a baptized meteorite St. Catharines of Mexico I think it's an epicurean a distinction as any ever made by theologians Fousing list of quartz pebble bibliography part 2.355 up and down of course another object of quartzite was reported to have fallen in the autumn of 1880 at Shroon Lake, New York set in the Scientific American 43272 to be a fraud it was not the usual about the first of May 1899 the newspapers published a story of a snow white meteorite that had fallen of incense Indiana the editor of the Monthly Review issue of April 1899 requested the local observer at Vincent's to investigate the editor says that the thing was only a fragment of a quartz boulder he says that anyone with at least a public school education should know better than to write that quartz has ever fallen from the sky notes and queries 2892 that in the Leiden Museum of Antiquities there is a disk of quartz by 5 millimeters by about 5 centimeters said to have fallen upon a plantation in the Dutch West Indies after a meteoric explosion bricks I think this is a vice for writing I recommend it to those who have hankered for a new sin at first some of our data were of so frightful or ridiculous mean as to be hated or eyebrowed was only to be seen then some pity crept in I think that we can now embrace bricks the baked clay idea was all right in its place but it rather lacks distinction I think with our minds upon the concrete boats that have been building terrestrially lately and thinking of wrecks that may occur to some of them and have a new material for the deep sea fishes to disregard object that fell at Richland South Carolina yellow to gray said to look like a piece of brick American Journal of Science 234 298 pieces of furnace made brick said to have fallen in a hailstorm at Padua August 1834 Edinburgh New Philosophy Journal 1987 the writer offered an explanation that started another convention that the fragments of brick had been knocked from buildings by the hailstones but there is here a concomitant that will be disagreeable to anyone who may have been inclined to smile at the now digestible enough notion that furnace-made bricks have fallen from the sky it is that in some of the hailstones two percent of them that were found with the pieces of brick was a light grayish powder monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 337 365 Padre Satchi explains that a stone said to have fallen in a thunderstorm at Cipino Italy September 1875 had been knocked from a roof Nature 33153 that it had been reported that a good-sized stone of form clearly artificial had fallen at Naples November 1885 the stone was described by two professors of Naples who had accepted it as inexplicable but veritable. They were visited by Dr. H. Johnstone-Lavis the correspondent to Nature whose investigations had convinced him that the object was a shoemaker's lapstone. Now to us of the initiated or to us of the wider outlook there is nothing incredible in the thought of shoemakers in other worlds but I suspect that this characterization is tactical. The object of work stone or this shoemaker's lapstone was made of Vesuvian lava Dr. Johnstone-Lavis thinks most probably of lava of the flow of 1631 from the Lustala quarries and him most probably as bad positivism. As to the men of position who had accepted that this thing had fallen from the sky I have now obliged them to admit their mistake says Dr. Johnstone-Lavis or it's always the stranger Naples who knows the Scala lava better than the natives know it. Explanation the thing that had been knocked from or thrown from a roof as to attempt to trace the occurrence to any special roof Dr. Johnstone-Lavis called a carved stone a lapstone quite as Mr. Simons called a spherical object a cannonball bent upon discrediting incongruity. Shoemaking and Celestiality it is so easy to say that axes or wedge-shaped stones found on the ground were there in the first place and that it is only coincidence that lightning should strike near one but the credibility of coincidences decreases as the square root of their volume sink. Our masked instances speak too much of coincidences of coincidences but the axes or wedge-shaped objects that have been found in trees are more difficult for the doxy. For instance Irogo accepts that such finds have occurred but he argues that if wedge-shaped stones have been found in tree trunks so have toads been found in tree trunks. Did the toads fall there? Not at all bad for a hypnotic. Of course in our acceptance the Irish are the chosen people it's because they are characteristically best in accord with the underlying essence of quasi-existence. Mr. Irogo answers a question by asking another question that's the only way a question could be answered in our hiberian kind of an existence. Dr. Boting argued with the natives of the Sontal Paragons, India who said that cut and shape stones had fallen from the sky some of them in tree trunks. Mr. Boting with orthodox notions of velocity of falling bodies having missed I suppose some of the notes I have upon large hailstones which for size have fallen with astonishingly low velocity argued that anything falling from the sky would be smashed to atoms. He accepts that