88 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



Derelicts, rubbish, old cargoes from inter-planetary wrecks; 

 things cast out into what is called space by convulsions of other 

 planets, things from the times of the Alexanders, Caesars and Na- 

 poleons of Mars and Jupiter and Neptune; things raised by this 

 earth's cyclones: horses and barns and elephants and flies and 

 dodoes, moas, and pterodactyls; leaves from modern trees, and 

 leaves of the Carboniferous era all, however, tending to disinte- 

 grate into homogeneous-looking muds or dusts, red or black or yel- 

 low treasure-troves for the palaeontologists and for the archaeolo- 

 gists accumulations of centuries cyclones of Egypt, Greece, and 

 Assyria fishes dried and hard, there a short time: others there long 

 enough to putrefy 



But the omnipresence of Heterogeneity or living fishes, also 

 ponds of fresh water: oceans of salt water. 



As to the Law of Gravitation, I prefer to take one simple stand: 



Orthodoxy accepts the correlation and equivalence of forces: 



Gravitation is one of these forces. 



All other forces have phenomena of repulsion and of inertness 

 irrespective of distance, as well as of attraction. 



But Newtonian Gravitation admits attraction only: 



Then Newtonian Gravitation can be only one-third acceptable 

 even to the orthodox, or there is denial of the correlation and 

 equivalence of forces. 



Or still simpler: 



Here are the data. 



Make what you will, yourself, of them. 



In our Intermediatist revolt against homogeneous, or positive, ex- 

 planations, or our acceptance that the all-sufficing cannot be less 

 than universality, besides which, however, there would be nothing 

 to suffice, our expression upon the Super-Sargasso Sea, though it har- 

 monizes with data of fishes that fall as if from a stationary source 

 and, of course, with other data, too is inadequate to account for 

 two peculiarities of the falls of frogs: 



That never has a fall of tadpoles been reported; 



That never has a fall of full-grown frogs been reported 



Always frogs a few months old. 



It sounds positive, bat, if there be such reports they are some- 

 where out of my range of reading. 



But tadpoles would be more likely to fall from the sky, than 

 would frogs, little or big, if such falls be attributed to whirlwinds; 



