Over and over:
"It is scarcely necessary to suggest to the intelligent reader that
thunderstones are a myth."
We contend that there is a misuse of a word here: we admit that only we
are intelligent upon this subject, if by intelligence is meant the
inquiry of inequilibrium, and that all other intellection 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 in ruts. An odd thing is that
intelligence is usually supposed to be creditable. 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
plebeians, 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 "thunderstones"
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 wedge-shaped,
highly polished objects of stone, described as "axes," been found
sticking in trees that have been struck by lightning--or by what seemed
to be lightning. The natives, rather like the unscientific persons of
Memphis, Tenn., when they saw snakes after a storm, jumped to the
conclusion that the "axes" had not always been sticking in the trees.
Livingstone (_Last Journal_, pages 83, 89, 442, 448) says that he had
never heard of stone implements used 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: 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_, p. 100.)
The finders jumped to the conclusion that the axes had fallen there.
Another stone ax--or wedge-shaped object of worked stone--said to have
been found in a tree that had been struck by something that looked like
lightning. (_Thunder Weapons_, p. 71.)
The finder jumped to the conclusion.
Story told by Blinkenberg, of a woman, who lived near Kulsbjaergene,
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). The peasant who owned the cow dug up the ground at the
spot and found a small greenstone "ax." 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 ax found by a farmer, after a severe storm--described as a
"fearful storm"--by a signal staff, which had been split by something. I
should say that nearness 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 heresy: somewhere
there must be a merging into each other, or an overlapping.
Nevertheless, upon such a subject as this, it does seem a little
shocking. In most works upon meteorites, the peculiar, sulphurous odor
of things that fall from the sky is mentioned. Sir John Evans (_Stone
Implements_, p. 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 worked 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, there is nothing to prove or
solve or settle. 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 "thunderstones" are described as "axes," but
Meunier (_La Nature_, 1892-2-381) tells of one that was in his
possession; said to have fallen at Ghardia, Algeria, contrasting
"profoundment" (pear-shaped) 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 its fall in a thunderstorm, the datum
that turns the orthodox meteorologist pale with rage, or induces a
slight elevation of his eyebrows, if you mention it to him.
Meunier tells of another "thunderstone" said to have fallen in North
Africa. Meunier, 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:
"Thunderstone" said to have fallen in London, April, 1876: weight about
8 pounds: no particulars as to shape (Timb's _Year Book_, 1877-246).
"Thunderstone" said to have fallen at Cardiff, Sept. 26, 1916 (London
_Times_, Sept. 28, 1916). According to _Nature_, 98-95, it was
coincidence; only a 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_, 80-34.)
London _Times_, April 26, 1876:
That, April 20, 1876, near Wolverhampton, fell a mass of meteoritic iron
during a heavy fall of rain. An account of this phenomenon in _Nature_,
14-272, by H.S. Maskelyne, 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 "ax":
_Nature_, 30-300:
That, May 27, 1884, at Tysnas, 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 near by.
The description is--"in shape and size very like the fourth part of a
large Stilton cheese."
It is our acceptance that many objects and different substances have
been brought down by atmospheric disturbance from what--only as a matter
of convenience now, and until we have more data--we call the
Super-Sargasso Sea; however, our chief interest is in objects that have
been shaped by means similar to human handicraft.
Description of the "thunderstones" of Burma (_Proc. Asiatic Soc. of
Bengal_, 1869-183): said to be of a kind of stone unlike any other found
in Burma; called "thunderbolts" by the natives. I think there's 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 _Proc. Soc. Antiq. of
London_, 2-3-97. One of them, described as an "adze," 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 a Sir John Evans. Just as a great deal of Voltaire's meaning was
inter-linear, we suspect that a Captain Duff merely hints rather than
to risk having a Prof. Lawrence Smith fly at him and call him "a
half-insane 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 it equally useless
as an offensive or defensive weapon."
Story, by a correspondent, in _Nature_, 34-53, of a Malay, of
"considerable social standing"--and one thing about our data is that,
damned 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 "thunderstone." Not said whether he jumped or leaped to the
conclusion that it had fallen: process 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 afterward
findable; mere mention occasionally--burial and damnation.
The extraordinary and 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 Prof. Hitchcock, who had only to smite Amherst
with the wand of his botanical knowledge, and lo! two fungi sprang up
before night; and we did read of Dr. Gray and his thousands of fishes
from one pailful 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, sub-dividing into--wedges,
spheres, and disks.
_Jour. Roy. Met. Soc._, 14-207:
That, July 2, 1866, a correspondent to a London newspaper wrote that
something had fallen from the sky, during a thunderstorm of June 30,
1866, at Netting Hill. Mr. G.T. Symons, of _Symons' Meteorological
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 of the correspondent coal had been unloaded the day before.
With the uncanny wisdom of the stranger upon unfamiliar ground that we
have noted before, Mr. Symons 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 super-abundance of convincingness, Mr. Symons
then lugs another character into his little comedy:
That it 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 gutter, so making an artificial thunderbolt."
