Upon October 13, 1872, a stone fell from the sky, to this earth, near
the town of Soko-Banja, Servia. If it were not a peculiar stone, there
is no force to this datum. It is said that it was unknown stone. A name
was invented for it. The stone was called _banjite_, after the town near
which it fell.
Seventeen years later (Dec. 1, 1889) another rock of banjite fell in
Servia, near Jelica.
For Meunier’s account of these stones, see _L’Astronomie_, 1890-272, and
_Comptes Rendus_, 92-331. Also, see _La Nature_, 1881-1-192. According
to Meunier these stones did fall from the sky; indigenous to this earth
there are no such stones; nowhere else have such stones fallen from the
sky; they are identical in material; they fell seventeen years apart.
* * * * *
At times when we think favorably of this work of ours, we see in it a
pointing-out of an evil of modern specialization. A seismologist studies
earthquakes, and an astronomer studies meteors; neither studies both
earthquakes and meteors, and consequently each, ignorant of the data
collected by the other, sees no relation between the two phenomena. The
treatment of the event in Servia, Dec. 1, 1889, is an instance of
conventional scientific attempts to understand something by separately,
or specially, focussing upon different aspects, and not combining into
an inclusive concept. Meunier writes only upon the stones that fell from
the sky, and does not mention an earthquake at the time. Milne, in his
_Catalogue of Destructive Earthquakes_, lists the occurrence as an
earthquake, and does not mention stones that fell from the sky. All
combinations greatly affect the character of components: in our
combination of the two aspects, we see that the phenomenon was not an
earthquake, as earthquakes are commonly understood, though it may have
been meteoric; but was not meteoric, in ordinary terms of meteors,
because of the unlikelihood that meteors, identical in material, should,
seventeen years apart, fall upon the same part of this earth’s surface,
and nowhere else.
This occurrence was of course an explosion in the sky, and its
vibrations were communicated to the earth below, with all the effects of
any other kind of earthquakes. Back in our earliest confusion of the
data of a century’s first quarter, we had awareness of this combination
and its conventional misinterpretation: that many concussions that have
been communicated from explosions in the sky have been cataloged in
lists of subterranean earthquakes. We are farther along now, in our data
of the 19th century, and now we come across awareness, in other minds,
of this distinguishment. At 8:20 A. M., Nov. 20, 1887, was heard and
felt something that was reported from many places in the region that is
known to us as the London Triangle, as an earthquake, though in some
towns it was thought that a great explosion, perhaps in London, had
occurred. It was reported from Reading, and from four towns near
Reading, and Reading is said to be one of the places where the
concussion was greatest. There were several accounts of slight alarm
among sheep, which are sensitive to meteors and earthquakes. But, in
_Symons’ Met. Mag._, Mr. H. G. Fordham wrote that the occurrence was not
an earthquake; that a meteor had exploded. He had very little to base
this opinion upon: out of scores of descriptions, he had record of only
two assertions that something had been seen in the sky. Nevertheless,
because the sound was so much greater than the concussion, Mr. Fordham
came to his conclusion.
In _Symons’ Met. Mag._, 23-154, Dr. R. H. Wake writes that, upon the
evening of Nov. 3, 1888, in a region about four miles wide and ten or
fifteen miles long, in the Thames Valley (near Reading) flocks of sheep
had rushed from their folds in a common alarm. About a year later, in
the Chiltern Hills, which extend in a northeasterly direction from the
Thames Valley, near Reading, there was another such occurrence. In the
London _Standard_, Nov. 7, 1889, the Rev. J. Ross Barker, of Chesham, a
town about 25 miles northeast of Reading, writes that, upon Oct. 25,
1889, many flocks of sheep, in a region of 30 square miles, had, by
common impulse, broken from their folds. Mr. Barker asks whether anyone
knew of a meteor or of an earthquake at the time. In vol. 24, _Symons’
Met. Mag._, Mr. Symons accepts that all three of these occurrences were
effects of meteoric explosions in the sky. The phenomena are
insignificant relatively to some that we have considered: the
significance is in this definite recognition in orthodoxy, itself, that
some supposed earthquakes, or effects of supposed earthquakes, are
reactions to explosions in the sky.