The Book of the Damned (16 page)

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:

In the London
Times,
Feb. 1, 1888, it is said that a roundish object of iron had been found, “after a violent thunderstorm,” in a garden at Brixton, Aug. 17, 1887. It was analyzed by a chemist, who could not identify it as true meteoritic material. Whether a product of workmanship like human workmanship or not, this object is described as an oblate spheroid, about two inches across its major diameter. The chemist’s name and address are given: Mr. J. James Morgan: Ebbw Vale.

Garden—familiar ground—I suppose that in Mr. Symons’ opinion this symmetric object had been upon the ground “in the first place,” though he neglects to say this. But we do note that he described this object as a “lump,” which does not suggest the spheroidal or symmetric. It is our notion that the word “lump” was, because of its meaning of amorphousness, used purposely to have the next datum stand alone, remote, without similars. If Mr. Symons had said that there had been a report of another round object that had fallen from the sky, his readers would be attracted by an agreement. He distracts his readers by describing in terms of the unprecedented—

“Iron cannon ball.”

It was found in a manure heap, in Sussex, after a thunderstorm.

However, Mr. Symons argues pretty reasonably, it seems to me, that, given a cannon ball in a manure heap, in the first place, lightning might be attracted by it, and, if seen to strike there, the untutored mind, or mentality below the average, would leap or jump, or proceed with less celerity, to the conclusion that the iron object had fallen.

Except that—if every farmer isn’t upon very familiar ground—or if every farmer doesn’t know his own manure heap as well as Mr. Symons knew his writing desk—

Then comes the instance of a man, his wife, and his three daughters, at Casterton, Westmoreland, who were looking out at their lawn, during a thunderstorm, when they “considered,” as Mr. Symons expresses it, that they saw a stone fall from the sky, kill a sheep, and bury itself in the ground.

They dug.

They found a stone ball.

Symons:

Coincidence. It had been there in the first place.

This object was exhibited at a meeting of the Royal Meteorological Society by Mr. C. Carus-Wilson. It is described in the
Journal’s
list of exhibits as a “sandstone” ball. It is described as “sandstone” by Mr. Symons.

Now a round piece of sandstone may be almost anywhere in the ground—in the first place—but, by our more or less discreditable habit of prying and snooping, we find that this object was rather more complex and of material less commonplace. In snooping through
Knowledge,
Oct. 9, 1885, we read that this “thunderstone” was in the possession of Mr. C. Carus-Wilson, who tells the story of the witness and his family—the sheep killed, the burial of something in the earth, the digging, and the finding. Mr. C. Carus-Wilson describes the object as a ball of hard, ferruginous quartzite, about the size of a cocoanut, weight about twelve pounds. Whether we’re feeling around for significance or not, there is a suggestion not only of symmetry but of structure in this object: it had an external shell, separated from a loose nucleus. Mr. Carus-Wilson attributes this cleavage to unequal cooling of the mass.

My own notion is that there is very little deliberate misrepresentation in the writings of scientific men: that they are quite as guiltless in intent as are other hypnotic subjects. Such a victim of induced belief reads of a stone ball said to have fallen from the sky. Mechanically in his mind arise impressions of globular lumps, or nodules, of sandstone, which are common almost everywhere. He assimilates the reported fall with his impressions of objects in the ground, in the first place. To an intermediatist, the phenomena of intellection are only phenomena of universal process localized in human minds. The process called “explanation” is only a local aspect of universal assimilation. It looks like materialism: but the intermediatist holds that interpretation of the immaterial, as it is called, in terms of the material, as it is called, is no more rational than interpretation of the “material” in terms of the “immaterial”: that there is in quasi-existence neither the material nor the immaterial, but approximations one way or the other. But so hypnotic quasi-reasons: that globular lumps of sandstone are common. Whether he jumps or leaps, or whether only the frowsy and base-born are so athletic, his is the impression, by assimilation, that this especial object is a ball of sandstone. Or human mentality: its inhabitants are conveniences. It may be that Mr. Symons’ paper was written before this object was exhibited to the members of the Society, and with the charity with which, for the sake of diversity, we intersperse our malices, we are willing to accept that he “investigated” something that he had never seen. But whoever listed this object was uncareful: it is listed as “sandstone.”

