A note:
That nine days before had fallen the red substance--flesh--whatever it
may have been--of Bath County, Kentucky.
I think that a super-egotist, vast, but not so vast as it had supposed,
had refused to move to one side for a comet.
We summarize our general super-geographical expressions:
Gelatinous regions, sulphurous regions, frigid and tropical regions: a
region that has been Source of Life relatively to this earth: regions
wherein there is density so great that things from them, entering this
earth's thin atmosphere, explode.
We have had a datum of explosive hailstones. We now have support to the
acceptance that they had been formed in a medium far denser than air of
this earth at sea-level. In the _Popular Science News_, 22-38, is an
account of ice that had been formed, under great pressure, in the
laboratory of the University of Virginia. When released and brought into
contact with ordinary air, this ice exploded.
And again the flesh-like substance that fell in Kentucky: its flake-like
formation. Here is a phenomenon that is familiar to us: it suggests
flattening, under pressure. But the extraordinary inference is--pressure
not equal on all sides. In the _Annual Record of Science_, 1873-350, it
is said that, in 1873, after a heavy thunderstorm in Louisiana, a
tremendous number of fish scales were found, for a distance of forty
miles, along the banks of the Mississippi River: bushels of them picked
up in single places: large scales that were said to be of the gar fish,
a fish that weighs from five to fifty pounds. It seems impossible to
accept this identification: one thinks of a substance that had been
pressed into flakes or scales. And round hailstones with wide thin
margins of ice irregularly around them--still, such hailstones seem to
me more like things that had been stationary: had been held in a field
of thin ice. In the _Illustrated London News_, 34-546, are drawings of
hailstones so margined, as if they had been held in a sheet of ice.
Some day we shall have an expression which will be, to our advanced
primitiveness, a great joy:
That devils have visited this earth: foreign devils: human-like beings,
with pointed beards: good singers; one shoe ill-fitting--but with
sulphurous exhalations, at any rate. I have been impressed with the
frequent occurrence of sulphurousness with things that come from the
sky. A fall of jagged pieces of ice, Orkney, July 24, 1818 (_Trans. Roy.
Soc. Edin._, 9-187). They had a strong sulphurous odor. And the coke--or
the substance that looked like coke--that fell at Mortree, France, April
24, 1887: with it fell a sulphurous substance. The enormous round things
that rose from the ocean, near the _Victoria_. Whether we still accept
that they were super-constructions that had come from a denser
atmosphere and, in danger of disruption, had plunged into the ocean for
relief, then rising and continuing on their way to Jupiter or Uranus--it
was reported that they spread a "stench of sulphur." At any rate, this
datum of proximity is against the conventional explanation that these
things did not rise from the ocean, but rose far away above the horizon,
with illusion of nearness.
And the things that were seen in the sky July, 1898: I have another
note. In _Nature_, 58-224, a correspondent writes that, upon July 1,
1898, at Sedberg, he had seen in the sky--a red object--or, in his own
wording, something that looked like the red part of a rainbow, about 10
degrees long. But the sky was dark at the time. The sun had set. A heavy
rain was falling.
Throughout this book, the datum that we are most impressed with:
Successive falls.
Or that, if upon one small area, things fall from the sky, and then,
later, fall again upon the same small area, they are not products of a
whirlwind, which though sometimes axially stationary, discharges
tangentially--
So the frogs that fell at Wigan. I have looked that matter up again.
Later more frogs fell.
As to our data of gelatinous substance said to have fallen to this earth
with meteorites, it is our expression that meteorites, tearing through
the shaky, protoplasmic seas of Genesistrine--against which we warn
aviators, or they may find themselves suffocating in a reservoir of
life, or stuck like currants in a blanc mange--that meteorites detach
gelatinous, or protoplasmic, lumps that fall with them.
Now the element of positiveness in our composition yearns for the
appearance of completeness. Super-geographical lakes with fishes in
them. Meteorites that plunge through these lakes, on their way to this
earth. The positiveness in our make-up must have expression in at least
one record of a meteorite that has brought down a lot of fishes with
it--
_Nature_, 3-512:
That, near the bank of a river, in Peru, Feb. 4, 1871, a meteorite
fell. "On the spot, it is reported, several dead fishes were found, of
different species." The attempt to correlate is--that the fishes "are
supposed to have been lifted out of the river and dashed against the
stones."
Whether this be imaginable or not depends upon each one's own hypnoses.
_Nature_, 4-169:
That the fishes had fallen among the fragments of the meteorite.
_Popular Science Review_, 4-126:
That one day, Mr. Le Gould, an Australian scientist, was traveling in
Queensland. He saw a tree that had been broken off close to the ground.
Where the tree had been broken was a great bruise. Near by was an object
that "resembled a ten-inch shot."
A good many pages back there was an instance of over-shadowing, I think.
The little carved stone that fell at Tarbes is my own choice as the most
impressive of our new correlates. It was coated with ice, remember.
Suppose we should sift and sift and discard half the data in this
book--suppose only that one datum should survive. To call attention to
the stone of Tarbes would, in my opinion, be doing well enough, for
whatever the spirit of this book is trying to do. Nevertheless, it seems
to me that a datum that preceded it was slightingly treated.
The disk of quartz, said to have fallen from the sky, after a meteoric
explosion:
Said to have fallen at the plantation Bleijendal, Dutch Guiana: sent to
the Museum of Leyden by M. van Sypesteyn, adjutant to the Governor of
Dutch Guiana (_Notes and Queries_, 2-8-92).
And the fragments that fall from super-geographic ice fields: flat
pieces of ice with icicles on them. I think that we did not emphasize
enough that, if these structures were not icicles, but crystalline
protuberances, such crystalline formations indicate long suspension
quite as notably as would icicles. In the _Popular Science News_, 24-34,
it is said that in 1869, near Tiflis, fell large hailstones with long
protuberances. "The most remarkable point in connection with the
hailstones is the fact that, judging from our present knowledge, a very
long time must have been occupied in their formation." According to the
_Geological Magazine_, 7-27, this fall occurred May 27, 1869. The
writer in the _Geological Magazine_ says that of all theories that he
had ever heard of, not one could give him light as to this
occurrence--"these growing crystalline forms must have been suspended a
long time"--
Again and again this phenomenon:
Fourteen days later, at about the same place, more of these hailstones
fell.
Rivers of blood that vein albuminous seas, or an egg-like composition in
the incubation of which this earth is a local center of
development--that there are super-arteries of blood in Genesistrine:
that sunsets are consciousness of them: that they flush the skies with
northern lights sometimes: super-embryonic reservoirs from which
life-forms emanate--
Or that our whole solar system is a living thing: that showers of blood
upon this earth are its internal hemorrhages--
Or vast living things in the sky, as there are vast living things in the
oceans--
Or some one especial thing: an especial time: an especial place. A thing
the size of the Brooklyn Bridge. It's alive in outer space--something
the size of Central Park kills it--
It drips.
We think of the ice fields above this earth: which do not, themselves,
fall to this earth, but from which water does fall--
_Popular Science News_, 35-104:
That, according to Prof. Luigi Palazzo, head of the Italian
Meteorological Bureau, upon May 15, 1890, at Messignadi, Calabria,
something the color of fresh blood fell from the sky.
This substance was examined in the public-health laboratories of Rome.
It was found to be blood.
"The most probable explanation of this terrifying phenomenon is that
migratory birds (quails or swallows) were caught and torn in a violent
wind."