The Book of the Damned (24 page)

Sir William Thomson ridiculed the heresy, with the phantomosities of his era:

That all bodies, such as hailstones, if away from this earth’s atmosphere, would have to move at planetary velocity—which would be positively reasonable if the pronouncements of St. Isaac were anything but articles of faith—that a hailstone falling through this earth’s atmosphere, with planetary velocity, would perform 13,000 times as much work as would raise an equal weight of water one degree centigrade, and therefore never fall as a hailstone at all; be more than melted—super-volatilized—

These turls and these bleats of pedantry—though we insist that, relatively to 1882, these turls and bleats should be regarded as respectfully as we regard rag dolls that keep infants occupied and noiseless—it is the survival of rag dolls into maturity that we object to—so these pious and naive ones who believed that 13,000 times something could have—that is, in quasi-existence—an exact and calculable resultant, whereas there is—in quasi-existence—nothing that can, except by delusion and convenience, be called a unit, in the first place—whose devotions to St. Isaac required blind belief in formulas of falling bodies—

Against data that were piling up, in their own time, of slow-falling meteorites; “milk warm” ones admitted even by Farrington and Merrill; at least one icy meteorite nowhere denied by the present orthodoxy, a datum as accessible to Thomson, in 1882, as it is now to us, because it was an occurrence of 1860. Beans and needles and tacks and a magnet. Needles and tacks adhere to and systematize relatively to a magnet, but, if some beans, too, be caught up, they are irreconcilables to this system and drop right out of it. A member of the Salvation Army may hear over and over data that seem so memorable to an evolutionist. It seems remarkable that they do not influence him—one finds that he cannot remember them. It is incredible that Sir William Thomson had never heard of slow-falling, cold meteorites. It is simply that he had no power to remember such irreconcilabilities.

And then Mr. Symons again. Mr. Symons was a man who probably did more for the science of meteorology than did any other man of his time: therefore he probably did more to hold back the science of meteorology than did any other man of his time. In
Nature,
41-135, Mr. Symons says that Prof. Schwedoff’s ideas are “very droll.”

I think that even more amusing is our own acceptance that, not very far above this earth’s surface, is a region that will be the subject of a whole new science—super-geography—with which we shall immortalize ourselves in the resentments of the schoolboys of the future—

Pebbles and fragments of meteors and things from Mars and Jupiter and Azuria: wedges, delayed messages, cannon balls, bricks, nails, coal and coke and charcoal and offensive old cargoes—things that coat in ice in some regions and things that get into areas so warm that they putrefy—or that there are all the climates of geography in super-geography. I shall have to accept that, floating in the sky of this earth, there often are fields of ice as extensive as those on the Arctic Ocean—volumes of water in which are many fishes and frogs—tracts of land covered with caterpillars—

Aviators of the future. They fly up and up. Then they get out and walk. The fishing’s good: the bait’s right there. They find messages from other worlds—and within three weeks there’s a big trade worked up in forged messages. Sometime I shall write a guide book to the Super-Sargasso Sea, for aviators, but just at present there wouldn’t be much call for it.

We now have more of our expression upon hail as a concomitant, or more data of things that have fallen from the sky, with hail.

In general, the expression is:

These things may have been raised from some other part of the earth’s surface, in whirlwinds, or may not have fallen, and may have been upon the ground, in the first place—but were the hailstones found with them, raised from some other part of the earth’s surface, or were the hailstones upon the ground, in the first place?

As I said before, this expression is meaningless as to a few instances; it is reasonable to think of some coincidence between the fall of hail and the fall of other things: but, inasmuch as there have been a good many instances,—we begin to suspect that this is not so much a book we’re writing as a sanitarium for overworked coincidences. If not conceivably could very large hailstones and lumps of ice form in this earth’s atmosphere, and so then had to come from external regions, then other things in or accompanying very large hailstones and lumps of ice came from external regions—which worries us a little: we may be instantly translated to the Positive Absolute.

Cosmos,
13-120, quotes a Virginia newspaper, that fishes said to have been catfishes, a foot long, some of them, had fallen, in 1853, at Norfolk, Virginia, with hail.

Vegetable débris, not only nuclear, but frozen upon the surfaces of large hailstones, at Toulouse, France, July 28, 1874. (
La Science Pour Tous,
1874-270.)

