64 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



substance, said, by Prof. Leeds, of Stevens Institute, to be carbonate 

 of soda (Sci. Arner., 30-262). 



We are getting a little away from the lines of our composition, 

 but it will be an important point later that so many extraordinary 

 falls have occurred with hail. Or if they were of substances that 

 had had origin upon some other part of this earth's surface had 

 the hail, too, that origin? Our acceptance here will depend upon 

 the number of instances. Reasonably enough, some of the things' 

 that fall to this earth should coincide with falls of hail. 



As to vegetable substances in quantities so great as to suggest lost 

 cargoes, we have a note in the Intellectual Observer, 3-468: that, 

 upon the first of May, 1863, a rain fell at Perpignan, "bringing 

 down with it a red substance, which proved on examination to be 

 a red meal mixed with fine sand." At various points along the 

 Mediterranean, this substance fell. 



There is, in Philosophical Transactions, 16-281, an account of 

 a seeming cereal, said to have fallen hi Wiltshire, in 1686 said 

 that some of the "wheat" fell "enclosed in hailstones" but the 

 writer in Transactions, says that he had examined the grains, and 

 that they were nothing but seeds of ivy berries dislodged from 

 holes and chinks where birds had hidden them. If birds still hide 

 ivy seeds, and if winds still blow, I don't see why the phenomenon 

 has not repeated in more than two hundred years since. 



Or the red matter in rain, at Siena, Italy, May, 1830; said, by 

 Arago, to have been vegetable matter (Arago, (Euvres, 12-468). 



Somebody should collect data of falls at Siena alone. 



In the Monthly Weather Review, 29-^5, a correspondent 

 writes that, upon Feb. 16, 1901, at Pawpaw, Michigan, upon a day 

 that was so calm that his windmill did not run, fell a brown dust 

 that looked like vegetable matter. The Editor of the Review 

 concludes that this was no widespread fall from a tornado, because 

 it had been reported from nowhere else. 



Rancidness putridity decomposition a note that has been 

 struck many times. In a positive sense, of course, nothing means 

 anything, or every meaning is continuous with all other meanings: 

 or that all evidences of guilt, for instance, are just as good evidences 

 of innocence but this condition seems to mean things lying around 

 among the stars a long time. Horrible disaster in the time of Julius 

 Caesar; remains from it not reaching this earth till the time of the 

 Bishop of Cloyne: we leave to later research the discussion of 



