74 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



ness that earthy matter may have been caught up by whirlwinds 

 and flung down somewhere else. If he had given a full list, he 

 would be called upon to explain the special affinity of whirlwinds 

 for a special kind of coal. He does not give a full list. We shall 

 have all that's findable, and we shall see that against this disease 

 we're writing, the homeopathist's prescription availeth not. An- 

 other exclusionist was Prof. Lawrence Smith. His psycho-tropism 

 was to respond to all reports of carbonaceous matter falling from 

 the sky, by saying that this damned matter had been deposited upon 

 things of the chosen by impact with this earth. Most of our data 

 antedate him, or were contemporaneous with him, or were as access- 

 ible to him as to us. In his attempted positivism it is simply and 

 beautifully disregarded that, according to Berthelot, Berzelius, 

 Cloez, Wohler and others these masses are not merely coated with 

 carbonaceous matter, but are carbonaceous throughout, or are per- 

 meated throughout. How any one could so resolutely and dogmat- 

 ically and beautifully and blindly hold out, would puzzle us were it 

 not for our acceptance that only to think is to exclude and include; 

 and to exclude some things that have as much right to come in as 

 have the included that to have an opinion upon any subject is to be 

 a Lawrence Smith because there is no definite subject. 



Dr. Walter Flight (Eclectic Magazine, 89-71) says, of the sub- 

 stance that fell near Alais, France, March 15, 1806, that it "emits 

 a faint bituminous substance" when heated, according to the obser- 

 vations of Berzelius and a commission appointed by the French 

 Academy. This time we have not the reluctances expressed in such 

 words as "like" and "resembling." We are told that this substance 

 is "an earthy kind of coal." 



As to "minute quantities" we are told that the substance that fell 

 at the Cape of Good Hope has in it a little more than a quar- 

 ter of organic matter, which, in alcohol, gives the familiar reaction 

 of yellow, resinous matter. Other instances given by Dr. Flight 

 are: 



Carbonaceous matter that fell in 1840, in Tennessee; Cranbourne, 

 Australia, 1861; Montauban, France, May 14, 1864 (twenty masses, 

 some of them as large as a human head; of a substance that "re- 

 sembled a dull-colored earthy lignite") ; Goalpara, India, about 1867 

 (about 8 per cent of a hydrocarbon); at Ornans, France, July n, 

 1868; substance with "an organic, combustible ingredient," at 

 Hessle, Sweden, Jan. i, 1860. 



Knowledge, 4-134: 