objects of work-stone have been found in tree trunks but he explains that the sentels often steal trees but do not chop them down in the usual way because that would be to make too much noise. They insert stone wedges and hammer them instead. Then, if they should be caught, wedges would not be the evidence against them that axes would be. Or that a scientific man can't be desperate and reasonable, too. Or that a pickpocket, for instance, is safe though caught with his hand in one's pocket if he's gloved, say, because no court in the land would regard a gloved hand in the same way in which a bear hand would be regarded. That there's nothing but intermediateness rational and preposterous that this status of our own rationalization is perceptible wherein they are upon the unfamiliar. Dr. Boating collected fifty of these shaped stones said to have fallen from the sky in the course of many years. He says that the sentels are a highly developed race and for ages have not used stone implements except in this one nefarious convenience to him. All explanations or localizations fade away before the universal. It is difficult to express that black rains in England do not originate in the smoke of factories. Less difficult to express that black rains of South Africa do not. We utter little stress upon the absurdity of Dr. Boating's explanation, because if anything's absurd everything's absurd or rather has in it some degree or aspect of absurdity and we've never had experience with any state except something somewhere between ultimate absurdity and final reasonableness. Our acceptance is that Dr. Boating's elaborate explanation does not apply to cut stone objects found in tree trunks in other lands. We accept that, for the general, a local explanation is inadequate. As to thunderstorms not said to have fallen luminously and not said to have been found sticking in trees, we are told by faithful hypnotics that astonished rustics come upon prehistoric axes that have been washed into sight by rains and jump to the conclusion that the things have fallen from the sky. But simple rustics come upon many prehistoric things, scrapers, pottery, knives, hammers. We have no recording of rusticity coming upon old pottery after a rain reporting the fall of a bowl from the sky. Just now my own acceptance is that wedge-shaped stone objects formed by means similar to human workmanship have often fallen from the sky. Maybe there are messages upon them. My acceptance is that they have been called axes to discredit them or, the more familiar a term, to hire the incongruity with vague concepts of the vast, remote, tremendous, unknown. In Notes and Queries 2.8.92 a writer says that he had a thunderstorm which he had brought from Jamaica. The description is of a wedge-shaped object, not of an axe. It shows no mark ever been attached to a handle. Of ten thunderstorms, figured upon different pages in Blinkenberg's book, nine show no sign of ever having been attached to a handle. One is perforated. But in a report by Dr. C. Lehmann's director of the Leiden Museum of Antiquities, objects set by the Japanese who have fallen from the sky are alluded to throughout as wedges. In the Archaeologic Journal 11.11.18, in a paper upon the thunderstorms of Java the objects are called wedges, and not axes. Our notion is that rustics and savages call wedge-shaped objects that fall from the sky axes that scientific men when it suits their purposes can resist temptations to prolixity and pedantry and adopt the simple that they can be intelligible when derisive. All of which lands us in a confusion. Worse, I think, than we were in before we so satisfactorily emerged from the distresses of butter and blood and ink and paper and punk and silk. Now it's cannibals and axes and discs. If a lap stone be a disc, it's a flat stone at any rate. A great many scientists are good impressionists. They snub the impertenances of details. Had he been of a coarse, grubbing nature, I think Dr. Boating could never have so simply and beautifully explained the occurrence of stone wedges and tree trunks. But to a realist the story would be something like this. A man who needed a tree in a land of jungles where, for some unknown reason everyone's very selfish with his trees, conceives that hammering stone wedges makes less noise than does the chopping of wood. He and his descendants, in a course of many years, cut down trees with wedges and escaped penalty because it never occurs to a prosecutor that the head of an axe is a wedge. This story is like every other attempted positivism, beautiful and complete, until we see what it excludes or disregards, whereupon it becomes the ugly and incomplete, but not absolutely because there is probably something of what is called foundation for it. Perhaps a mentally incomplete Sontal did once do something of the kind. Story told to Dr. Boating in the usual scientific way. He makes a dogma of an aberration. Or did we have to utter a little stress upon this matter after all? We're so hairy and attractive these scientists of the nineteenth century. We feel the zeal of a sitting-bowl when we think of their scalps. We shall have to have an expression of our own upon this