The Book of the Damned (13 page)

In the
Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal,
2-650, depositions of witnesses are given:

“Some of the fish were fresh, but others were rotten and without heads.”

“Among the number which I got, five were fresh and the rest stinking and headless.”

They remind us of His Grace’s observation of some pages back.

According to Dr. Buist, some of these fishes weighed one and a half pounds each and others three pounds.

A fall of fishes at Futtepoor, India, May 16, 1833:

“They were all dead and dry.” (Dr. Buist;
Living Age,
52-186.)

India is far away: about 1830 was long ago.

Nature,
Sept. 19, 1918-46:

A correspondent writes, from the Dove Marine Laboratory, Cuttercoats, England, that, at Hindon, a suburb of Sunderland, Aug. 24, 1918, hundreds of small fishes, identified as sand eels, had fallen—

Again the small area: about sixty by thirty yards.

The fall occurred during a heavy rain that was accompanied by thunder—or indications of disturbance aloft—but by no visible lightning. The sea is close to Hindon, but if you try to think of these fishes having described a trajectory in a whirlwind from the ocean, consider this remarkable datum:

That, according to witnesses, the fall upon this small area occupied ten minutes.

I cannot think of a clearer indication of a direct fall from a stationary source.

And:

“The fish were all dead, and indeed stiff and hard, when picked up, immediately after the occurrence.”

By all of which I mean that we have only begun to pile up our data of things that fall from a stationary source overhead: we’ll have to take up the subject from many approaches before our acceptance, which seems quite as rigorously arrived at as ever has been a belief, can emerge from the accursed.

I don’t know how much the horse and the barn will help us to emerge: but, if ever anything did go up from this earth’s surface and stay up—those damned things may have:

Monthly Weather Review,
May, 1878:

In a tornado, in Wisconsin, May 23, 1878, “a barn and a horse were carried completely away, and neither horse nor barn, nor any portion of either have since been found.”

After that, which would be a little strong were it not for a steady improvement in our digestions that I note as we go along, there is little of the bizarre or the unassimilable in the turtle that hovered six months or so over a small town in Mississippi:

Monthly Weather Review,
May, 1894:

That, May 11, 1894, at Vicksburg, Miss., fell a small piece of alabaster; that, at Bovina, eight miles from Vicksburg, fell a gopher turtle.

They fell in a hailstorm.

This item was widely copied at the time: for instance,
Nature,
one of the volumes of 1894, page 430, and
Jour. Roy. Met. Soc.,
20-273. As to discussion—not a word. Or Science and its continuity with Presbyterianism—data like this are damned at birth. The
Weather Review
does sprinkle, or baptize, or attempt to save, this infant—but in all the meteorological literature that I have gone through, after that date—not a word, except mention once or twice. The Editor of the
Review
says:

“An examination of the weather map shows that these hailstorms occur on the south side of a region of cold northerly winds, and were but a small part of a series of similar storms; apparently some special local whirls or gusts carried heavy objects from this earth’s surface up to the cloud regions.”

Of all incredibilities that we have to choose from, I give first place to a notion of a whirlwind pouncing upon a region and scrupulously selecting a turtle and a piece of alabaster. This time, the other mechanical thing “there in the first place” cannot rise in response to its stimulus: it is resisted in that these objects were coated with ice—month of May in a southern state. If a whirlwind at all, there must have been very limited selection: there is no record of the fall of other objects. But there is no attempt in the
Review
to specify a whirlwind.

These strangely associated things were remarkably separated.

They fell eight miles apart.

Then—as if there were real reasoning—they must have been high to fall with such divergence, or one of them must have been carried partly horizontally eight miles farther than the other. But either supposition argues for power more than that of a local whirl or gust, or argues for a great, specific disturbance, of which there is no record—for the month of May, 1894.

Nevertheless—as if I really were reasonable—I do feel that I have to accept that this turtle had been raised from this earth’s surface, somewhere near Vicksburg—because the gopher turtle is common in the southern states.

Then I think of a hurricane that occurred in the state of Mississippi weeks or months before May 11, 1894.

