The Book of the Damned Part 22

The vast majority of "thunderstones" are described as "axes," but Meunier (_La Nature_, 1892-2-381) tells of one that was in his possession; said to have fallen at Ghardia, Algeria, contrasting "profoundment" (pear-shaped) with the angular outlines of ordinary meteorites. The conventional explanation that it had been formed as a drop of molten matter from a larger body seems reasonable to me; but with less agreeableness I note its fall in a thunderstorm, the datum that turns the orthodox meteorologist pale with rage, or induces a slight elevation of his eyebrows, if you mention it to him.

Meunier tells of another "thunderstone" said to have fallen in North Africa. Meunier, too, is a little lamentable here: he quotes a soldier of experience that such objects fall most frequently in the deserts of Africa.

Rather miscellaneous now:

"Thunderstone" said to have fallen in London, April, 1876: weight about 8 pounds: no particulars as to shape (Timb's _Year Book_, 1877-246).

"Thunderstone" said to have fallen at Cardiff, Sept. 26, 1916 (London _Times_, Sept. 28, 1916). According to _Nature_, 98-95, it was coincidence; only a lightning flash had been seen.

Stone that fell in a storm, near St. Albans, England: accepted by the Museum of St. Albans; said, at the British Museum, not to be of "true meteoritic material." (_Nature_, 80-34.)

London _Times_, April 26, 1876:

That, April 20, 1876, near Wolverhampton, fell a ma.s.s of meteoritic iron during a heavy fall of rain. An account of this phenomenon in _Nature_, 14-272, by H.S. Maskelyne, who accepts it as authentic. Also, see _Nature_, 13-531.

For three other instances, see the _Scientific American_, 47-194; 52-83; 68-325.

As to wedge-shape larger than could very well be called an "ax":

_Nature_, 30-300:

That, May 27, 1884, at Tysnas, Norway, a meteorite had fallen: that the turf was torn up at the spot where the object had been supposed to have fallen; that two days later "a very peculiar stone" was found near by.

The description is--"in shape and size very like the fourth part of a large Stilton cheese."

It is our acceptance that many objects and different substances have been brought down by atmospheric disturbance from what--only as a matter of convenience now, and until we have more data--we call the Super-Sarga.s.so Sea; however, our chief interest is in objects that have been shaped by means similar to human handicraft.

Description of the "thunderstones" of Burma (_Proc. Asiatic Soc. of Bengal_, 1869-183): said to be of a kind of stone unlike any other found in Burma; called "thunderbolts" by the natives. I think there's a good deal of meaning in such expressions as "unlike any other found in Burma"--but that if they had said anything more definite, there would have been unpleasant consequences to writers in the 19th century.

More about the "thunderstones" of Burma, in the _Proc. Soc. Antiq. of London_, 2-3-97. One of them, described as an "adze," was exhibited by Captain Duff, who wrote that there was no stone like it in its neighborhood.

Of course it may not be very convincing to say that because a stone is unlike neighboring stones it had foreign origin--also we fear it is a kind of plagiarism: we got it from the geologists, who demonstrate by this reasoning the foreign origin of erratics. We fear we're a little gross and scientific at times.

But it's my acceptance that a great deal of scientific literature must be read between the lines. It's not everyone who has the lamentableness of a Sir John Evans. Just as a great deal of Voltaire's meaning was inter-linear, we suspect that a Captain Duff merely hints rather than to risk having a Prof. Lawrence Smith fly at him and call him "a half-insane man." Whatever Captain Duff's meaning may have been, and whether he smiled like a Voltaire when he wrote it, Captain Duff writes of "the extremely soft nature of the stone, rendering it equally useless as an offensive or defensive weapon."

