70 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



Sometimes cannon balls are found embedded in trees. Doesn't 

 seem to be anything to discuss; doesn't seem discussable that any 

 one would cut a hole in a tree and hide a cannon ball, which one 

 could take to bed, and hide under one's pillow, just as easily. So 

 with the stone of Battersea Fields. What is there to say, except 

 that it fell with high velocity and embedded in the tree? Never- 

 theless, there was a great deal of discussion 



Because, at the foot of the tree, as if broken off the stone, frag- 

 ments of slag were found. 



I have nine other instances. 



Slag and cinders and ashes, and you won't believe, and neither 

 will I, that they came from the furnaces of vast aerial super- 

 constructions. We'll see what looks acceptable. 



As to ashes, the difficulties are great, because we'd expect many 

 falls of terrestrially derived ashes volcanoes and forest fires. 



In some of our acceptances, I have felt a little radical 



I suppose that one of our main motives is to show that there 

 is, in quasi-existence, nothing but the preposterous or something 

 intermediate to absolute preposterousness and final reasonableness 

 that the new is the obviously preposterous; that it becomes the 

 established and disguisedly preposterous; that it is displaced, after 

 a while, and is again seen to be the preposterous. Or that all prog- 

 ress is from the outrageous to the academic or sanctified, and back 

 to the outrageous modified, however, by a trend of higher and 

 higher approximation to the impreposterous. Sometimes I feel a 

 little more uninspired than at other times, but I think we're pretty 

 well accustomed now to the oneness of allness; or that the methods 

 of science in maintaining its system are as outrageous as the attempts 

 of the damned to break in. In the Annual Record of Science, 

 1875-241, Prof. Daubree is quoted: that ashes that had fallen in 

 the Azores had come from the Chicago fire 



Or the damned and the saved, and there's little to choose between 

 them; and angels are beings that have not obviously barbed tails 

 to them or never have such bad manners as to stroke an angel 

 below the waist-line. 



However this especial outrage was challenged: the Editor of the 

 Record returns to it, in the issue of 1876: considers it "in the 

 highest degree improper to say that the ashes of Chicago were landed 

 in the Azores." 



Bull. Soc. Astro, de France, 22-245: 



Account of a white substance, like ashes, that fell at Annoy, 



