But I'll omit many notes upon ashes: if ashes should sift down upon
deep-sea fishes, that is not to say that they came from steamships.
Data of falls of cinders have been especially damned by Mr. Symons, the
meteorologist, some of whose investigations we'll investigate
later--nevertheless--
Notice of a fall, in Victoria, Australia, April 14, 1875 (_Rept. Brit.
Assoc._, 1875-242)--at least we are told, in the reluctant way, that
someone "thought" he saw matter fall near him at night, and the next day
found something that looked like cinders.
In the _Proc. of the London Roy. Soc._, 19-122, there is an account of
cinders that fell on the deck of a lightship, Jan. 9, 1873. In the
_Amer. Jour. Sci._, 2-24-449, there is a notice that the Editor had
received a specimen of cinders said to have fallen--in showery
weather--upon a farm, near Ottowa, Ill., Jan. 17, 1857.
But after all, ambiguous things they are, cinders or ashes or slag or
clinkers, the high priest of the accursed that must speak aloud for us
is--coal that has fallen from the sky.
Or coke:
The person who thought he saw something like cinders, also thought he
saw something like coke, we are told.
_Nature_, 36-119:
Something that "looked exactly like coke" that fell--during a
thunderstorm--in the Orne, France, April 24, 1887.
Or charcoal:
Dr. Angus Smith, in the _Lit. and Phil. Soc. of Manchester Memoirs_,
2-9-146, says that, about 1827--like a great deal in Lyell's
_Principles_ and Darwin's _Origin_, this account is from
hearsay--something fell from the sky, near Allport, England. It fell
luminously, with a loud report, and scattered in a field. A fragment
that was seen by Dr. Smith, is described by him as having "the
appearance of a piece of common wood charcoal." Nevertheless, the
reassured feeling of the faithful, upon reading this, is burdened with
data of differences: the substance was so uncommonly heavy that it
seemed as if it had iron in it; also there was "a sprinkling of
sulphur." This material is said, by Prof. Baden-Powell, to be "totally
unlike that of any other meteorite." Greg, in his catalogue (_Rept.
Brit. Assoc._, 1860-73), calls it "a more than doubtful substance"--but
again, against reassurance, that is not doubt of authenticity. Greg says
that it is like compact charcoal, with particles of sulphur and iron
pyrites embedded.
Reassurance rises again:
Prof. Baden-Powell says: "It contains also charcoal, which might perhaps
be acquired from matter among which it fell."
This is a common reflex with the exclusionists: that substances not
"truly meteoritic" did not fall from the sky, but were picked up by
"truly meteoritic" things, of course only on their surfaces, by impact
with this earth.
Rhythm of reassurances and their declines:
According to Dr. Smith, this substance was not merely coated with
charcoal; his analysis gives 43.59 per cent carbon.
Our acceptance that coal has fallen from the sky will be via data of
resinous substances and bituminous substances, which merge so that they
cannot be told apart.
Resinous substance said to have fallen at Kaba, Hungary, April 15, 1887
(_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1860-94).
A resinous substance that fell after a fireball? at Neuhaus, Bohemia,
Dec. 17, 1824 (_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1860-70).
Fall, July 28, 1885, at Luchon, during a storm, of a brownish substance;
very friable, carbonaceous matter; when burned it gave out a resinous
odor (_Comptes Rendus_, 103-837).
Substance that fell, Feb. 17, 18, 19, 1841, at Genoa, Italy, said to
have been resinous; said by Arago (_OEuvres_, 12-469) to have been
bituminous matter and sand.
Fall--during a thunderstorm--July, 1681, near Cape Cod, upon the deck of
an English vessel, the _Albemarle_, of "burning, bituminous matter"
(_Edin. New Phil. Jour._, 26-86); a fall, at Christiania, Norway, June
13, 1822, of bituminous matter, listed by Greg as doubtful; fall of
bituminous matter, in Germany, March 8, 1798, listed by Greg. Lockyer
(_The Meteoric Hypothesis_, p. 24) says that the substance that fell at
the Cape of Good Hope, Oct. 13, 1838--about five cubic feet of it:
substance so soft that it was cuttable with a knife--"after being
experimented upon, it left a residue, which gave out a very bituminous
smell."