Description of a storm, at Pontiac, Canada, July 11, 1864, in which it is said that it was not hailstones that fell, but “pieces of ice, from half an inch to over two inches in diameter”
(Canadian Naturalist,
2-1-308):

“But the most extraordinary thing is that a respectable farmer, of undoubted veracity, says he picked up a piece of hail, or ice, in the center of which was a small green frog.”

Storm at Dubuque, Iowa, June 16, 1882, in which fell hailstones and pieces of ice
(Monthly Weather Review,
June, 1882):

“The foreman of the Novelty Iron Works, of this city, states that in two large hailstones melted by him were found small living frogs.” But the pieces of ice that fell upon this occasion had a peculiarity that indicates—though by as bizarre an indication as any we’ve had yet—that they had been for a long time motionless or floating somewhere. We’ll take that up soon.

Living Age,
52-186:

That, June 30, 1841, fishes, one of which was ten inches long, fell at Boston; that, eight days later, fishes and ice fell at Derby.

In Timb’s
Year Book,
1842-275, it is said that, at Derby, the fishes had fallen in enormous numbers; from half an inch to two inches long, and some considerably larger. In the
Athenæum,
1841-542, copied from the Sheffield
Patriot,
it is said that one of the fishes weighed three ounces. In several accounts, it is said that, with the fishes, fell many small frogs and “pieces of half-melted ice.” We are told that the frogs and the fishes had been raised from some other part of the earth’s surface, in a whirlwind; no whirlwind specified; nothing said as to what part of the earth’s surface comes ice, in the month of July—interests us that the ice is described as “half-melted.” In the London
Times,
July 15, 1841, it is said that the fishes were sticklebacks; that they had fallen with ice and small frogs, many of which had survived the fall. We note that, at Dunfermline, three months later (Oct. 7, 1841) fell many fishes, several inches in length, in a thunderstorm. (London
Times,
Oct. 12, 1841.)

Hailstones, we don’t care so much about. The matter of stratification seems significant, but we think more of the fall of lumps of ice from the sky, as possible data of the Super-Sargasso Sea:

Lumps of ice, a foot in circumference, Derbyshire, England, May 12, 1811
(Annual Register,
1811-54); cuboidal mass, six inches in diameter, that fell at Birmingham, 26 days later (Thomson,
Intro. to Meteorology,
p. 179); size of pumpkins, Bungalore, India, May 22, 1851
(Rept. Brit. Assoc.,
1855-35); masses of ice of a pound and a half each, New Hampshire, Aug. 13, 1851 (Lummis,
Meteorology,
p. 129); masses of ice, size of a man’s head, in the Delphos tornado (Ferrel,
Popular Treatise,
p. 428); large as a man’s hand, killing thousands of sheep, Texas, May 3, 1877
(Monthly Weather Review,
May, 1877); “pieces of ice so large that they could not be grasped in one hand,” in a tornado, in Colorado, June 24, 1877
(Monthly Weather Review,
June, 1877); lumps of ice four and a half inches long, Richmond, England, Aug. 2, 1879
(Symons’ Met. Mag.,
14-100); mass of ice, 21 inches in circumference that fell with hail, Iowa, June, 1881
(Monthly Weather Review,
June, 1881); “pieces of ice” eight inches long, and an inch and a half thick, Davenport, Iowa, Aug. 30, 1882
(Monthly Weather Review,
Aug., 1882); lump of ice size of a brick; weight two pounds, Chicago, July 12, 1883
(Monthly Weather Review,
July, 1883); lumps of ice that weighed one pound and a half each, India, May (?), 1888
(Nature,
37-42); lump of ice weighing four pounds, Texas, Dec. 6, 1893
(Sc. Am.,
68-58); lumps of ice one pound in weight, Nov. 14, 1901, in a tornado, Victoria
(Meteorology of Australia,
p. 34).

Of course it is our acceptance that these masses not only accompanied tornadoes, but were brought down to this earth by tornadoes.

Flammarion,
The Atmosphere,
p. 34:

Block of ice, weighing four and a half pounds that fell at Cazorta, Spain, June 15, 1829; block of ice, weighing eleven pounds, at Cette, France, October, 1844; mass of ice three feet long, three feet wide, and more than two feet thick, that fell, in a storm, in Hungary, May 8, 1802.

