;?<S BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



Such disagreements don't look very well, so, in Nature, 68-109, 

 one of the differing chemists explains. He says that his analysis 

 was of muddy rain, and the other was of sediment of rain 



We're quite ready to accept excuses from the most high, though 

 I do wonder whether we're quite so damned as we were, if we find 

 ourselves in a gracious and tolerant mood toward the powers that 

 condemn but the tax that now comes upon our good manners and 

 unwillingness to be too severe . 



Nature, 68-223: 



Another chemist. He says it was 23.49 per cent water and or- 

 ganic matter. 



He "identifies" this matter as sand from an African desert but 

 after deducting organic matter 



But you and I could be "identified" as sand from an African des- 

 ert, after deducting all there is to us except sand 



Why we can not accept that this fall was of sand from the 

 Sahara, omitting the obvious objection that in most parts the Sahara 

 is not red at all, but is usually described as "dazzling white" 



The enormousness of it: that a whirlwind might have carried it, 

 but that, in that case it would be no supposititious, or doubtfully 

 identified whirlwind, but the greatest atmospheric cataclysm in the 

 history of this earth: 



Jour. Roy. Met. Soc., 30-56: 



That, up to the 27th of February, this fall had continued in 

 Belgium, Holland, Germany and Austria; that in some instances it 

 was not sand, or that almost all the matter was organic: that a 

 vessel had reported the fall as occurring in the Atlantic Ocean, 

 midway between Southampton and the Barbados. The calculation 

 is given that, in England alone, 10,000,000 tons of matter had 

 fallen. It had fallen in Switzerland (Symons' Met. Mag., March, 

 1903). It had fallen in Russia (Bull. Com. Geolog., 22-48). Not 

 only had a vast quantity of matter fallen several months before, in 

 Australia, but it was at this time falling in Australia (Victorian 

 Naturalist, June, 1903) enormously red mud fifty tons per 

 square mile. 



The Wessex explanation 



Or that every explanation is a Wessex explanation: by that I 

 mean an attempt to interpret the enormous in terms of the minute 

 but that nothing can be finally explained, because by Truth we 

 mean the Universal; and that even if we could think as wide as 

 Universality, that would not be requital to the cosmic quest whir' 