Or even Shakespeare, with all his inartistry, 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 30, 1866, was peculiar. It is
described in the London _Times_, July 2, 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 30, 1866.
Clinkers, said to have fallen, during a storm, at Kilburn, July 5, 1877:
According to the _Kilburn Times_, July 7, 1877, quoted by Mr. Symons, 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-Sargasso Sea,
from which dislodgment by tempests occurs, it is intermediatistic 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 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. Symons 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 at Notting Hill, searching cellars
until he found one with newly arrived coal in it; ringing door bells,
exciting a whole 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 fifth. Will you look over your
records and tell me where your engine was at about ten minutes past
four, July fifth?"
Mr. Symons says:
"I think that most probably they had been raked out of the steam
fire-engine."
June 20, 1880, it was reported that a "thunderstone" had struck the
house at 180 Oakley Street, Chelsea, falling down the chimney, into the
kitchen grate.
Mr. Symons investigated.
He describes the "thunderstone" 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 if a 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 merge away with the "proper"--as the
_Sci. Am. Sup._ would say. The preposterous is always interpretable in
terms of the "proper," with which it must be continuous--or--clay-like
masses such as have fallen from the sky--tremendous heat generated by
their velocity--they bake--bricks.
We begin to suspect that Mr. Symons exhausted himself at Notting Hill.
It's a warning to efficiency-fanatics.
Then the instance of three lumps of earthy matter, found upon a
well-frequented path, after a thunderstorm, at Reading, July 3, 1883.
There are so many records of the fall of earthy matter from the sky that
it would seem almost uncanny to find resistance here, were we not so
accustomed to the uncompromising stands of orthodoxy--which, in our
metaphysics, represent good, as attempts, but evil in their
insufficiency. If I thought it necessary, I'd list one hundred and fifty
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. Symons here. This especial
Mr. Symons 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--though avoided, as we have seen--by
orthodoxy, are more glaringly of untrue meteoritic material than was
this substance of Reading. Mr. Symons says that these three lumps were
upon the ground "in the first place."
Whether these data are worth preserving or not, I think that the appeal
that this especial Mr. Symons makes is worthy of a place in the museum
we're writing. 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)" said to have
fallen, during a thunderstorm, at Brixton, Aug. 17, 1887. Mr. Symons
says: "At present I cannot trace it."
He was at his best at Notting Hill: there's been a marked falling off in
his later manner:
In the London _Times_, Feb. 1, 1888, it is said that a roundish object
of iron had been found, "after a violent thunderstorm," in a garden at
Brixton, Aug. 17, 1887. It was analyzed by a 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: Ebbw Vale.
Garden--familiar ground--I suppose that in Mr. Symons' opinion this
symmetric object had been upon the ground "in the first place," though
he neglects to say this. 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 datum stand alone,
remote, without similars. If Mr. Symons 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 cannon ball."
It was found in a manure heap, in Sussex, after a thunderstorm.
However, Mr. Symons argues pretty reasonably, it seems to me, that,
given a cannon ball 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 below the average, would leap 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. Symons 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 "considered," as Mr. Symons 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.
Symons:
Coincidence. It had been there in the first place.
This object was exhibited at a meeting of the Royal Meteorological
Society by Mr. C. Carus-Wilson. It is described in the _Journal's_ list
of exhibits as a "sandstone" ball. It is described as "sandstone" by Mr.
Symons.
Now a round piece of sandstone may be almost anywhere in the ground--in
the first place--but, by our more or less discreditable habit of prying
and snooping, we find that this object was rather more complex and of
material less commonplace. In snooping through _Knowledge_, Oct. 9,
1885, we read that this "thunderstone" was in the possession of Mr. C.
Carus-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. Carus-Wilson describes the object as a ball of hard,
ferruginous quartzite, about the size of a cocoanut, weight about twelve
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, separated from a loose nucleus. Mr. Carus-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
intent as are 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
intermediatist, the phenomena of intellection 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 intermediatist 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 frowsy and
base-born are so athletic, his is the impression, by assimilation, that
this especial object is a ball of sandstone. Or human mentality: its
inhabitants are conveniences. It may be that Mr. Symons' 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
intersperse our malices, we are willing to accept that he "investigated"
something that he had never seen. But whoever listed this object was
uncareful: it is listed as "sandstone."
We're making excuses for them.
Really--as it were--you know, we're not quite so 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 a 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. Symonses. As it is, of course, seriousness seems out
of place.
We note an amusing little touch in the indefinite allusion to "a man,"
who with his un-named family, had "considered" that he had seen a stone
fall. The "man" was the Rev. W. Carus-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.
Dug.
Bronze ax.
