5 8 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



to this earth; if, upon this earth's surface there is infinite variety 

 of substances detachable by whirlwinds, two falls of such a rare 

 substance as marsh paper would be remarkable. 



A writer in the Edinburgh Review, 87-194, says that, at the 

 time of writing, he had before him a portion of a sheet of 200 square 

 feet, of a substance that had fallen at Carolath, Silesia, in 1839 

 exactly similar to cotton-felt, of which clothing might have been 

 made. The god Microscopic Examination had spoken. The sub- 

 stance consisted chiefly of conifervae. 



Jour. Asiatic Soc. of Bengal, i84y-pt. 1-193: 



That March 16, 1846 about the time of a fall of edible substance 

 in Asia Minor an olive-gray powder fell at Shanghai. Under the 

 microscope, it was seen to be an aggregation of hairs of two kinds, 

 black ones and rather thick white ones. They were supposed to 

 be mineral fibres, but, when burned, they gave out "the common 

 ammonical smell and smoke of burnt hair or feathers." The writer 

 described the phenomenon as "a cloud of 3800 square miles of 

 fibers, alkali, and sand." In a postscript, he says that other inves- 

 tigators, with more powerful microscopes, gave opinion that the fibres 

 were not hairs; that the substance consisted chiefly of conifervae. 



Or the pathos of it, perhaps; or the dull and uninspired, but 

 courageous persistence of the scientific: everything seemingly found 

 out is doomed to be subverted by more powerful microscopes and 

 telescopes; by more refined, precise, searching means and methods 

 the new pronouncements irrepressibly bobbing up; their reception 

 always as Truth at last; always the illusion of the final; very little 

 of the Intermediatist spirit 



That the new that has displaced the ojd will itself some day be 

 displaced; that it, too, will be recognized as myth-stuff 



But that if phantoms climb, spooks of ladders are good enough 

 for them. 



Annual Register, 1821-681: 



That, according to a report by M. Laine, French Consul at Per- 

 nambuco, early in October, 1821, there was a shower of a substance 

 resembling silk. The quantity was as tremendous as might be a 

 whole cargo, lost somewhere between Jupiter and Mars, having 

 drifted around perhaps for centuries, the original fabrics slowly dis- 

 integrating. In Annales de Chimie, 2-15-427, it is said that sam- 

 ples of this substance were sent to France by M. Laine, and that 

 they proved to have some resemblances to silky filaments which, at 

 certain times of the year, are carried by the wind near Paris. 