We’re making excuses for them.

Really—as it were—you know, we’re not quite so damned as we were.

One does not apologize for the gods and at the same time feel quite utterly prostrate before them.

If this were a real existence, and all of us real persons, with real standards to judge by, I’m afraid we’d have to be a little severe with some of these Mr. Symonses. As it is, of course, seriousness seems out of place.

We note an amusing little touch in the indefinite allusion to “a man,” who with his unnamed family, had “considered” that he had seen a stone fall. The “man” was the Rev. W. Carus-Wilson, who was well-known in his day.

The next instance was reported by W.B. Tripp, F.R.M.S.—that, during a thunderstorm, a farmer had seen the ground in front of him plowed up by something that was luminous.

Dug.

Bronze ax.

My own notion is that an expedition to the North Pole could not be so urgent as that representative scientists should have gone to that farmer and there spent a summer studying this one reported occurrence. As it is—unnamed farmer—somewhere—no date. The thing must stay damned.

Another specimen for our museum is a comment in
Nature
upon these objects: that they are “of an amusing character, thus clearly showing that they were of terrestrial, and not a celestial, character.” Just why celestiality, or that of it which, too, is only of Intermediateness should not be quite as amusing as terrestriality is beyond our reasoning powers, which we have agreed are not ordinary. Of course there is nothing amusing about wedges and spheres at all—or Archimedes and Euclid are humorists. It is that they were described derisively. If you’d like a little specimen of the standardization of orthodox opinion—

Amer. Met. Jour.,
4-589:

“They are of an amusing character, thus clearly showing that they were of a terrestrial and not a celestial character.”

I’m sure—not positively, of course—that we’ve tried to be as easygoing and lenient with Mr. Symons as his obviously scientific performance would permit. Of course it may be that subconsciously we were prejudiced against him, instinctively classing him with St. Augustine, Darwin, St. Jerome, and Lyell. As to the “thunderstones,” I think that he investigated them mostly “for the credit of Englishmen,” or in the spirit of the Royal Krakatoa Committee, or about as the commission from the French Academy investigated meteorites. According to a writer in
Knowledge,
5-418, the Krakatoa Committee attempted not in the least to prove what had caused the atmospheric effects of 1883, but to prove—that Krakatoa did it.

Altogether I should think that the following quotation should be enlightening to anyone who still thinks that these occurrences were investigated not to support an opinion formed in advance:

In opening his paper, Mr. Symons say that he undertook his investigation as to the existence of “thunderstones,” or “thunderbolts” as he calls them—“feeling certain that there was a weak point somewhere, inasmuch as ‘thunderbolts’ have no existence.”

We have another instance of the reported fall of a “cannon ball.” It occurred prior to Mr. Symons’ investigations, but is not mentioned by him. It was investigated, however. In the
Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin.,
3-147, is the report of a “thunderstone,” “supposed to have fallen in Hampshire, Sept., 1852.” It was an iron cannon ball, or it was a “large nodule of iron pyrites or bisulphuret of iron.” No one had seen it fall. It had been noticed, upon a garden path, for the first time, after a thunderstorm. It was only a “supposed” thing, because—“It had not the character of any known meteorite.”

In the London
Times,
Sept. 16, 1852, appears a letter from Mr. George E. Bailey, a chemist of Andover, Hants. He says that, in a very heavy thunderstorm, of the first week of September, 1852, this iron object had fallen in the garden of Mr. Robert Dowling, of Andover; that it had fallen upon a path “within six yards of the house.” It had been picked up “immediately” after the storm by Mrs. Dowling. It was about the size of a cricket ball: weight four pounds. No one had seen it fall. In the
Times,
Sept. 15, 1852, there is an account of this thunderstorm, which was of unusual violence.

