4
It is in the records of the French Academy that, upon March 17, 1669, in
the town of Chatillon-sur-Seine, fell a reddish substance that was
"thick, viscous, and putrid."
_American Journal of Science_, 1-41-404:
Story of a highly unpleasant substance that had fallen from the sky, in
Wilson County, Tennessee. We read that Dr. Troost visited the place and
investigated. Later we're going to investigate some investigations--but
never mind that now. Dr. Troost reported that the substance was clear
blood and portions of flesh scattered upon tobacco fields. He argued
that a whirlwind might have taken an animal up from one place, mauled it
around, and have precipitated its remains somewhere else.
But, in volume 44, page 216, of the _Journal_, there is an apology. The
whole matter is, upon newspaper authority, said to have been a hoax by
Negroes, who had pretended to have seen the shower, for the sake of
practicing upon the credulity of their masters: that they had scattered
the decaying flesh of a dead hog over the tobacco fields.
If we don't accept this datum, at least we see the sociologically
necessary determination to have all falls accredited to earthly
origins--even when they're falls that don't fall.
_Annual Register_, 1821-687:
That, upon the 13th of August, 1819, something had fallen from the sky
at Amherst, Mass. It had been examined and described by Prof. Graves,
formerly lecturer at Dartmouth College. It was an object that had upon
it a nap, similar to that of milled cloth. Upon removing this nap, a
buff-colored, pulpy substance was found. It had an offensive odor, and,
upon exposure to the air, turned to a vivid red. This thing was said to
have fallen with a brilliant light.
Also see the _Edinburgh Philosophical Journal_, 5-295. In the _Annales
de Chimie_, 1821-67, M. Arago accepts the datum, and gives four
instances of similar objects or substances said to have fallen from the
sky, two of which we shall have with our data of gelatinous, or viscous
matter, and two of which I omit, because it seems to me that the dates
given are too far back.
In the _American Journal of Science_, 1-2-335, is Professor Graves'
account, communicated by Professor Dewey:
That, upon the evening of August 13, 1819, a light was seen in
Amherst--a falling object--sound as if of an explosion.
In the home of Prof. Dewey, this light was reflected upon a wall of a
room in which were several members of Prof. Dewey's family.
The next morning, in Prof. Dewey's front yard, in what is said to have
been the only position from which the light that had been seen in the
room, the night before, could have been reflected, was found a substance
"unlike anything before observed by anyone who saw it." It was a
bowl-shaped object, about 8 inches in diameter, and one inch thick.
Bright buff-colored, and having upon it a "fine nap." Upon removing this
covering, a buff-colored, pulpy substance of the consistency of
soft-soap, was found--"of an offensive, suffocating smell."
A few minutes of exposure to the air changed the buff color to "a livid
color resembling venous blood." It absorbed moisture quickly from the
air and liquefied. For some of the chemic reactions, see the _Journal_.
There's another lost quasi-soul of a datum that seems to me to belong
here:
London _Times_, April 19, 1836:
Fall of fish that had occurred in the neighborhood of Allahabad, India.
It is said that the fish were of the chalwa species, about a span in
length and a seer in weight--you know.
They were dead and dry.
Or they had been such a long time out of water that we can't accept that
they had been scooped out of a pond, by a whirlwind--even though they
were so definitely identified as of a known local species--
Or they were not fish at all.
I incline, myself, to the acceptance that they were not fish, but
slender, fish-shaped objects of the same substance as that which fell at
Amherst--it is said that, whatever they were, they could not be eaten:
that "in the pan, they turned to blood."
For details of this story see the _Journal of the Asiatic Society of
Bengal_, 1834-307. May 16 or 17, 1834, is the date given in the
_Journal_.
In the _American Journal of Science_, 1-25-362, occurs the inevitable
damnation of the Amherst object:
Prof. Edward Hitchcock went to live in Amherst. He says that years
later, another object, like the one said to have fallen in 1819, had
been found at "nearly the same place." Prof. Hitchcock was invited by
Prof. Graves to examine it. Exactly like the first one. Corresponded in
size and color and consistency. The chemic reactions were the same.
Prof. Hitchcock recognized it in a moment.
It was a gelatinous fungus.