Story, by a correspondent, in _Nature_, 34-53, of a Malay, of "considerable social standing"--and one thing about our data is that, d.a.m.ned though they be, they do so often bring us into awful good company--who knew of a tree that had been struck, about a month before, by something in a thunderstorm. He searched among the roots of this tree and found a "thunderstone." Not said whether he jumped or leaped to the conclusion that it had fallen: process likely to be more leisurely in tropical countries. Also I'm afraid his way of reasoning was not very original: just so were fragments of the Bath-furnace meteorite, accepted by orthodoxy, discovered.

We shall now have an unusual experience. We shall read of some reports of extraordinary circ.u.mstances that were investigated by a man of science--not of course that they were really investigated by him, but that his phenomena occupied a position approximating higher to real investigation than to utter neglect. Over and over we read of extraordinary occurrences--no discussion; not even a comment afterward findable; mere mention occasionally--burial and d.a.m.nation.

The extraordinary and how quickly it is hidden away.

Burial and d.a.m.nation, or the obscurity of the conspicuous.

We did read of a man who, in the matter of snails, did travel some distance to a.s.sure himself of something that he had suspected in advance; and we remember Prof. Hitchc.o.c.k, who had only to smite Amherst with the wand of his botanical knowledge, and lo! two fungi sprang up before night; and we did read of Dr. Gray and his thousands of fishes from one pailful of water--but these instances stand out; more frequently there was no "investigation." We now have a good many reported occurrences that were "investigated." Of things said to have fallen from the sky, we make, in the usual scientific way, two divisions: miscellaneous objects and substances, and symmetric objects attributable to beings like human beings, sub-dividing into--wedges, spheres, and disks.

_Jour. Roy. Met. Soc._, 14-207:

That, July 2, 1866, a correspondent to a London newspaper wrote that something had fallen from the sky, during a thunderstorm of June 30, 1866, at Netting Hill. Mr. G.T. Symons, of _Symons' Meteorological Magazine_, investigated, about as fairly, and with about as unprejudiced a mind, as anything ever has been investigated.

He says that the object was nothing but a lump of coal: that next door to the home of the correspondent coal had been unloaded the day before.

With the uncanny wisdom of the stranger upon unfamiliar ground that we have noted before, Mr. Symons saw that the coal reported to have fallen from the sky, and the coal unloaded more prosaically the day before, were identical. Persons in the neighborhood, unable to make this simple identification, had bought from the correspondent pieces of the object reported to have fallen from the sky. As to credulity, I know of no limits for it--but when it comes to paying out money for credulity--oh, no standards to judge by, of course--just the same--

The trouble with efficiency is that it will merge away into excess. With what seems to me to be super-abundance of convincingness, Mr. Symons then lugs another character into his little comedy:

That it was all a hoax by a chemist's pupil, who had filled a capsule with an explosive, and "during the storm had thrown the burning ma.s.s into the gutter, so making an artificial thunderbolt."

Or even Shakespeare, with all his inartistry, did not lug in King Lear to make Hamlet complete.

Whether I'm lugging in something that has no special meaning, myself, or not, I find that this storm of June 30, 1866, was peculiar. It is described in the London _Times_, July 2, 1866: that "during the storm, the sky in many places remained partially clear while hail and rain were falling." That may have more meaning when we take up the possible extra-mundane origin of some hailstones, especially if they fall from a cloudless sky. Mere suggestion, not worth much, that there may have been falls of extra-mundane substances, in London, June 30, 1866.

Clinkers, said to have fallen, during a storm, at Kilburn, July 5, 1877:

According to the _Kilburn Times_, July 7, 1877, quoted by Mr. Symons, a street had been "literally strewn," during the storm, with a ma.s.s of clinkers, estimated at about two bushels: sizes from that of a walnut to that of a man's hand--"pieces of the clinkers can be seen at the _Kilburn Times_ office."

If these clinkers, or cinders, were refuse from one of the super-mercantile constructions from which c.o.ke and coal and ashes occasionally fall to this earth, or, rather, to the Super-Sarga.s.so Sea, from which dislodgment by tempests occurs, it is intermediatistic to accept that they must merge away somewhere with local phenomena of the scene of precipitation. If a red-hot stove should drop from a cloud into Broadway, someone would find that at about the time of the occurrence, a moving van had pa.s.sed, and that the moving men had tired of the stove, or something--that it had not been really red-hot, but had been rouged instead of blacked, by some absent-minded housekeeper. Compared with some of the scientific explanations that we have encountered, there's considerable restraint, I think, in that one.