There are some other data relative to the ball of quartz of Westmoreland. They’re poor things. There’s so little to them that they look like ghosts of the damned. However, ghosts, when multiplied, take on what is called substantiality—if the solidest thing conceivable, in quasi-existence, is only concentrated phantomosity. It is not only that there have been other reports of quartz that has fallen from the sky; there is another agreement. The round quartz object of Westmoreland, if broken open and separated from its loose nucleus, would be a round, hollow, quartz object. My pseudoposition is that two reports of similar extraordinary occurrences, one from England and one from Canada—are interesting.

Proc. Canadian Institute,
3-7-8:

That, at the meeting of the Institute, of Dec. 1, 1888, one of the members, Mr. J.A. Livingstone, exhibited a globular quartz body which he asserted had fallen from the sky. It had been split open. It was hollow.

But the other members of the Institute decided that the object was spurious, because it was not of “true meteoritic material.”

No date; no place mentioned; we note the suggestion that it was only a geode, which had been upon the ground in the first place. Its crystalline lining was geode-like.

Quartz is upon the “index prohibitory” of Science. A monk who would read Darwin would sin no more than would a scientist who would admit that, except by the “up and down” process, quartz has ever fallen from the sky—but Continuity: it is not excommunicated if part of or incorporated in a baptized meteorite—St. Catherine’s of Mexico, I think. It’s as epicurean a distinction as any ever made by theologians. Fassig lists a quartz pebble, found in a hailstone
(Bibliography,
part 2-355). “Up and down,” of course. Another object of quartzite was reported to have fallen, in the autumn of 1880, at Schroon Lake, N.Y.—said in the
Scientific American,
43-272 to be a fraud—it was not—the usual. About the first of May, 1899, the newspapers published a story of a “snow white” meteorite that had fallen, at Vincennes, Indiana. The Editor of the
Monthly Weather Review
(issue of April, 1899) requested the local observer, at Vincennes, to investigate. The Editor says that the thing was only a fragment of a quartz boulder. He says that anyone with at least a public school education should know better than to write that quartz has ever fallen from the sky.

Notes and Queries,
2-8-92:

That, in the Leyden Museum of Antiquities, there is a disk of quartz: six centimeters by five millimeters by about five centimeters; said to have fallen upon a plantation in the Dutch West Indies, after a meteoric explosion.

Bricks.

I think this is a vice we’re writing. I recommend it to those who have hankered for a new sin. At first some of our data were of so frightful or ridiculous mien as to be hated, or eyebrowed, was only to be seen. Then some pity crept in? I think that we can now embrace bricks.

The baked-clay-idea was all right in its place, but it rather lacks distinction, I think. With our minds upon the concrete boats that have been building terrestrially lately, and thinking of wrecks that may occur to some of them, and of a new material for the deep-sea fishes to disregard—

Object that fell at Richland, South Carolina—yellow to gray—said to look like a piece of brick.
(Amer. Jour. Sci.,
2-34-298.)

Pieces of “furnace-made brick” said to have fallen—in a hailstorm—at Padua, August, 1834.
(Edin. New Phil. Jour.,
19-87.) The writer offered an explanation that started another convention: that the fragments of brick had been knocked from buildings by the hailstones. But there is here a concomitant that will be disagreeable to anyone who may have been inclined to smile at the now digestible-enough notion that furnace-made bricks have fallen from the sky. It is that in some of the hailstones—two percent of them—that were found with the pieces of brick, was a light grayish powder.

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society,
337-365:

Padre Sechi explains that a stone said to have fallen, in a thunderstorm, at Supino, Italy, September, 1875, had been knocked from a roof.

Nature,
33-153:

That it had been reported that a good-sized stone, of form clearly artificial, had fallen at Naples, November, 1885. The stone was described by two professors of Naples, who had accepted it as inexplicable but veritable. They were visited by Dr. H. Johnstone-Lavis, the correspondent to
Nature,
whose investigations had convinced him that the object was a “shoemaker’s lapstone.”