Part 10

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 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 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 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-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, 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 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 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 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."

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 un-named 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--un-named 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 sub-consciously 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 says 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."