The Book of the Damned Part 10

So it was called, in its day, and now we have an occurrence that attracted a great deal of attention in its own time. Usually these things of the accursed have been hushed up or disregarded--suppressed like the seven black rains of Slains--but, upon March 3, 1876, something occurred, in Bath County, Kentucky, that brought many newspaper correspondents to the scene.

The substance that looked like beef that fell from the sky.

Upon March 3, 1876, at Olympian Springs, Bath County, Kentucky, flakes of a substance that looked like beef fell from the sky--"from a clear sky." We'd like to emphasize that it was said that nothing but this falling substance was visible in the sky. It fell in flakes of various sizes; some two inches square, one, three or four inches square. The flake-formation is interesting: later we shall think of it as signifying pressure--somewhere. It was a thick shower, on the ground, on trees, on fences, but it was narrowly localized: or upon a strip of land about 100 yards long and about 50 yards wide. For the first account, see the _Scientific American_, 34-197, and the _New York Times_, March 10, 1876.

Then the exclusionists.

Something that looked like beef: one flake of it the size of a square envelope.

If we think of how hard the exclusionists have fought to reject the coming of ordinary-looking dust from this earth's externality, we can sympathize with them in this sensational instance, perhaps. Newspaper correspondents wrote broadcast and witnesses were quoted, and this time there is no mention of a hoax, and, except by one scientist, there is no denial that the fall did take place.

It seems to me that the exclusionists are still more emphatically conservators. It is not so much that they are inimical to all data of externally derived substances that fall upon this earth, as that they are inimical to all data discordant with a system that does not include such phenomena--

Or the spirit or hope or ambition of the cosmos, which we call attempted positivism: not to find out the new; not to add to what is called knowledge, but to systematize.

_Scientific American Supplement_, 2-426:

That the substance reported from Kentucky had been examined by Leopold Brandeis.

"At last we have a proper explanation of this much talked of phenomenon."

"It has been comparatively easy to identify the substance and to fix its status. The Kentucky 'wonder' is no more or less than nostoc."

Or that it had not fallen; that it had been upon the ground in the first place, and had swollen in rain, and, attracting attention by greatly increased volume, had been supposed by unscientific observers to have fallen in rain--

What rain, I don't know.

Also it is spoken of as "dried" several times. That's one of the most important of the details.

But the relief of outraged propriety, expressed in the _Supplement_, is amusing to some of us, who, I fear, may be a little improper at times.

Very spirit of the Salvation Army, when some third-rate scientist comes out with an explanation of the vermiform appendix or the os coccygis that would have been acceptable to Moses. To give completeness to "the proper explanation," it is said that Mr. Brandeis had identified the substance as "flesh-colored" nostoc.

Prof. Lawrence Smith, of Kentucky, one of the most resolute of the exclusionists:

_New York Times_, March 12, 1876:

That the substance had been examined and a.n.a.lyzed by Prof. Smith, according to whom it gave every indication of being the "dried" sp.a.w.n of some reptile, "doubtless of the frog"--or up from one place and down in another. As to "dried," that may refer to condition when Prof. Smith received it.

In the _Scientific American Supplement_, 2-473, Dr. A. Mead Edwards, President of the Newark Scientific a.s.sociation, writes that, when he saw Mr. Brandeis' communication, his feeling was of conviction that propriety had been re-established, or that the problem had been solved, as he expresses it: knowing Mr. Brandeis well, he had called upon that upholder of respectability, to see the substance that had been identified as nostoc. But he had also called upon Dr. Hamilton, who had a specimen, and Dr. Hamilton had declared it to be lung-tissue. Dr.

Edwards writes of the substance that had so completely, or beautifully--if beauty is completeness--been identified as nostoc--"It turned out to be lung-tissue also." He wrote to other persons who had specimens, and identified other specimens as ma.s.ses of cartilage or muscular fibers. "As to whence it came, I have no theory." Nevertheless he endorses the local explanation--and a bizarre thing it is:

A flock of gorged, heavy-weighted buzzards, but far up and invisible in the clear sky--

They had disgorged.