And this inclusion of Lockyer's--so far as findable in all books that I
have read--is, in books, about as close as we can get to our
desideratum--that coal has fallen from the sky. Dr. Farrington, except
with a brief mention, ignores the whole subject of the fall of
carbonaceous matter from the sky. Proctor, in all of his books that I
have read--is, in books, about as close as we can get to the admission
that carbonaceous matter has been found in meteorites "in very minute
quantities"--or my own suspicion is that it is possible to damn
something else only by losing one's own soul--quasi-soul, of course.
_Sci. Amer._, 35-120:
That the substance that fell at the Cape of Good Hope "resembled a piece
of anthracite coal more than anything else."
It's a mistake, I think: the resemblance is to bituminous coal--but it
is from the periodicals that we must get our data. To the writers of
books upon meteorites, it would be as wicked--by which we mean departure
from the characters of an established species--quasi-established, of
course--to say that coal has fallen from the sky, as would be, to
something in a barnyard, a temptation that it climb a tree and catch a
bird. Domestic things in a barnyard: and how wild things from forests
outside seem to them. Or the homeopathist--but we shall shovel data of
coal.
And, if over and over, we shall learn of masses of soft coal that have
fallen upon this earth, if in no instance has it been asserted that the
masses did not fall, but were upon the ground in the first place; if we
have many instances, this time we turn down good and hard the mechanical
reflex that these masses were carried from one place to another in
whirlwinds, because we find it too difficult to accept that whirlwinds
could so select, or so specialize in a peculiar substance. Among writers
of books, the only one I know of who makes more than brief mention is
Sir Robert Ball. He represents a still more antique orthodoxy, or is an
exclusionist of the old type, still holding out against even meteorites.
He cites several falls of carbonaceous matter, but with disregards that
make for reasonableness that earthy matter may have been caught up by
whirlwinds and flung down somewhere else. If he had given a full list,
he would be called upon to explain the special affinity of whirlwinds
for a special kind of coal. He does not give a full list. We shall have
all that's findable, and we shall see that against this disease we're
writing, the homeopathist's prescription availeth not. Another
exclusionist was Prof. Lawrence Smith. His psycho-tropism was to
respond to all reports of carbonaceous matter falling from the sky, by
saying that this damned matter had been deposited upon things of the
chosen by impact with this earth. Most of our data antedate him, or were
contemporaneous with him, or were as accessible to him as to us. In his
attempted positivism it is simply--and beautifully--disregarded that,
according to Berthelot, Berzelius, Cloez, Wohler and others these masses
are not merely coated with carbonaceous matter, but are carbonaceous
throughout, or are permeated throughout. How anyone could so resolutely
and dogmatically and beautifully and blindly hold out would puzzle us
were it not for our acceptance that only to think is to exclude and
include; and to exclude some things that have as much right to come in
as have the included--that to have an opinion upon any subject is to be
a Lawrence Smith--because there is no definite subject.
Dr. Walter Flight (_Eclectic Magazine_, 89-71) says, of the substance
that fell near Alais, France, March 15, 1806, that it "emits a faint
bituminous substance" when heated, according to the observations of
Bergelius and a commission appointed by the French Academy. This time we
have not the reluctances expressed in such words as "like" and
"resembling." We are told that this substance is "an earthy kind of
coal."
As to "minute quantities" we are told that the substance that fell at
the Cape of Good Hope has in it a little more than a quarter of organic
matter, which, in alcohol, gives the familiar reaction of yellow,
resinous matter. Other instances given by Dr. Flight are:
Carbonaceous matter that fell in 1840, in Tennessee; Cranbourne,
Australia, 1861; Montauban, France, May 14, 1864 (twenty masses, some of
them as large as a human head, of a substance that "resembled a
dull-colored earthy lignite"); Goalpara, India, about 1867 (about 8 per
cent of a hydrocarbon); at Ornans, France, July 11, 1868; substance with
"an organic, combustible ingredient," at Hessle, Sweden, Jan. 1, 1860.
