BOOK OF THE DAMNED 87 



coated with ice month of May in a southern state. If a whirl- 

 wind at all, there must have been very limited selection: there is no 

 record of the fall of other objects. But there is no attempt in the 

 Review to specify a whirlwind. 



These strangely associated things were remarkably separated. 



They fell eight miles apart. 



Then as if there were real reasoning they must have been 

 high to fall with such divergence, or one of them must have been 

 carried partly horizontally eight miles farther than the other. But 

 either supposition argues for power more than that of a local whirl 

 or gust, or argues for a great, specific disturbance, of which there is 

 no record for the month of May, 1894. 



Nevertheless as if I really were reasonable I do feel that I 

 have to accept that this turtle had been raised from this earth's sur- 

 face, somewhere near Vicksburg because the gopher turtle is com- 

 mon in the southern states. 



Then I think of a hurricane that occurred in the state of Missis- 

 sippi weeks or months before May n, 1894. 



No I don't look for it and inevitably find it. 



Or that things can go up so high in hurricanes that they stay up 

 indefinitely but may, after a while, be shaken down by storms. 

 Over and over have we noted the occurrence of strange falls in 

 storms. So then that the turtle and the piece of alabaster may 

 have had far different origins from different worlds, perhaps 

 have entered a region of suspension over this earth wafting near 

 each other long duration final precipitation by atmospheric dis- 

 turbance with hail or that hailstones, too, when large, are phe- 

 nomena of suspension of long duration : that it is highly unacceptable 

 that the very large ones could become so great only in falling from 

 the clouds. 



Over and over has the note of disagreeableness, or of putrefaction, 

 been struck long duration. Other indications of long duration. 



I think of a region somewhere above this earth's surface, in which 

 gravitation is inoperative, and is not governed by the square of the 

 distance quite as magnetism is negligible at a very short distance 

 from a magnet. Theoretically the attraction of a magnet should de- 

 crease with the square of the distance, but the falling-off is found 

 to be almost abrupt at a short distance. 



I think that things raised from this earth's surface to that region 

 have been held there until shaken down by storms 



The Super-Sargasso Sea. 