Prof. Fa.s.sig lists the substance, in his "Bibliography," as fish sp.a.w.n.

McAtee (_Monthly Weather Review_, May, 1918) lists it as a jelly-like material, supposed to have been the "dried" sp.a.w.n either of fishes or of some batrachian.

Or this is why, against the seemingly insuperable odds against all things new, there can be what is called progress--

That nothing is positive, in the aspects of h.o.m.ogeneity and unity:

If the whole world should seem to combine against you, it is only unreal combination, or intermediateness to unity and disunity. Every resistance is itself divided into parts resisting one another. The simplest strategy seems to be--never bother to fight a thing: set its own parts fighting one another.

We are merging away from carnal to gelatinous substance, and here there is an abundance of instances or reports of instances. These data are so improper they're obscene to the science of today, but we shall see that science, before it became so rigorous, was not so prudish. Chladni was not, and Greg was not.

I shall have to accept, myself, that gelatinous substance has often fallen from the sky--

Or that, far up, or far away, the whole sky is gelatinous?

That meteors tear through and detach fragments?

That fragments are brought down by storms?

That the twinkling of stars is penetration of light through something that quivers?

I think, myself, that it would be absurd to say that the whole sky is gelatinous: it seems more acceptable that only certain areas are.

Humboldt (_Cosmos_, 1-119) says that all our data in this respect must be "cla.s.sed amongst the mythical fables of mythology." He is very sure, but just a little redundant.

We shall be opposed by the standard resistances:

There in the first place;

Up from one place, in a whirlwind, and down in another.

We shall not bother to be very convincing one way or another, because of the over-shadowing of the datum with which we shall end up. It will mean that something had been in a stationary position for several days over a small part of a small town in England: this is the revolutionary thing that we have alluded to before; whether the substance were nostoc, or sp.a.w.n, or some kind of a larval nexus, doesn't matter so much. If it stood in the sky for several days, we rank with Moses as a chronicler of improprieties--or was that story, or datum, we mean, told by Moses? Then we shall have so many records of gelatinous substance said to have fallen with meteorites, that, between the two phenomena, some of us will have to accept connection--or that there are at least vast gelatinous areas aloft, and that meteorites tear through, carrying down some of the substance.

_Comptes Rendus_, 3-554:

That, in 1836, M. Vallot, member of the French Academy, placed before the Academy some fragments of a gelatinous substance, said to have fallen from the sky, and asked that they be a.n.a.lyzed. There is no further allusion to this subject.

_Comptes Rendus_, 23-542:

That, in Wilna, Lithuania, April 4, 1846, in a rainstorm, fell nut-sized ma.s.ses of a substance that is described as both resinous and gelatinous. It was odorless until burned: then it spread a very p.r.o.nounced sweetish odor. It is described as like gelatine, but much firmer: but, having been in water 24 hours, it swelled out, and looked altogether gelatinous--

It was grayish.

We are told that, in 1841 and 1846, a similar substance had fallen in Asia Minor.

In _Notes and Queries_, 8-6-190, it is said that, early in August, 1894, thousands of jellyfish, about the size of a shilling, had fallen at Bath, England. I think it is not acceptable that they were jellyfish: but it does look as if this time frog sp.a.w.n did fall from the sky, and may have been translated by a whirlwind--because, at the same time, small frogs fell at Wigan, England.

_Nature_, 87-10:

That, June 24, 1911, at Eton, Bucks, England, the ground was found covered with ma.s.ses of jelly, the size of peas, after a heavy rainfall.

We are not told of nostoc, this time: it is said that the object contained numerous eggs of "some species of Chironomus, from which larvae soon emerged."

I incline, then, to think that the objects that fell at Bath were neither jellyfish nor ma.s.ses of frog sp.a.w.n, but something of a larval kind--