He did not satisfy himself as to just the exact species it belonged to,
but he predicted that similar fungi might spring up within twenty-four
hours--
But, before evening, two others sprang up.
Or we've arrived at one of the oldest of the exclusionists'
conventions--or nostoc. We shall have many data of gelatinous substance
said to have fallen from the sky: almost always the exclusionists argue
that it was only nostoc, an Alga, or, in some respects, a fungous
growth. The rival convention is "spawn of frogs or of fishes." These two
conventions have made a strong combination. In instances where testimony
was not convincing that gelatinous matter had been seen to fall, it was
said that the gelatinous substance was nostoc, and had been upon the
ground in the first place: when the testimony was too good that it had
fallen, it was said to be spawn that had been carried from one place to
another in a whirlwind.
Now, I can't say that nostoc is always greenish, any more than I can say
that blackbirds are always black, having seen a white one: we shall
quote a scientist who knew of flesh-colored nostoc, when so to know was
convenient. When we come to reported falls of gelatinous substances, I'd
like it to be noticed how often they are described as whitish or
grayish. In looking up the subject, myself, I have read only of
greenish nostoc. Said to be greenish, in Webster's Dictionary--said to
be "blue-green" in the New International Encyclopedia--"from bright
green to olive-green" (_Science Gossip_, 10-114); "green" (_Science
Gossip_, 7-260); "greenish" (_Notes and Queries_, 1-11-219). It would
seem acceptable that, if many reports of white birds should occur, the
birds are not blackbirds, even though there have been white blackbirds.
Or that, if often reported, grayish or whitish gelatinous substance is
not nostoc, and is not spawn if occurring in times unseasonable for
spawn.
"The Kentucky Phenomenon."
So it was called, in its day, and now we have an occurrence that
attracted a great deal of attention in its own time. Usually these
things of the accursed have been hushed up or disregarded--suppressed
like the seven black rains of Slains--but, upon March 3, 1876, something
occurred, in Bath County, Kentucky, that brought many newspaper
correspondents to the scene.
The substance that looked like beef that fell from the sky.
Upon March 3, 1876, at Olympian Springs, Bath County, Kentucky, flakes
of a substance that looked like beef fell from the sky--"from a clear
sky." We'd like to emphasize that it was said that nothing but this
falling substance was visible in the sky. It fell in flakes of various
sizes; some two inches square, one, three or four inches square. The
flake-formation is interesting: later we shall think of it as signifying
pressure--somewhere. It was a thick shower, on the ground, on trees, on
fences, but it was narrowly localized: or upon a strip of land about 100
yards long and about 50 yards wide. For the first account, see the
_Scientific American_, 34-197, and the _New York Times_, March 10, 1876.
Then the exclusionists.
Something that looked like beef: one flake of it the size of a square
envelope.
If we think of how hard the exclusionists have fought to reject the
coming of ordinary-looking dust from this earth's externality, we can
sympathize with them in this sensational instance, perhaps. Newspaper
correspondents wrote broadcast and witnesses were quoted, and this time
there is no mention of a hoax, and, except by one scientist, there is no
denial that the fall did take place.
It seems to me that the exclusionists are still more emphatically
conservators. It is not so much that they are inimical to all data of
externally derived substances that fall upon this earth, as that they
are inimical to all data discordant with a system that does not include
such phenomena--
Or the spirit or hope or ambition of the cosmos, which we call attempted
positivism: not to find out the new; not to add to what is called
knowledge, but to systematize.
_Scientific American Supplement_, 2-426:
That the substance reported from Kentucky had been examined by Leopold
Brandeis.
"At last we have a proper explanation of this much talked of
phenomenon."
"It has been comparatively easy to identify the substance and to fix its
status. The Kentucky 'wonder' is no more or less than nostoc."
Or that it had not fallen; that it had been upon the ground in the first
place, and had swollen in rain, and, attracting attention by greatly
increased volume, had been supposed by unscientific observers to have
fallen in rain--
What rain, I don't know.
Also it is spoken of as "dried" several times. That's one of the most
important of the details.
But the relief of outraged propriety, expressed in the _Supplement_, is
amusing to some of us, who, I fear, may be a little improper at times.