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--un-named 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, thus clearly showing
that they were of terrestrial, and not a celestial, character." Just why
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 are humorists. It is that they were described derisively. If
you'd like a little specimen of the standardization of orthodox
opinion--
_Amer. Met. Jour._, 4-589:
"They are of an amusing character, thus 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 easygoing
and lenient with Mr. Symons as his obviously scientific performance
would permit. Of course it may be that sub-consciously we were
prejudiced against him, instinctively classing him with St. Augustine,
Darwin, St. Jerome, and Lyell. As to the "thunderstones," 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_, 5-418, 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 quotation 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. Symons says that he undertook his
investigation as to the existence of "thunderstones," or "thunderbolts"
as he calls them--"feeling certain that there was a weak point
somewhere, inasmuch as 'thunderbolts' have no existence."
We have another instance of the reported fall of a "cannon ball." It
occurred prior to Mr. Symons' investigations, but is not mentioned by
him. It was investigated, however. In the _Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin._,
3-147, is the report of a "thunderstone," "supposed to have fallen in
Hampshire, Sept., 1852." It was an iron cannon ball, or it was a "large
nodule of iron pyrites or bisulphuret 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_, Sept. 16, 1852, appears a letter from Mr. George
E. Bailey, a chemist of Andover, Hants. 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
_Times_, Sept. 15, 1852, there is an account of this thunderstorm, which
was of unusual violence.
There are some other data relative to the ball of quartz of
Westmoreland. They're poor things. There's 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 has 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.
_Proc. Canadian Institute_, 3-7-8:
That, at the meeting of the Institute, of Dec. 1, 1888, one of the
members, Mr. J.A. Livingstone, 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 prohibitory" of Science. A monk who would read
Darwin would sin 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. Catherine's of Mexico, I think. It's as
epicurean a distinction as any ever made by theologians. Fassig lists a
quartz pebble, found in a hailstone (_Bibliography_, part 2-355). "Up
and down," of course. Another object of quartzite was reported to have
fallen, in the autumn of 1880, at Schroon Lake, N.Y.--said in the
_Scientific American_, 43-272 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, at Vincennes, Indiana. The
Editor of the _Monthly Weather Review_ (issue of April, 1899) requested
the local observer, at Vincennes, 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_, 2-8-92:
That, in the Leyden Museum of Antiquities, there is a disk of quartz: 6
centimeters 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 we're 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 mien 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 of 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. (_Amer. Jour. Sci._, 2-34-298.)
Pieces of "furnace-made brick" said to have fallen--in a hailstorm--at
Padua, August, 1834. (_Edin. New Phil. Jour._, 19-87.) 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 per cent 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 Sechi explains that a stone said to have fallen, in a
thunderstorm, at Supino, Italy, September, 1875, had been knocked from a
roof.
_Nature_, 33-153:
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.
This object of worked 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 La Scala quarries. We condemn "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 in
Naples who knows La Scala lava better than the natives know it.
Explanation:
That the thing had been knocked from, or thrown from, a roof.
As to attempt to trace the occurrence to any special roof--nothing said
upon that subject. Or that Dr. Johnstone-Lavis called a carved stone a
"lapstone," quite as Mr. Symons called a spherical object a "cannon
ball": bent upon a 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, I think. Our
massed 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 orthodoxy. For instance, Arago 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. M. Arago answers a question by asking
another question. That's the only way a question can be answered in our
Hibernian kind of an existence.
Dr. Bodding argued with the natives of the Santal Parganas, India, who
said that cut and shaped stones had fallen from the sky, some of them
lodging in tree trunks. Dr. Bodding, 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 worked stone have been
found in tree trunks, but he explains:
That the Santals 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 bare hand would be
regarded.
That there's nothing but intermediateness to the rational and the
preposterous: that this status of our own ratiocinations is perceptible
wherein they are upon the unfamiliar.
Dr. Bodding collected 50 of these shaped stones, said to have fallen
from the sky, in the course of many years. He says that the Santals are
a highly developed race, and for ages have not used stone
implements--except in this one nefarious convenience to him.
All explanations are localizations. They 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.
Bedding'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. Bedding'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 "thunderstones" 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 record 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, the higher
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
"thunderstone," which he had brought from Jamaica. The description is of
a wedge-shaped object; not of an ax:
"It shows no mark of having been attached to a handle."
Of ten "thunderstones," 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. Leemans, Director of the Leyden Museum of
Antiquities, objects, said by the Japanese to have fallen from the sky,
are alluded to throughout as "wedges." In the _Archaeologic Journal_,
11-118, in a paper upon the "thunderstones" 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 cannon balls and
axes and disks--if a "lapstone" be a disk--it's a flat stone, at any
rate.
A great many scientists are good impressionists: they snub the
impertinences of details. Had he been of a coarse, grubbing nature, I
think Dr. Bodding could never have so simply and beautifully explained
the occurrence of stone wedges in 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
escape penalty, because it never occurs to a prosecutor that the head of
an ax is a wedge.
The 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 Santal did once do something of the kind. Story told
to Dr. Bodding: in the usual scientific way, he makes a dogma of an
aberration.
Or we did have to utter a little stress upon this matter, after all.
They're so hairy and attractive, these scientists of the 19th century.
We feel the zeal of a Sitting Bull 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.
Cannon balls and wedges, and what may they mean?