BOOK OF THE DAMNED 35 



a chemist's opinion, see the report of the meeting of the Royal 

 Chemical Society, April 2, 1903. Mr. E. G. Clayton read a paper 

 upon some of the substance that had fallen from the sky, collected 

 by him. The Sahara explanation applies mostly to falls that occur 

 in southern Europe. Farther away, the conventionalists are a little 

 uneasy: for instance, the editor of the Monthly Weather Review, 

 29-121, says of a red rain that fell near the coast of Newfoundland, 

 early in 1890: "It would be very remarkable if this was Sahara 

 dust." Mr. Clayton said that the matter examined by him was 

 "merely wind-borne dust from the roads and lanes of Wessex." This 

 opinion is typical of all scientific opinion or theological opinion 

 or feminine opinion all very well except for what it disregards. 

 The most charitable thing I can think of because I think it gives 

 us a broader tone to relieve our malices with occasional charities 

 is that Mr. Clayton had not heard of the astonishing extent of this 

 fall had covered the Canary Islands, on the i9th, for instance. 

 I think, myself, that in 1903, we passed through the remains of a 

 powdered world left over from an ancient inter-planetary dispute, 

 brooding in space like a red resentment ever since. Or, like every 

 other opinion, the notion of dust from Wessex turns into a provin- 

 cial thing when we look it over. 



To think is to conceive incompletely, because all thought relates 

 only to the local. We metaphysicians, of course, like to have the 

 notion that we think of the unthinkable. 



As to opinions, or pronouncements, I should say, because they 

 always have such an authoritative air, of other chemists, there is 

 an analysis in Nature, 68-54, giving water and organic matter 

 at 9.08 per cent. It's that carrying out of fractions that's so con- 

 vincing. The substance is identified as sand from the Sahara. 



The vastness of this fall. In Nature, 68-65, we are told that 

 it had occurred in Ireland, too. The Sahara, of course because, 

 prior to Feb. 19, there had been dust storms in the Sahara disre- 

 garding that in that great region there's always, in some part of it, 

 a dust storm. However, just at present, it does look reasonable that 

 dust had come from Africa, via the Canaries. 



The great difficulty that authoritativeness has to contend with is 

 some other authoritativeness. When an infallibility clashes with a 

 pontification 



They explain. 



Nature, March 5, 1903: 



Another analysis 36 per cent organic matter. 