No—I don’t look for it—and inevitably find it.

Or that things can go up so high in hurricanes that they stay up indefinitely—but may, after a while, be shaken down by storms. Over and over have we noted the occurrence of strange falls in storms. So then that the turtle and the piece of alabaster may have had far different origins—from different worlds, perhaps—have entered a region of suspension over this earth—wafting near each other—long duration—final precipitation by atmospheric disturbance—with hail—or that hailstones, too, when large, are phenomena of suspension of long duration: that it is highly unacceptable that the very large ones could become so great only in falling from the clouds.

Over and over has the note of disagreeableness, or of putrefaction, been struck—long duration. Other indications of long duration.

I think of a region somewhere above this earth’s surface in which gravitation is inoperative and is not governed by the square of the distance—quite as magnetism is negligible at a very short distance from a magnet. Theoretically the attraction of a magnet should decrease with the square of the distance, but the falling-off is found to be almost abrupt at a short distance.

I think that things raised from this earth’s surface to that region have been held there until shaken down by storms—

The Super-Sargasso Sea.

Derelicts, rubbish, old cargoes from interplanetary wrecks; things cast out into what is called space by convulsions of other planets, things from the times of the Alexanders, Caesars and Napoleons of Mars and Jupiter and Neptune; things raised by this earth’s cyclones: horses and barns and elephants and flies and dodoes, moas, and pterodactyls; leaves from modern trees and leaves of the Carboniferous era—all, however, tending to disintegrate into homogeneous-looking muds or dusts, red or black or yellow—treasure troves for the paleontologists and for the archaeologists—accumulations of centuries—cyclones of Egypt, Greece, and Assyria—fishes dried and hard, there a short time: others there long enough to putrefy—

But the omnipresence of Heterogeneity—or living fishes, also—ponds of fresh water: oceans of salt water.

As to the Law of Gravitation, I prefer to take one simple stand:

Orthodoxy accepts the correlation and equivalence of forces:

Gravitation is one of these forces.

All other forces have phenomena of repulsion and of inertness irrespective of distance, as well as of attraction.

But Newtonian Gravitation admits attraction only:

Then Newtonian Gravitation can be only one-third acceptable even to the orthodox, or there is denial of the correlation and equivalence of forces.

Or still simpler:

Here are the data.

Make what you will, yourself, of them.

In our Intermediatist revolt against homogeneous, or positive, explanations, or our acceptance that the all-sufficing cannot be less than universality, besides which, however, there would be nothing to suffice, our expression upon the Super-Sargasso Sea, though it harmonizes with data of fishes that fall as if from a stationary source—and, of course, with other data, too—is inadequate to account for two peculiarities of the falls of frogs:

That never has a fall of tadpoles been reported;

That never has a fall of full-grown frogs been reported—

Always frogs a few months old.

It sounds positive, but if there be such reports they are somewhere out of my range of reading.

But tadpoles would be more likely to fall from the sky than would frogs, little or big, if such falls be attributed to whirlwinds; and more likely to fall from the Super-Sargasso Sea if, though very tentatively and provisionally, we accept the Super-Sargasso Sea.

Before we take up an especial expression upon the fall of immature and larval forms of life to this earth, and the necessity then of conceiving of some factor besides mere stationariness or suspension or stagnation, there are other data that are similar to data of falls of fishes.

Science Gossip,
1886-238:

That small snails, of a land species, had fallen near Redruth, Cornwall, July 8, 1886, “during a heavy thunderstorm”: roads and fields strewn with them, so that they were gathered up by the hatful: none seen to fall by the writer of this account: snails said to be “quite different to any previously known in this district.”

But, upon page 282, we have better orthodoxy. Another correspondent writes that he had heard of the supposed fall of snails: that he had supposed that all such stories had gone the way of witch stories; that, to his astonishment, he had read an account of this absurd story in a local newspaper of “great and deserved repute.”

“I thought I should for once like to trace the origin of one of these fabulous tales.”