_Knowledge_, 4-134:
That, according to M. Daubree, the substance that had fallen in the
Argentine Republic, "resembled certain kinds of lignite and boghead
coal." In _Comptes Rendus_, 96-1764, it is said that this mass fell,
June 30, 1880, in the province Entre Rios, Argentina: that it is "like"
brown coal; that it resembles all the other carbonaceous masses that
have fallen from the sky.
Something that fell at Grazac, France, Aug. 10, 1885: when burned, it
gave out a bituminous odor (_Comptes Rendus_, 104-1771).
Carbonaceous substance that fell at Rajpunta, India, Jan. 22, 1911: very
friable: 50 per cent of its soluble in water (_Records Geol. Survey of
India_, 44-pt. 1-41).
A combustible carbonaceous substance that fell with sand at Naples,
March 14, 1818 (_Amer. Jour. Sci._, 1-1-309).
_Sci. Amer. Sup._, 29-11798:
That, June 9, 1889, a very friable substance, of a deep, greenish black,
fell at Mighei, Russia. It contained 5 per cent organic matter, which,
when powdered and digested in alcohol, yielded, after evaporation, a
bright yellow resin. In this mass was 2 per cent of an unknown mineral.
Cinders and ashes and slag and coke and charcoal and coal.
And the things that sometimes deep-sea fishes are bumped by.
Reluctances and the disguises or covered retreats of such words as
"like" and "resemble"--or that conditions of Intermediateness forbid
abrupt transitions--but that the spirit animating all Intermediateness
is to achieve abrupt transitions--because, if anything could finally
break away from its origin and environment, that would be a real
thing--something not merging away indistinguishably with the
surrounding. So all attempt to be original; all attempt to invent
something that is more than mere extension or modification of the
preceding, is positivism--or that if one could conceive of a device to
catch flies, positively different from, or unrelated to, all other
devices--up he'd shoot to heaven, or the Positive Absolute--leaving
behind such an incandescent train that in one age it would be said that
he had gone aloft in a fiery chariot, and in another age that he had
been struck by lightning--
I'm collecting notes upon persons supposed to have been struck by
lightning. I think that high approximation to positivism has often been
achieved--instantaneous translation--residue of negativeness left
behind, looking much like effects of a stroke of lightning. Some day I
shall tell the story of the _Marie Celeste_--"properly," as the
_Scientific American Supplement_ would say--mysterious disappearance of
a sea captain, his family, and the crew--
Of positivists, by the route of Abrupt Transition, I think that Manet
was notable--but that his approximation was held down by his intense
relativity to the public--or that it is quite as impositive to flout and
insult and defy as it is to crawl and placate. Of course, Manet began
with continuity with Courbet and others, and then, between him and Manet
there were mutual influences--but the spirit of abrupt difference is the
spirit of positivism, and Manet's stand was against the dictum that all
lights and shades must merge away suavely into one another and prepare
for one another. So a biologist like De Vries represents positivism, or
the breaking of Continuity, by trying to conceive of evolution by
mutation--against the dogma of indistinguishable gradations by "minute
variations." A Copernicus conceives of helio-centricity. Continuity is
against him. He is not permitted to break abruptly with the past. He is
permitted to publish his work, but only as "an interesting hypothesis."
Continuity--and that all that we call evolution or progress is attempt
to break away from it--
That our whole solar system was at one time attempt by planets to break
away from a parental nexus and set up as individualities, and, failing,
move in quasi-regular orbits that are expressions of relations with the
sun and with one another, all having surrendered, being now
quasi-incorporated in a higher approximation to system:
Intermediateness in its mineralogic aspect of positivism--or Iron that
strove to break away from Sulphur and Oxygen, and be real, homogeneous
Iron--failing, inasmuch as elemental iron exists only in text-book
chemistry:
Intermediateness in its biologic aspect of positivism--or the wild,
fantastic, grotesque, monstrous things it conceived of, sometimes in a
frenzy of effort to break away abruptly from all preceding types--but
failing, in the giraffe-effort, for instance, or only caricaturing an
antelope--
All things break one relation only by the establishing of some other
relation--
All things cut an umbilical cord only to clutch a breast.