Very spirit of the Salvation Army, when some third-rate scientist comes
out with an explanation of the vermiform appendix or the os coccygis
that would have been acceptable to Moses. To give completeness to "the
proper explanation," it is said that Mr. Brandeis had identified the
substance as "flesh-colored" nostoc.
Prof. Lawrence Smith, of Kentucky, one of the most resolute of the
exclusionists:
_New York Times_, March 12, 1876:
That the substance had been examined and analyzed by Prof. Smith,
according to whom it gave every indication of being the "dried" spawn of
some reptile, "doubtless of the frog"--or up from one place and down in
another. As to "dried," that may refer to condition when Prof. Smith
received it.
In the _Scientific American Supplement_, 2-473, Dr. A. Mead Edwards,
President of the Newark Scientific Association, writes that, when he saw
Mr. Brandeis' communication, his feeling was of conviction that
propriety had been re-established, or that the problem had been solved,
as he expresses it: knowing Mr. Brandeis well, he had called upon that
upholder of respectability, to see the substance that had been
identified as nostoc. But he had also called upon Dr. Hamilton, who had
a specimen, and Dr. Hamilton had declared it to be lung-tissue. Dr.
Edwards writes of the substance that had so completely, or
beautifully--if beauty is completeness--been identified as nostoc--"It
turned out to be lung-tissue also." He wrote to other persons who had
specimens, and identified other specimens as masses of cartilage or
muscular fibers. "As to whence it came, I have no theory." Nevertheless
he endorses the local explanation--and a bizarre thing it is:
A flock of gorged, heavy-weighted buzzards, but far up and invisible in
the clear sky--
They had disgorged.
Prof. Fassig lists the substance, in his "Bibliography," as fish spawn.
McAtee (_Monthly Weather Review_, May, 1918) lists it as a jelly-like
material, supposed to have been the "dried" spawn either of fishes or of
some batrachian.
Or this is why, against the seemingly insuperable odds against all
things new, there can be what is called progress--
That nothing is positive, in the aspects of homogeneity and unity:
If the whole world should seem to combine against you, it is only unreal
combination, or intermediateness to unity and disunity. Every resistance
is itself divided into parts resisting one another. The simplest
strategy seems to be--never bother to fight a thing: set its own parts
fighting one another.
We are merging away from carnal to gelatinous substance, and here there
is an abundance of instances or reports of instances. These data are so
improper they're obscene to the science of today, but we shall see that
science, before it became so rigorous, was not so prudish. Chladni was
not, and Greg was not.
I shall have to accept, myself, that gelatinous substance has often
fallen from the sky--
Or that, far up, or far away, the whole sky is gelatinous?
That meteors tear through and detach fragments?
That fragments are brought down by storms?
That the twinkling of stars is penetration of light through something
that quivers?
I think, myself, that it would be absurd to say that the whole sky is
gelatinous: it seems more acceptable that only certain areas are.
Humboldt (_Cosmos_, 1-119) says that all our data in this respect must
be "classed amongst the mythical fables of mythology." He is very sure,
but just a little redundant.
We shall be opposed by the standard resistances:
There in the first place;
Up from one place, in a whirlwind, and down in another.
We shall not bother to be very convincing one way or another, because of
the over-shadowing of the datum with which we shall end up. It will mean
that something had been in a stationary position for several days over a
small part of a small town in England: this is the revolutionary thing
that we have alluded to before; whether the substance were nostoc, or
spawn, or some kind of a larval nexus, doesn't matter so much. If it
stood in the sky for several days, we rank with Moses as a chronicler of
improprieties--or was that story, or datum, we mean, told by Moses? Then
we shall have so many records of gelatinous substance said to have
fallen with meteorites, that, between the two phenomena, some of us will
have to accept connection--or that there are at least vast gelatinous
areas aloft, and that meteorites tear through, carrying down some of the
substance.
_Comptes Rendus_, 3-554:
That, in 1836, M. Vallot, member of the French Academy, placed before
the Academy some fragments of a gelatinous substance, said to have
fallen from the sky, and asked that they be analyzed. There is no
further allusion to this subject.
_Comptes Rendus_, 23-542:
That, in Wilna, Lithuania, April 4, 1846, in a rainstorm, fell nut-sized
masses of a substance that is described as both resinous and
gelatinous. It was odorless until burned: then it spread a very
pronounced sweetish odor. It is described as like gelatine, but much
firmer: but, having been in water 24 hours, it swelled out, and looked
altogether gelatinous--
It was grayish.