Our own acceptance is that justice cannot be in an intermediate existence, in which there can be approximation only to justice or to injustice; that to be fair is to have no opinion at all; that to be honest is to be uninterested; that to investigate is to admit prejudice; that nobody has ever really investigated anything, but has always sought positively to prove or to disprove something that was conceived of, or suspected, in advance.

“As I suspected,” says this correspondent, “I found that the snails were of a familiar land species”—that they had been upon the ground “in the first place.”

He found that the snails had appeared after the rain: that “astonished rustics had jumped to the conclusion that they had fallen.”

He met one person who said that he had seen the snails fall.

“This was his error,” says the investigator.

In the
Philosophical Magazine,
58-310, there is an account of snails said to have fallen at Bristol in a field of three acres, in such quantities that they were shoveled up. It is said that the snails “may be considered as a local species.” Upon page 457, another correspondent says that the numbers had been exaggerated, and that in his opinion they had been upon the ground in the first place. But that there had been some unusual condition aloft comes out in his observation upon “the curious azure-blue appearance of the sun, at the time.”

Nature,
47-278:

That, according to
Das Wetter,
December, 1892, upon Aug. 9, 1892, a yellow cloud appeared over Paderborn, Germany. From this cloud, fell a torrential rain, in which were hundreds of mussels. There is no mention of whatever may have been upon the ground in the first place, nor of a whirlwind.

Lizards—said to have fallen on the sidewalks of Montreal, Canada, Dec. 28, 1857.
(Notes and Queries,
8-6-104.)

In the
Scientific American,
3-112, a correspondent writes, from South Granville, N.Y., that, during a heavy shower, July 3, 1860, he heard a peculiar sound at his feet, and looking down, saw a snake lying as if stunned by a fall. It then came to life. Gray snake, about a foot long.

These data have any meaning or lack of meaning or degree of damnation you please: but, in the matter of the fall that occurred at Memphis, Tennessee, occur some strong significances. Our quasi-reasoning upon this subject applies to all segregations so far considered.

Monthly Weather Review,
Jan. 15, 1877:

That, in Memphis, Tenn., Jan. 15, 1877, rather strictly localized, or “in a space of two blocks,” and after a violent storm in which the rain “fell in torrents,” snakes were found. They were crawling on sidewalks, in yards, and in streets, and in masses—but “none were found on roofs or any other elevation above ground” and “none were seen to fall.”

If you prefer to believe that the snakes had always been there, or had been upon the ground in the first place, and that it was only that something occurred to call special attention to them, in the streets of Memphis, Jan. 15, 1877—why, that’s sensible: that’s the common sense that has been against us from the first.

It is not said whether the snakes were of a known species or not, but that “when first seen, they were of a dark brown, almost black.” Blacksnakes, I suppose.

If we accept that these snakes did fall, even though not seen to fall by all the persons who were out sight-seeing in a violent storm, and had not been in the streets crawling loose or in thick tangled masses, in the first place;

If we try to accept that these snakes had been raised from some other part of this earth’s surface in a whirlwind;

If we try to accept that a whirlwind could segregate them—

We accept the segregation of other objects raised in that whirlwind.

Then, near the place of origin, there would have been a fall of heavier objects that had been snatched up with the snakes—stones, fence rails, limbs of trees. Say that the snakes occupied the next gradation, and would be the next to fall. Still farther would there have been separate falls of lightest objects: leaves, twigs, tufts of grass.

In the
Monthly Weather Review
there is no mention of other falls said to have occurred anywhere in January, 1877.

Again ours is the objection against such selectiveness by a whirlwind. Conceivably a whirlwind could scoop out a den of hibernating snakes, with stones and earth and an infinitude of other débris, snatching up dozens of snakes—I don’t know how many to a den—hundreds maybe—but, according to the account of this occurrence in the
New York Times,
there were thousands of them; alive; from one foot to eighteen inches in length. The
Scientific American,
36-86, records the fall, and says that there were thousands of them. The usual whirlwind explanation is given—“but in what locality snakes exist in such abundance is yet a mystery.”