BOOK OF THE DAMNED 49 



minute forms, said to have been infusoria; not forms about an inch 

 in length. 



Trans. Ent. Soc. of London, iSyi-proc. xxii: 



That the phenomenon had been investigated by the Rev. L. Jenyns, 

 of Bath. His description is of minute worms in filmy envelopes. 

 He tries to account for their segregation. The mystery of it 

 is: what could have brought so many of them together? Many other 

 falls we shall have record of, and in most of them segregation is 

 the great mystery. A whirlwind seems anything but a segregative 

 force. Segregation of things that have fallen from the sky has been 

 avoided as most deep-dyed of the damned. Mr. Jenyns conceives of 

 a large pool, in which were many of these spherical masses: of the 

 pool drying up and concentrating all in a small area; of a whirl- 

 wind then scooping all up together 



But several days later, more of these objects fell in the same 

 place. 



That such marksmanship is not attributable to whirlwinds seems 

 to me to be what we think we mean by common sense: 



It may not look like common sense to say that these things had 

 been stationary over the town of Bath, several days 



The seven black rains of Slains; 



The four red rains of Siena. 



An interesting sidelight on the mechanics of orthodoxy is that 

 Mr. Jenyns dutifully records the second fall, but ignores it in his 

 explanation. 



R. P. Greg, one of the most notable of cataloguers of meteoritic 

 phenomena, records (Phil. Mag.: 4-8-463) falls of viscid substance 

 in the years 1652, 1686, 1718, 1796, 1811, 1819, 1844. He gives 

 earlier dates, but I practice exclusions, myself. In the Report 

 of the British Association, 1860-63, Greg records a meteor that 

 seemed to pass near the ground, between Barsdorf and Freiburg, 

 Germany: the next day a jelly-like mass was found in the snow 



Unseasonableness for either spawn or nostoc. 



Greg's comment in this instance is: "curious if true." But he 

 records without modification the fall of a meteorite at Gotha, 

 Germany, Sept. 6, 1835, "leaving a jelly-like mass on the ground." 

 We are told that this substance fell only three feet away from an 

 observer. In the Report of the British Association, 1855-94, ac- 

 cording to a letter from Greg to Prof. Baden-Powell, at night, Oct. 

 8, 1844, near Coblentz, a German, who was known to Greg, and 

 another person, saw a luminous body fall close to them. They 



