The Book of the Damned (15 page)

The finder jumped to the conclusion.

Story told by Blinkenberg, of a woman, who lived near Kulsbjaergene, Sweden, who found a flint near an old willow—“near her house.” I emphasize “near her house” because that means familiar ground. The willow had been split by something.

She jumped.

Cow killed by lightning, or by what looked like lightning (Isle of Sark, near Guernsey). The peasant who owned the cow dug up the ground at the spot and found a small greenstone “ax.” Blinkenberg says that he jumped to the conclusion that it was this object that had fallen luminously, killing the cow.

Reliquary,
1867-208:

A flint ax found by a farmer, after a severe storm—described as a “fearful storm”—by a signal staff, which had been split by something. I should say that nearness to a signal staff may be considered familiar ground.

Whether he jumped, or arrived at the conclusion by a more leisurely process, the farmer thought that the flint object had fallen in the storm.

In this instance we have a lamentable scientist with us. It’s impossible to have positive difference between orthodoxy and heresy: somewhere there must be a merging into each other, or an overlapping. Nevertheless, upon such a subject as this, it does seem a little shocking. In most works upon meteorites, the peculiar, sulphurous odor of things that fall from the sky is mentioned. Sir John Evans
(Stone Implements,
p. 57) says—with extraordinary reasoning powers, if he could never have thought such a thing with ordinary reasoning powers—that this flint object “proved to have been the bolt, by its peculiar smell when broken.”

If it did so prove to be, that settles the whole subject. If we prove that only one object of worked stone has fallen from the sky, all piling up of further reports is unnecessary. However, we have already taken the stand that nothing settles anything; that the disputes of ancient Greece are no nearer solution now than they were several thousand years ago—all because, in a positive sense, there is nothing to prove or solve or settle. Our object is to be more nearly real than our opponents. Wideness is an aspect of the Universal. We go on widely. According to us the fat man is nearer godliness than is the thin man. Eat, drink, and approximate to the Positive Absolute. Beware of negativeness, by which we mean indigestion.

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 eight 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 mass 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 nearby. 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-Sargasso 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, damned 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 circumstances 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 damnation.

The extraordinary and how quickly it is hidden away.

Burial and damnation, or the obscurity of the conspicuous.

We did read of a man who, in the matter of snails, did travel some distance to assure himself of something that he had suspected in advance; and we remember Prof. Hitchcock, 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, subdividing 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 Notting 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 mass 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 mass 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 coke and coal and ashes occasionally fall to this earth, or, rather, to the Super-Sargasso 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 passed, 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 masses 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 Not-ting 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 associated 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.”