BOOK OF THE DAMNED 55 



leafy mass; and a person who lived near said he had seen it fall 

 like flakes with the snow." 



Some of these flake-like formations were as large as a table-top. 



"The mass was damp and smelt disagreeably, like rotten seaweed, 

 but, when dried, the smell went off." 



"It tore fibrously, like paper." 



Classic explanation: 



"Up from one place, and down in another." 



But what went up, from one place, in a whirlwind? Of course, 

 our Intermediatist acceptance is that had this been the strangest 

 substance conceivable, from the strangest other world that could 

 be thought of; somewhere upon this earth there must be a substance 

 similar to it, or from which it would, at least subjectively, or accord- 

 ing to description, not be easily distinguishable. Or that every- 

 thing in New York City is only another degree or aspect of 

 something, or combination of things, in a village of Central Africa. 

 The novel is a challenge to vulgarization: write something that 

 looks new to you: some one will point out that the thrice-accursed 

 Greeks said it long ago. Existence is Appetite: the gnaw of being; 

 the one attempt of all things to assimilate all other things, if they 

 have not surrendered and submitted to some higher attempt. It was 

 cosmic that these scientists, who had surrendered to and submitted 

 to the Scientific System, should, consistently with the principles of 

 that system, attempt to assimilate the substance that fell at Memel 

 with some known terrestrial product. At the meeting of the Royal 

 Irish Academy it was brought out that there is a substance, of 

 rather rare occurrence, that has been known to form in thin sheets 

 upon marsh land. 



It looks like greenish felt. 



The substance of Memel: 



Damp, coal-black, leafy mass. 



But, if broken up, the marsh-substance is flake-like, and it tears 

 fibrously. 



An elephant can be identified as a sunflower both have long 

 stems. A camel is indistinguishable from a peanut if only their 

 humps be considered. 



Trouble with this book is that we'll end up a lot of intellectual 

 roues: we'll be incapable of being astonished with anything. We 

 knew, to start with, that science and imbecility are continuous; 

 nevertheless so many expressions of the merging-point are at first 

 startling. We did think that Prof. Hitchcock's performance in 