We are told that, in 1841 and 1846, a similar substance had fallen in
Asia Minor.
In _Notes and Queries_, 8-6-190, it is said that, early in August, 1894,
thousands of jellyfish, about the size of a shilling, had fallen at
Bath, England. I think it is not acceptable that they were jellyfish:
but it does look as if this time frog spawn did fall from the sky, and
may have been translated by a whirlwind--because, at the same time,
small frogs fell at Wigan, England.
_Nature_, 87-10:
That, June 24, 1911, at Eton, Bucks, England, the ground was found
covered with masses of jelly, the size of peas, after a heavy rainfall.
We are not told of nostoc, this time: it is said that the object
contained numerous eggs of "some species of Chironomus, from which
larvae soon emerged."
I incline, then, to think that the objects that fell at Bath were
neither jellyfish nor masses of frog spawn, but something of a larval
kind--
This is what had occurred at Bath, England, 23 years before.
London _Times_, April 24, 1871:
That, upon the 22nd of April, 1871, a storm of glutinous drops neither
jellyfish nor masses of frog spawn, but something of a [line missing
here in original text. Ed.] railroad station, at Bath. "Many soon
developed into a worm-like chrysalis, about an inch in length." The
account of this occurrence in the _Zoologist_, 2-6-2686, is more like
the Eton-datum: of minute forms, said to have been infusoria; not forms
about an inch in length.
_Trans. Ent. Soc. of London_, 1871-proc. xxii:
That the phenomenon has been investigated by the Rev. L. Jenyns, of
Bath. His description is of minute worms in filmy envelopes. He tries to
account for their segregation. The mystery of it is: What could have
brought so many of them together? Many other falls we shall have record
of, and in most of them segregation is the great mystery. A whirlwind
seems anything but a segregative force. Segregation of things that have
fallen from the sky has been avoided as most deep-dyed of the damned.
Mr. Jenyns conceives of a large pool, in which were many of these
spherical masses: of the pool drying up and concentrating all in a small
area; of a whirlwind then scooping all up together--
But several days later, more of these objects fell in the same place.
That such marksmanship is not attributable to whirlwinds seems to me to
be what we think we mean by common sense:
It may not look like common sense to say that these things had been
stationary over the town of Bath, several days--
The seven black rains of Slains;
The four red rains of Siena.
An interesting sidelight on the mechanics of orthodoxy is that Mr.
Jenyns dutifully records the second fall, but ignores it in his
explanation.
R.P. Greg, one of the most notable of cataloguers of meteoritic
phenomena, records (_Phil. Mag._: 4-8-463) falls of viscid substance in
the years 1652, 1686, 1718, 1796, 1811, 1819, 1844. He gives earlier
dates, but I practice exclusions, myself. In the _Report of the British
Association_, 1860-63, Greg records a meteor that seemed to pass near
the ground, between Barsdorf and Freiburg, Germany: the next day a
jelly-like mass was found in the snow--
Unseasonableness for either spawn or nostoc.
Greg's comment in this instance is: "Curious if true." But he records
without modification the fall of a meteorite at Gotha, Germany, Sept. 6,
1835, "leaving a jelly-like mass on the ground." We are told that this
substance fell only three feet away from an observer. In the _Report of
the British Association_, 1855-94, according to a letter from Greg to
Prof. Baden-Powell, at night, Oct. 8, 1844, near Coblenz, a German, who
was known to Greg, and another person saw a luminous body fall close to
them. They returned next morning and found a gelatinous mass of grayish
color.
According to Chladni's account (_Annals of Philosophy_, n.s., 12-94) a
viscous mass fell with a luminous meteorite between Siena and Rome,
May, 1652; viscous matter found after the fall of a fire ball, in
Lusatia, March, 1796; fall of a gelatinous substance, after the
explosion of a meteorite, near Heidelberg, July, 1811. In the _Edinburgh
Philosophical Journal_, 1-234, the substance that fell at Lusatia is
said to have been of the "color and odor of dried, brown varnish." In
the _Amer. Jour. Sci._, 1-26-133, it is said that gelatinous matter fell
with a globe of fire, upon the island of Lethy, India, 1718.
