BOOK OF THE DAMNED 89 



and more likely to fall from the Super-Sargasso Sea, if, though very 

 tentatively and provisionally, we accept the Super-Sargasso Sea. 



Before we take up an especial expression upon the fall of imma- 

 ture and larval forms of life to this earth, and the necessity then of 

 conceiving of some factor besides mere stationariness or suspension 

 or stagnation, there are other data that are similar to data of falls 

 of fishes. 



Science Gossip, 1886-238: 



That small snails, of a land species, had fallen near Redruth, 

 Cornwall, July 8, 1886, "during a heavy thunderstorm:" roads 

 and fields strewn with them, so that they were gathered up by the 

 hatful: none seen to fall by the writer of this account: snails said 

 to be "quite different to any previously known in this district." 



But, upon page 282, we have better orthodoxy. Another corre- 

 spondent writes that he had heard of the supposed fall of snails: 

 that he had supposed that all such stories had gone the way of 

 witch stories; that, to his astonishment, he had read an account of 

 this absurd story in a local newspaper of "great and deserved re- 

 pute." 



"I thought I should for once like to trace the origin of one of 

 these fabulous tales." 



Our own acceptance is that justice can not be in an intermediate 

 existence, in which there can be approximation only to justice or to 

 injustice; that to be fair is to have no opinion at all; that to be 

 honest is to be uninterested; that to investigate is to admit preju- 

 dice; that nobody has ever really investigated anything, but has 

 always sought positively to prove or to disprove something that 

 was conceived of, or suspected, in advance. 



"As I suspected," says this correspondent, "I found that the snails 

 were of a familiar land-species" that they had been upon the 

 ground "in the first place." 



He found that the snails had appeared after the rain: that "as- 

 tonished rustics had jumped to the conclusion that they had fallen." 



He met one person who said that he had seen the snails fall. 



"This was his error," says the investigator. 



In the Philosophical Magazine, 58-310, there is an account of 

 snails said to have fallen at Bristol, in a field of three acres, in such 

 quantities that they were shovelled up. It is said that the snails 

 "may be considered as a local species." Upon page 457, another cor- 

 respondent says that the numbers had been exaggerated, and that 

 in his opinion they had been upon the ground in the first place. 



