The Book of the Damned Part 13

That it would have been equally noteworthy when it went up--

That there is no record of anyone, in England or elsewhere, having seen tons of "spider webs" going up, September, 1741.

Further confession of intelligence upon my part:

That, if it be contested, then, that the place of origin may have been far away, but still terrestrial--

Then it's that other familiar matter of incredible "marksmanship"

again--hitting a small, triangular s.p.a.ce for hours--interval of hours--then from nine in the morning until night: same small triangular s.p.a.ce.

These are the disregards of the cla.s.sic explanation. There is no mention of spiders having been seen to fall, but a good inclusion is that, though this substance fell in good-sized flakes of considerable weight, it was viscous. In this respect it was like cobwebs: dogs nosing it on gra.s.s, were blindfolded with it. This circ.u.mstance does strongly suggest cobwebs--

Unless we can accept that, in regions aloft, there are vast viscous or gelatinous areas, and that things pa.s.sing through become daubed. Or perhaps we clear up the confusion in the descriptions of the substance that fell in 1841 and 1846, in Asia Minor, described in one publication as gelatinous, and in another as a cereal--that it was a cereal that had pa.s.sed through a gelatinous region. That the paper-like substance of Memel may have had such an experience may be indicated in that Ehrenberg found in it gelatinous matter, which he called "nostoc." (_Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist._, 1-3-185.)

_Scientific American_, 45-337:

Fall of a substance described as "cobwebs," latter part of October, 1881, in Milwaukee, Wis., and other towns: other towns mentioned are Green Bay, Vesburge, Fort Howard, Sheboygan, and Ozaukee. The aeronautic spiders are known as "gossamer" spiders, because of the extreme lightness of the filaments that they cast out to the wind. Of the substance that fell in Wisconsin, it is said:

"In all instances the webs were strong in texture and very white."

The Editor says:

"Curiously enough, there is no mention in any of the reports that we have seen, of the presence of spiders."

So our attempt to divorce a possible external product from its terrestrial merger: then our joy of the prospector who thinks he's found something:

The _Monthly Weather Review_, 26-566, quotes the _Montgomery_ (Ala.) _Advertiser_:

That, upon Nov. 21, 1898, numerous batches of spider-web-like substance fell in Montgomery, in strands and in occasional ma.s.ses several inches long and several inches broad. According to the writer, it was not spiders' web, but something like asbestos; also that it was phosph.o.r.escent.

The Editor of the _Review_ says that he sees no reason for doubting that these ma.s.ses were cobwebs.

_La Nature_, 1883-342:

A correspondent writes that he sends a sample of a substance said to have fallen at Montussan (Gironde), Oct. 16, 1883. According to a witness, quoted by the correspondent, a thick cloud, accompanied by rain and a violent wind, had appeared. This cloud was composed of a woolly substance in lumps the size of a fist, which fell to the ground. The Editor (Tissandier) says of this substance that it was white, but was something that had been burned. It was fibrous. M. Tissandier astonishes us by saying that he cannot identify this substance. We thought that anything could be "identified" as anything. He can say only that the cloud in question must have been an extraordinary conglomeration.

_Annual Register, 1832-447:_

That, March, 1832, there fell, in the fields of Kourianof, Russia, a combustible yellowish substance, covering, at least two inches thick, an area of 600 or 700 square feet. It was resinous and yellowish: so one inclines to the conventional explanation that it was pollen from pine trees--but, when torn, it had the tenacity of cotton. When placed in water, it had the consistency of resin. "This resin had the color of amber, was elastic, like India rubber, and smelled like prepared oil mixed with wax."

So in general our notion of cargoes--and our notion of cargoes of food supplies:

In _Philosophical Transactions_, 19-224, is an extract from a letter by Mr. Robert Vans, of Kilkenny, Ireland, dated Nov. 15, 1695: that there had been "of late," in the counties of Limerick and Tipperary, showers of a sort of matter like b.u.t.ter or grease... having "a very stinking smell."

There follows an extract from a letter by the Bishop of Cloyne, upon "a very odd phenomenon," which was observed in Munster and Leinster: that for a good part of the spring of 1695 there fell a substance which the country people called "b.u.t.ter"--"soft, clammy, and of a dark yellow"--that cattle fed "indifferently" in fields where this substance lay.

"It fell in lumps as big as the end of one's finger." It had a "strong ill scent." His Grace calls it a "stinking dew."

In Mr. Vans' letter, it is said that the "b.u.t.ter" was supposed to have medicinal properties, and "was gathered in pots and other vessels by some of the inhabitants of this place."

And:

In all the following volumes of _Philosophical Transactions_ there is no speculation upon this extraordinary subject. Ostracism. The fate of this datum is a good instance of d.a.m.nation, not by denial, and not by explaining away, but by simple disregard. The fall is listed by Chladni, and is mentioned in other catalogues, but, from the absence of all inquiry, and of all but formal mention, we see that it has been under excommunication as much as was ever anything by the preceding system. The datum has been buried alive. It is as irreconcilable with the modern system of dogmas as ever were geologic strata and vermiform appendix with the preceding system--

If, intermittently, or "for a good part of the spring," this substance fell in two Irish provinces, and nowhere else, we have, stronger than before, a sense of a stationary region overhead, or a region that receives products like this earth's products, but from external sources, a region in which this earth's gravitational and meteorological forces are relatively inert--if for many weeks a good part of this substance did hover before finally falling. We suppose that, in 1685, Mr. Vans and the Bishop of Cloyne could describe what they saw as well as could witnesses in 1885: nevertheless, it is going far back; we shall have to have many modern instances before we can accept.

