BOOK OF THE DAMNED 34 



cano, showing the same precise preference, if not marksmanship, for 

 one small parish in Scotland. 



Nor would orthodoxy be any better off in thinking of exploding 

 meteorites and their debris: preciseness and recurrence would be 

 just as difficult to explain. 



My own notion is of an island near an oceanic trade-route: it 

 might receive debris from passing vessels seven times in four 

 years. 



Other concomitants of black rains: 



In Timb's Year Book, 1851-270, there is an account of "a sort 

 of rumbling, as of wagons, heard for upward of an hour without 

 ceasing," July 16, 1850, Bulwick Rectory, Northampton, England. 

 On the 1 9th, a black rain fell. 



In Nature, 30-6, a correspondent writes of an intense darkness 

 at Preston, England, April 26, 1884: page 32, another correspondent 

 writes of black rain at Crowle, near Worcester, April 26: that a 

 week later, or May 3, it had fallen again: another account of black 

 rain, upon the 28th of April, near Church Shetton, so intense that 

 the following day brooks were still dyed with it. According to 

 four accounts by correspondents to Nature there were earth- 

 quakes in England at this time. 



Or the black rain of Canada, Nov. 9, 1819. This time it is 

 orthodoxy to attribute the black precipitate to smoke of forest fires 

 south of the Ohio River 



Zurcher, Meteors, p. 238: 



That this black rain was accompanied by "shocks like those of 

 an earthquake." 



Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, 2-381: 



That the earthquake had occurred at the climax of intense dark- 

 ness and the fall of black rain. 



Red rains. 



Orthodoxy: 



Sand blown by the sirocco, from the Sahara to Europe. 



Especially in the earthquake regions of Europe, there have been 

 many falls of red substance, usually, but not always, precipitated 

 in rain. Upon many occasions, these substances have been "abso- 

 lutely identified" as sand from the Sahara. When I first took this 

 matter up, I came across assurance after assurance, so positive to 

 this effect, that, had I not been an Intennediatist, I'd have looked 

 n further. Samples collected from a rain at Genoa samples of 



