Or visitors to this earth, long ago--explorers 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-Sargasso Sea--falling, or shaken, down
occasionally by storms--
But, by preponderance of description, we cannot accept that
"thunderstones" ever were attached to handles, or are 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 _Proc. Roy. Irish Acad._, 9-337, there is an account of a stone
wedge that fell from the sky, near Cashel, Tipperary, Aug. 2, 1865. The
phenomenon 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 _Rept. Brit.
Assoc._, 1861-34. One fell at Segowolee, India, March 6, 1853. Of the
object that fell at Cashel, Dr. Haughton says in the _Proceedings_: "A
singular feature is observable in 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 phenomenon had ever been observed. It merges away
with one or two instances known, after Dr. Haughton's time, of seeming
stratification in meteorites. Stratification in meteorites, however, is
denied by the faithful.