As to other falls, or another fall, it is said in the _Amer. Jour.

Sci._, 1-28-361, that, April 11, 1832--about a month after the fall of the substance of Kourianof--fell a substance that was wine-yellow, transparent, soft, and smelling like rancid oil. M. Herman, a chemist who examined it, named it "sky oil." For a.n.a.lysis and chemic reactions, see the _Journal_. The _Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal_, 13-368, mentions an "unctuous" substance that fell near Rotterdam, in 1832. In _Comptes Rendus_, 13-215, there is an account of an oily, reddish matter that fell at Genoa, February, 1841.

Whatever it may have been--

Altogether, most of our difficulties are problems that we should leave to later developers of super-geography, I think. A discoverer of America should leave Long Island to someone else. If there be, plying back and forth from Jupiter and Mars and Venus, super-constructions that are sometimes wrecked, we think of fuel as well as cargoes. Of course the most convincing data would be of coal falling from the sky: nevertheless, one does suspect that oil-burning engines were discovered ages ago in more advanced worlds--but, as I say, we should leave something to our disciples--so we'll not especially wonder whether these b.u.t.ter-like or oily substances were food or fuel. So we merely note that in the _Scientific American_, 24-323, is an account of hail that fell, in the middle of April, 1871, in Mississippi, in which was a substance described as turpentine.

Something that tasted like orange water, in hailstones, about the first of June, 1842, near Nimes, France; identified as nitric acid (_Jour. de Pharmacie_, 1845-273).

Hail and ashes, in Ireland, 1755 (_Sci. Amer._, 5-168).

That, at Elizabeth, N.J., June 9, 1874, fell hail in which was a substance, said, by Prof. Leeds, of Stevens Inst.i.tute, to be carbonate of soda (_Sci. Amer._, 30-262).

We are getting a little away from the lines of our composition, but it will be an important point later that so many extraordinary falls have occurred with hail. Or--if they were of substances that had had origin upon some other part of this earth's surface--had the hail, too, that origin? Our acceptance here will depend upon the number of instances.

Reasonably enough, some of the things that fall to this earth should coincide with falls of hail.

As to vegetable substances in quant.i.ties so great as to suggest lost cargoes, we have a note in the _Intellectual Observer_, 3-468: that, upon the first of May, 1863, a rain fell at Perpignan, "bringing down with it a red substance, which proved on examination to be a red meal mixed with fine sand." At various points along the Mediterranean, this substance fell.

There is, in _Philosophical Transactions_, 16-281, an account of a seeming cereal, said to have fallen in Wiltshire, in 1686--said that some of the "wheat" fell "enclosed in hailstones"--but the writer in _Transactions_, says that he had examined the grains, and that they were nothing but seeds of ivy berries dislodged from holes and c.h.i.n.ks where birds had hidden them. If birds still hide ivy seeds, and if winds still blow, I don't see why the phenomenon has not repeated in more than two hundred years since.

Or the red matter in rain, at Siena, Italy, May, 1830; said, by Arago, to have been vegetable matter (Arago, _OEuvres_, 12-468).

Somebody should collect data of falls at Siena alone.

In the _Monthly Weather Review_, 29-465, a correspondent writes that, upon Feb. 16, 1901, at Pawpaw, Michigan, upon a day that was so calm that his windmill did not run, fell a brown dust that looked like vegetable matter. The Editor of the _Review_ concludes that this was no widespread fall from a tornado, because it had been reported from nowhere else.

Rancidness--putridity--decomposition--a note that has been struck many times. In a positive sense, of course, nothing means anything, or every meaning is continuous with all other meanings: or that all evidences of guilt, for instance, are just as good evidences of innocence--but this condition seems to mean--things lying around among the stars a long time. Horrible disaster in the time of Julius Caesar; remains from it not reaching this earth till the time of the Bishop of Cloyne: we leave to later research the discussion of bacterial action and decomposition, and whether bacteria could survive in what we call s.p.a.ce, of which we know nothing--

_Chemical News_, 35-183:

Dr. A.T. Machattie, F.C.S., writes that, at London, Ontario, Feb. 24, 1868, in a violent storm, fell, with snow, a dark-colored substance, estimated at 500 tons, over a belt 50 miles by 10 miles. It was examined under a microscope, by Dr. Machattie, who found it to consist mainly of vegetable matter "far advanced in decomposition." The substance was examined by Dr. James Adams, of Glasgow, who gave his opinion that it was the remains of cereals. Dr. Machattie points out that for months before this fall the ground of Canada had been frozen, so that in this case a more than ordinarily remote origin has to be thought of. Dr.

Machattie thinks of origin to the south. "However," he says, "this is mere conjecture."

_Amer. Jour. Sci._, 1841-40:

That, March 24, 1840--during a thunderstorm--at Rajkit, India, occurred a fall of grain. It was reported by Col. Sykes, of the British a.s.sociation.

The natives were greatly excited--because it was grain of a kind unknown to them.

Usually comes forward a scientist who knows more of the things that natives know best than the natives know--but it so happens that the usual thing was not done definitely in this instance:

"The grain was shown to some botanists, who did not immediately recognize it, but thought it to be either a spartium or a vicia."