In the _Amer. Jour. Sci._, 1-26-396, in many observations upon the
meteors of November, 1833, are reports of falls of gelatinous substance:
That, according to newspaper reports, "lumps of jelly" were found on the
ground at Rahway, N.J. The substance was whitish, or resembled the
coagulated white of an egg:
That Mr. H.H. Garland, of Nelson County, Virginia, had found a
jelly-like substance of about the circumference of a twenty-five-cent
piece:
That, according to a communication from A.C. Twining to Prof. Olmstead,
a woman at West Point, N.Y., had seen a mass the size of a teacup. It
looked like boiled starch:
That, according to a newspaper, of Newark, N.J., a mass of gelatinous
substance, like soft soap, had been found. "It possessed little
elasticity, and, on the application of heat, it evaporated as readily as
water."
It seems incredible that a scientist would have such hardihood, or
infidelity, as to accept that these things had fallen from the sky:
nevertheless, Prof. Olmstead, who collected these lost souls, says:
"The fact that the supposed deposits were so uniformly described as
gelatinous substance forms a presumption in favor of the supposition
that they had the origin ascribed to them."
In contemporaneous scientific publications considerable attention was
given to Prof. Olmstead's series of papers upon this subject of the
November meteors. You will not find one mention of the part that treats
of gelatinous matter.
5
I shall attempt not much of correlation of dates. A mathematic-minded
positivist, with his delusion that in an intermediate state twice two
are four, whereas, if we accept Continuity, we cannot accept that there
are anywhere two things to start with, would search our data for
periodicities. It is so obvious to me that the mathematic, or the
regular, is the attribute of the Universal, that I have not much
inclination to look for it in the local. Still, in this solar system,
"as a whole," there is considerable approximation to regularity; or the
mathematic is so nearly localized that eclipses, for instance, can, with
rather high approximation, be foretold, though I have notes that would
deflate a little the astronomers' vainglory in this respect--or would if
that were possible. An astronomer is poorly paid, uncheered by crowds,
considerably isolated: he lives upon his own inflations: deflate a bear
and it couldn't hibernate. This solar system is like every other
phenomenon that can be regarded "as a whole"--or the affairs of a ward
are interfered with by the affairs of the city of which it is a part;
city by county; county by state; state by nation; nation by other
nations; all nations by climatic conditions; climatic conditions by
solar circumstances; sun by general planetary circumstances; solar
system "as a whole" by other solar systems--so the hopelessness of
finding the phenomena of entirety in the ward of a city. But positivists
are those who try to find the unrelated in the ward of a city. In our
acceptance this is the spirit of cosmic religion. Objectively the state
is not realizable in the ward of a city. But, if a positivist could
bring himself to absolute belief that he had found it, that would be a
subjective realization of that which is unrealizable objectively. Of
course we do not draw a positive line between the objective and the
subjective--or that all phenomena called things or persons are
subjective within one all-inclusive nexus, and that thoughts within
those that are commonly called "persons" are sub-subjective. It is
rather as if Intermediateness strove for Regularity in this solar
system and failed: then generated the mentality of astronomers, and, in
that secondary expression, strove for conviction that failure had been
success.
I have tabulated all the data of this book, and a great deal
besides--card system--and several proximities, thus emphasized, have
been revelations to me: nevertheless, it is only the method of
theologians and scientists--worst of all, of statisticians.
For instance, by the statistic method, I could "prove" that a black rain
has fallen "regularly" every seven months, somewhere upon this earth. To
do this, I'd have to include red rains and yellow rains, but,
conventionally, I'd pick out the black particles in red substances and
in yellow substances, and disregard the rest. Then, too, if here and
there a black rain should be a week early or a month late--that would be
"acceleration" or "retardation." This is supposed to be legitimate in
working out the periodicities of comets. If black rains, or red or
yellow rains with black particles in them, should not appear at all near
some dates--we have not read Darwin in vain--"the records are not
complete." As to other, interfering black rains, they'd be either gray
or brown, or for them we'd find other periodicities.