confusing subject. We have expressions we don't call them explanations. We've discarded explanations with beliefs. Though everyone who scalps is in the oneness of allness himself likely to be scalped, there is such a discourtesy to an enemy as the wearing of wigs. And what may they mean? Bombardments of this earth? Attempts to communicate? Or visitors to this earth long ago? Explores from the moon, taking back with them as curiosities perhaps, implements of this earth's prehistoric inhabitants. A wreck, a cargo of such things held for ages in suspension in the Super Circaus O.C., falling or shaken down occasionally by storms. But by preponderance of description we cannot accept that thunderstorms ever were attached to handles or our prehistoric axes. As to attempts to communicate with this earth by means of wedge-shaped objects especially adapted to the penetration of vast, gelatinous areas spread around this earth. In the proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 9.337, there is an account of a stone wedge that fell from the sky near Cashel, Tipperary, August 2, 1865. The phenomena is not questioned, but the orthodox preference is to call it not ax-like, nor wedge-shaped, but pyramidal. For data of other pyramidal stones said to have fallen from the sky, see Report of the British Association, 1861-34. One fell at Segawili, India, March 6, 1853. Of the object that fell at Cashel, Dr. Haughton says in the proceedings, a singular feature is observable on this stone that I have never seen in any other. The rounded edges of the pyramid are sharply marked by lines on the black crust, as perfect as if made by a ruler. Dr. Haughton's idea is that the marks may have been made by some peculiar tension in the cooling. It must have been very peculiar if in all aerolites not wedge-shaped, no such phenomena had ever been observed. It merges away with one or two instances known after Dr. Haughton's time of seeming stratification in meteorites. However, it is denied by the faithful. I begin to suspect something else. A whopper is coming. Later it will be reasonable by familiarity as anything else ever said. If someone should study the stone of Cashel, as Jampolian studied the rosetta stone he might, or rather would inevitably find meaning in those lines, and translate them into English. Nevertheless I begin to suspect something else, something more subtle and esoteric than graven characters upon stones that have fallen from the sky in attempts to communicate. The notion that other worlds are attempting to communicate with this world is widespread. My own notion is that it is no attempt at all. That it was achievement centuries ago. I should like to send out a report that a thunderstorm had fallen, say, somewhere in New Hampshire, and keep track of every person who came to examine that stone, trace down his affiliations, keep track of him. Then send out a report that a thunderstorm had fallen at Stockholm, say. Would one of the persons who had gone to New Hampshire be met again in Stockholm? But what if he had no anthropological lapidarian or meteorologic affiliations, but did belong to a secret society? It is only a dawning credulity. Of the three forms of symmetric objects that have or haven't fallen from the sky, it seems to me that the disc is the most striking. So far in this respect we've been at our worst. Possibly that's pretty bad. But lab stones are likely to be of considerable variety of form, and something that is said to have fallen at some time, somewhere in the Dutch West Indies, is profoundly of the unchosen. Now we shall have something that is high up in the castes of the accursed. Comptes Rindus 1887-182 That upon June 20th 1887, in a violent storm, two months before the reported fall of this symmetric iron object of Brixton, a small stone had fallen from the sky at Tarbes, France. Thirteen millimeters in diameter, five millimeters thick, weight, two grams, reported to the French Academy by Miser Soudre, professor of the Normal School, Tarbes. This time the old convenience there in the first place is too greatly resisted. The stone was covered with ice. This object had been cut and shaped by means similar to human hands and human mentality. It was a disc of work stone. Très régulière. Il était, émagement, travailler. There's not a word as to any known whirlwind anywhere. Nothing of other objects or debris that fell at or near this date in France. The thing had fallen alone. But as mechanically as any part of a machine responds to its stimulus, the explanation appears in comp's rendus that this stone had been raised by a whirlwind and then flung down. It may be that in the whole 19th century no event more important than this occurred in La Nature, 1887 and in La Né scientifique, 1887, this occurrence is noted. It is mentioned in one of the summer numbers of Nature, 1887, fossing lists of paper upon it in the Anywhere de Meteorologique, 1887. Not a word of discussion. Not a subsequent mention can I find. Our own expression. What matters is how we, the French Academy, or the Salvation Army may explain. A disc of work stone fell from the sky at Tarbes, France, June 20th, 1887. End of Chapter 8B Recording by Acacia Wood.