Mr. Symons learned that in the same street--he emphasizes that it was a short street--there was a fire-engine station. I had such an impression of him hustling and bustling around at Notting Hill, searching cellars until he found one with newly arrived coal in it; ringing door bells, exciting a whole neighborhood, calling up to second-story windows, stopping people in the streets, hotter and hotter on the trail of a wretched imposter of a chemist's pupil. After his efficiency at Notting Hill, we'd expect to hear that he went to the station, and--something like this:

"It is said that clinkers fell, in your street, at about ten minutes past four o'clock, afternoon of July fifth. Will you look over your records and tell me where your engine was at about ten minutes past four, July fifth?"

Mr. Symons says:

"I think that most probably they had been raked out of the steam fire-engine."

June 20, 1880, it was reported that a "thunderstone" had struck the house at 180 Oakley Street, Chelsea, falling down the chimney, into the kitchen grate.

Mr. Symons investigated.

He describes the "thunderstone" as an "agglomeration of brick, soot, unburned coal, and cinder."

He says that, in his opinion, lightning had flashed down the chimney, and had fused some of the brick of it.

He does think it remarkable that the lightning did not then scatter the contents of the grate, which were disturbed only as if a heavy body had fallen. If we admit that climbing up the chimney to find out is too rigorous a requirement for a man who may have been large, dignified and subject to expansions, the only unreasonableness we find in what he says--as judged by our more modern outlook, is:

"I suppose that no one would suggest that bricks are manufactured in the atmosphere."

Sounds a little unreasonable to us, because it is so of the positivistic spirit of former times, when it was not so obvious that the highest incredibility and laughability must merge away with the "proper"--as the _Sci. Am. Sup._ would say. The preposterous is always interpretable in terms of the "proper," with which it must be continuous--or--clay-like ma.s.ses such as have fallen from the sky--tremendous heat generated by their velocity--they bake--bricks.

We begin to suspect that Mr. Symons exhausted himself at Notting Hill.

It's a warning to efficiency-fanatics.

Then the instance of three lumps of earthy matter, found upon a well-frequented path, after a thunderstorm, at Reading, July 3, 1883.

There are so many records of the fall of earthy matter from the sky that it would seem almost uncanny to find resistance here, were we not so accustomed to the uncompromising stands of orthodoxy--which, in our metaphysics, represent good, as attempts, but evil in their insufficiency. If I thought it necessary, I'd list one hundred and fifty instances of earthy matter said to have fallen from the sky. It is his antagonism to atmospheric disturbance a.s.sociated with the fall of things from the sky that blinds and hypnotizes a Mr. Symons here. This especial Mr. Symons rejects the Reading substance because it was not "of true meteoritic material." It's uncanny--or it's not uncanny at all, but universal--if you don't take something for a standard of opinion, you can't have any opinion at all: but, if you do take a standard, in some of its applications it must be preposterous. The carbonaceous meteorites, which are unquestioned--though avoided, as we have seen--by orthodoxy, are more glaringly of untrue meteoritic material than was this substance of Reading. Mr. Symons says that these three lumps were upon the ground "in the first place."

Whether these data are worth preserving or not, I think that the appeal that this especial Mr. Symons makes is worthy of a place in the museum we're writing. He argues against belief in all external origins "for our credit as Englishmen." He is a patriot, but I think that these foreigners had a small chance "in the first place" for hospitality from him.

Then comes a "small lump of iron (two inches in diameter)" said to have fallen, during a thunderstorm, at Brixton, Aug. 17, 1887. Mr. Symons says: "At present I cannot trace it."

He was at his best at Notting Hill: there's been a marked falling off in his later manner: