BOOK OF THE DAMNED 45 



pressed like the seven black rains of Slains but, upon March 3, 

 1876, something occurred, in Bath County, Kentucky, that brought 

 many newspaper correspondents to the scene. 



The substance that looked like beef that fell from the sky. 



Upon March 3, 1876, at Olympian Springs, Bath County, Ken- 

 tucky, flakes of a substance that looked like beef fell from the sky 

 "from a clear sky." We'd like to emphasize that it was said that 

 nothing but this falling substance was visible in the sky. It fell in 

 flakes of various sizes; some two inches square, one, three or four 

 inches square. The flake-formation is interesting: later we shall 

 think of it as signifying pressure somewhere. It was a thick 

 shower, on the ground, on trees, on fences, but it was narrowly local- 

 ized: or upon a strip of land about 100 yards long and about 50 yards 

 wide. For the first account, see the Scientific American, 34-197, 

 and the New York Times, March 10, 1876. 



Then the exclusionists. 



Something that looked like beef: one flake of it the size of a 

 square envelope. 



If we think of how hard the exclusionists have fought to reject 

 the coming of ordinary-looking dust from this earth's externality, 

 we can sympathize with them in this sensational instance, perhaps. 

 ^Newspaper correspondents Wrote broadcast and witnesses were 

 quoted, and this time there is no mention of a hoax, and, except by 

 one scientist, there is no denial that the fall did take place. 



It seems to me that the exclusionists are still more emphatically 

 conservators. It is not so much that they are inimical to all data 

 of externally derived substances that fall upon this earth, as that they 

 are inimical to all data discordant with a system that does not in- 

 clude such phenomena 



Or the spirit or hope or ambition of the cosmos, which we call 

 attempted positivism: not to find out the new; not to add to what 

 is called knowledge, but to systematize. 



Scientific American Supplement, 2-426: 



That the substance reported from Kentucky had been examined 

 by Leopold Brandeis. 



"At last we have a proper explanation of this much talked of 

 phenomenon." 



"It has been comparatively easy to identify the substance and to 

 fix its status. The Kentucky 'wonder' is no more or less than 

 nostoc." 



Or that it had not fallen; that it had been upon the ground in 