Still, I have had to notice the year 1819, for instance. I shall not
note them all in this book, but I have records of 31 extraordinary
events in 1883. Someone should write a book upon the phenomena of this
one year--that is, if books should be written. 1849 is notable for
extraordinary falls, so far apart that a local explanation seems
inadequate--not only the black rain of Ireland, May, 1849, but a red
rain in Sicily and a red rain in Wales. Also, it is said (Timb's _Year
Book_, 1850-241) that, upon April 18 or 20, 1849, shepherds near Mt.
Ararat, found a substance that was not indigenous, upon areas measuring
8 to 10 miles in circumference. Presumably it had fallen there.
We have already gone into the subject of Science and its attempted
positiveness, and its resistances in that it must have relations of
service. It is very easy to see that most of the theoretic science of
the 19th century was only a relation of reaction against theologic
dogma, and has no more to do with Truth than has a wave that bounds back
from a shore. Or, if a shop girl, or you or I, should pull out a piece
of chewing gum about a yard long, that would be quite as scientific a
performance as was the stretching of this earth's age several hundred
millions of years.
All "things" are not things, but only relations, or expressions of
relations: but all relations are striving to be the unrelated, or have
surrendered to, and subordinated to, higher attempts. So there is a
positivist aspect to this reaction that is itself only a relation, and
that is the attempt to assimilate all phenomena under the materialist
explanation, or to formulate a final, all-inclusive system, upon the
materialist basis. If this attempt could be realized, that would be the
attaining of realness; but this attempt can be made only by disregarding
psychic phenomena, for instance--or, if science shall eventually give in
to the psychic, it would be no more legitimate to explain the immaterial
in terms of the material than to explain the material in terms of the
immaterial. Our own acceptance is that material and immaterial are of a
oneness, merging, for instance, in a thought that is continuous with a
physical action: that oneness cannot be explained, because the process
of explaining is the interpreting of something in terms of something
else. All explanation is assimilation of something in terms of something
else that has been taken as a basis: but, in Continuity, there is
nothing that is any more basic than anything else--unless we think that
delusion built upon delusion is less real than its pseudo-foundation.
In 1829 (Timb's _Year Book_, 1848-235) in Persia fell a substance that
the people said they had never seen before. As to what it was, they had
not a notion, but they saw that the sheep ate it. They ground it into
flour and made bread, said to have been passable enough, though insipid.
That was a chance that science did not neglect. Manna was placed upon a
reasonable basis, or was assimilated and reconciled with the system that
had ousted the older--and less nearly real--system. It was said that,
likely enough, manna had fallen in ancient times--because it was still
falling--but that there was no tutelary influence behind it--that it was
a lichen from the steppes of Asia Minor--from one place in a whirlwind
and down in another place. "In the _American Almanac_, 1833-71, it is
said that this substance--to the inhabitants of the region"--was
"immediately recognized" by scientists who examined it: and that "the
chemical analysis also identified it as a lichen."
This was back in the days when Chemical Analysis was a god. Since then
his devotees have been shocked and disillusioned. Just how a chemical
analysis could so botanize, I don't know--but it was Chemical Analysis
who spoke, and spoke dogmatically. It seems to me that the ignorance of
inhabitants, contrasting with the local knowledge of foreign scientists,
is overdone: if there's anything good to eat, within any distance
conveniently covered by a whirlwind--inhabitants know it. I have data of
other falls, in Persia and Asiatic Turkey, of edible substances. They
are all dogmatically said to be "manna"; and "manna" is dogmatically
said to be a species of lichens from the steppes of Asia Minor. The
position that I take is that this explanation was evolved in ignorance
of the fall of vegetable substances, or edible substances, in other
parts of the world: that it is the familiar attempt to explain the
general in terms of the local; that, if we shall have data of falls of
vegetable substance, in, say, Canada or India, they were not of lichens
from the steppes of Asia Minor; that, though all falls in Asiatic Turkey
and Persia are sweepingly and conveniently called showers of "manna,"
they have not been even all of the same substance. In one instance the
particles are said to have been "seeds." Though, in _Comptes Rendus_,
the substance that fell in 1841 and 1846 is said to have been
gelatinous, in the _Bull. Sci. Nat. de Neuchatel_, it is said to have
been of something, in lumps the size of a filbert, that had been ground
into flour; that of this flour had been made bread, very
attractive-looking, but flavorless.