Scientific American,
47-119:

That, according to the
Salina Journal, a
mass of ice weighing about 80 pounds had fallen from the sky, near Salina, Kansas, August, 1882. We are told that Mr. W.J. Hagler, the North Santa Fe merchant became possessor of it, and packed it in sawdust in his store.

London
Times,
April 7, 1860:

That, upon the 16th of March, 1860, in a snowstorm, in Upper Wasdale, blocks of ice, so large that at a distance they looked like a flock of sheep, had fallen.

Rept. Brit. Assoc.,
1851-32:

That a mass of ice about a cubic yard in size had fallen at Candeish, India, 1828.

Against these data, though, so far as I know, so many of them have never been assembled together before, there is a silence upon the part of scientific men that is unusual. Our Super-Sargasso Sea may not be an unavoidable conclusion, but arrival upon this earth of ice from external regions does seem to be—except that there must be, be it ever so faint, a merger. It is in the notion that these masses of ice are only congealed hailstones. We have data against this notion, as applied to all our instances, but the explanation has been offered, and, it seems to me, may apply in some instances. In the
Bull. Soc. Astro. de France,
20-245, it is said of blocks of ice the size of decanters that had fallen at Tunis that they were only masses of congealed hailstones.

London
Times,
Aug. 4, 1857:

That a block of ice, described as “pure” ice, weighing twenty-five pounds, had been found in the meadow of Mr. Warner, of Cricklewood. There had been a storm the day before. As in some of our other instances, no one had seen this object fall from the sky. It was found after the storm: that’s all that can be said about it.

Letter from Capt. Blakiston, communicated by Gen. Sabine, to the Royal Society (London
Roy. Soc. Proc.,
10-468):

That, Jan. 14, 1860, in a thunderstorm, pieces of ice had fallen upon Capt. Blakiston’s vessel—that it was not hail. “It was not hail, but irregular-shaped pieces of solid ice of different dimensions, up to the size of half a brick.”

According to the
Advertiser-Scotsman,
quoted by the
Edinburgh New Philosophical Magazine,
47-371, an irregular-shaped mass of ice fell at Ord, Scotland, August, 1849, after “an extraordinary peal of thunder.”

It is said that this was homogeneous ice, except in a small part, which looked like congealed hailstones.

The mass was about twenty feet in circumference.

The story, as told in the London
Times,
Aug. 14, 1849, is that, upon the evening of the 13th of August, 1849, after a loud peal of thunder, a mass of ice said to have been twenty feet in circumference, had fallen upon the estate of Mr. Moffat, of Balvullich, Ross-shire. It is said that this object fell alone, or without hailstones.

Altogether, though it is not so strong for the Super-Sargasso Sea, I think this is one of our best expressions upon external origins. That large blocks of ice could form in the moisture of this earth’s atmosphere is about as likely as that blocks of stone could form in a dust whirl. Of course, if ice or water comes to this earth from external sources, we think of at least minute organisms in it, and on, with our data, to frogs, fishes; on to anything that’s thinkable, coming from external sources. It’s of great importance to us to accept that large lumps of ice have fallen from the sky, but what we desire most—perhaps because of our interest in its archæologic and paleontologic treasures—is now to be through with tentativeness and probation, and to take the Super-Sargasso Sea into full acceptance in our more advanced fold of the chosen of this twentieth century.

In the
Report of the British Association,
1855-37, it is said that, at Poorhundur, India, Dec. 11, 1854, flat pieces of ice, many of them weighing several pounds—each, I suppose—had fallen from the sky. They are described as “large ice-flakes.”

Vast fields of ice in the Super-Arctic regions, or strata, of the Super-Sargasso Sea. When they break up, their fragments are flake-like. In our acceptance, there are aerial ice fields that are remote from this earth; that break up, fragments grinding against one another, rolling in vapor and water, of different constituency in different regions, forming slowly as stratified hailstones—but that there are ice fields near this earth, that break up into just such flat pieces of ice as cover any pond or river when ice of a pond or river is broken, and are sometimes soon precipitated to the earth, in this familiar flat formation.

Symons’ Met. Mag.,
43-154:

A correspondent writes that, at Braemar, July 2, 1908, when the sky was clear overhead, and the sun shining, flat pieces of ice fell—from somewhere. The sun was shining, but something was going on somewhere: thunder was heard.