BOOK OF THE DAMNED 63 



If, intermittently, or "for a good part of the spring," this sub- 

 stance fell in two Irish provinces, and nowhere else, we have, stronger 

 than before, a sense of a stationary region overhead, or a region 

 that receives products like this earth's products, but from external 

 sources, a region in which this earth's gravitational and meteoro- 

 logical forces are relatively inert if for many weeks a good part of 

 this substance did hover before finally falling. We suppose that, in 

 1685, Mr. Vans and the Bishop of Cloyne could describe what they 

 saw as well as could witnesses in 1885: nevertheless, it is going far 

 back; we shall have to have many modern instances before we can 

 accept. 



As to other falls, or another fall, it is said in the Amer. Jour. 

 Set., 1-28-361, that, April n, 1832 about a month after the 

 fall of the substance of Kourianof fell a substance that was wine- 

 yellow, transparent, soft, and smelling like rancid oil. M. Herman, 

 a chemist who examined it, named it "sky oil." For analysis and 

 chemic reactions, see the Journal. The Edinburgh New Philo- 

 sophical Journal, 13-368, mentions an "unctuous" substance that 

 fell near Rotterdam, in 1832. In Comptes Rendus, 13-215, there 

 is an account of an oily, reddish matter that fell at Genoa, February, 

 1841. 



Whatever it may have been 



Altogether, most of our difficulties are problems that we should 

 leave to later developers of super-geography, I think. A discoverer 

 of America should leave Long Island to some one else. If there be, 

 plying back and forth from Jupiter and Mars and Venus, super- 

 constructions that are sometimes wrecked, we think of fuel as well 

 as cargoes. Of course the most convincing data would be of coal 

 falling from the sky: nevertheless, one does suspect that oil-burning 

 engines were discovered ages ago in more advanced worlds but, as 

 I say, we should leave something to our disciples so we'll not 

 especially wonder whether these butter-like, or oily substances were 

 food or fuel. So we merely note that in the Scientific American, 

 24-323, is an account of hail that fell, in the middle of April, 1871, 

 in Mississippi, in which was a substance described as turpentine. 



Something that tasted like orange water, in hailstones, about the 

 first of June, 1842, near Nimes, France; identified as nitric acid 

 (Jour, de Pharmacie, 1845-273). 



Hail and ashes, in Ireland, 1755 (Set. Anier., 5-168). 



That, at Elizabeth, N. J., June 9, 1874, fell hail in which was a 