So the fight of the exclusionists to maintain the traditional--or to
prevent abrupt transition from the quasi-established--fighting so that
here, more than a century after meteorites were included, no other
notable inclusion has been made, except that of cosmic dust, data of
which Nordenskiold made more nearly real than data in opposition.
So Proctor, for instance, fought and expressed his feeling of the
preposterous, against Sir W.H. Thomson's notions of arrival upon this
earth of organisms on meteorites--
"I can only regard it as a jest" (_Knowledge_, 1-302).
Or that there is nothing but jest--or something intermediate to jest and
tragedy:
That ours is not an existence but an utterance;
That Momus is imagining us for the amusement of the gods, often with
such success that some of us seem almost alive--like characters in
something a novelist is writing; which often to considerable degree take
their affairs away from the novelist--
That Momus is imagining us and our arts and sciences and religions, and
is narrating or picturing us as a satire upon the gods' real existence.
Because--with many of our data of coal that has fallen from the sky as
accessible then as they are now, and with the scientific pronouncement
that coal is fossil, how, in a real existence, by which we mean a
consistent existence, or a state in which there is real intelligence, or
a form of thinking that does not indistinguishably merge away with
imbecility, could there have been such a row as that which was raised
about forty years ago over Dr. Hahn's announcement that he had found
fossils in meteorites?
Accessible to anybody at that time:
_Philosophical Magazine_, 4-17-425:
That the substance that fell at Kaba, Hungary, April 15, 1857, contained
organic matter "analagous to fossil waxes."
Or limestone:
Of the block of limestone which was reported to have fallen at
Middleburg, Florida, it is said (_Science_, 11-118) that, though
something had been seen to fall in "an old cultivated field," the
witnesses who ran to it picked up something that "had been upon the
ground in the first place." The writer who tells us this, with the usual
exclusion-imagination known as stupidity, but unjustly, because there is
no real stupidity, thinks he can think of a good-sized stone that had
for many years been in a cultivated field, but that had never been seen
before--had never interfered with plowing, for instance. He is earnest
and unjarred when he writes that this stone weighs 200 pounds. My own
notion, founded upon my own experience in seeing, is that a block of
stone weighing 500 pounds might be in one's parlor twenty years,
virtually unseen--but not in an old cultivated field, where it
interfered with plowing--not anywhere--if it interfered.
Dr. Hahn said that he had found fossils in meteorites. There is a
description of the corals, sponges, shells, and crinoids, all of them
microscopic, which he photographed, in _Popular Science_, 20-83.
Dr. Hahn was a well-known scientist. He was better known after that.
Anybody may theorize upon other worlds and conditions upon them that are
similar to our own conditions: if his notions be presented undisguisedly
as fiction, or only as an "interesting hypothesis," he'll stir up no
prude rages.
But Dr. Hahn said definitely that he had found fossils in specified
meteorites: also he published photographs of them. His book is in the
New York Public Library. In the reproductions every feature of some of
the little shells is plainly marked. If they're not shells, neither are
things under an oyster-counter. The striations are very plain: one sees
even the hinges where bivalves are joined.
Prof. Lawrence Smith (_Knowledge_, 1-258):
"Dr. Hahn is a kind of half-insane man, whose imagination has run away
with him."
Conservation of Continuity.
Then Dr. Weinland examined Dr. Hahn's specimens. He gave his opinion
that they are fossils and that they are not crystals of enstatite, as
asserted by Prof. Smith, who had never seen them.
The damnation of denial and the damnation of disregard:
After the publication of Dr. Weinland's findings--silence.
7
The living things that have come down to this earth:
Attempts 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 frogeity.
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 Prof. Pontus to M. Arago. (_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, Mo."
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 of fish in Scotland. But in the phenomenon 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? Their great numbers and their homogeneity. Over and over
in these annals of the damned 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 sucked 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. In _Symons' Meteorological Magazine_, 32-106, a fall of
small frogs, near Birmingham, England, June 30, 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.