104 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



supposed to have fallen; that two days later "a very peculiar stone" 

 was found near by. The description is "in shape and size very 

 like the fourth part of a large Stilton cheese." 



It is our acceptance that many objects and different substances 

 have been brought down, by atmospheric disturbance from what 

 only as a matter of convenience now, and until we have more 

 data we call the Super-Sargasso Sea; however, our chief interest is 

 in objects that have been shaped by means similar to human handi- 

 craft. 



Description of the "thunderstones" of Burmah (Proc. Asiatic 

 Soc. of Bengal, 1869-183): said to be of a kind of stone unlike 

 any other found in Burmah; called "thunderbolts" by the natives. 

 I think there's a good deal of meaning in such expressions as "unlike 

 any other found in Burmah" but that if they had said anything 

 more definite, there would have been unpleasant consequences to 

 writers in the igth century. 



More about the "thunderstones" of Burmah, in the Proc. Soc. 

 Antiq. of London, 2-3-97. O ne f them, described as an "adze," 

 was exhibited by Captain Duff, who wrote that there was no stone 

 like it in its neighborhood. 



Of course it may not be very convincing to say that because a 

 stone is unlike neighboring stones it had foreign origin also we 

 fear it is a kind of plagiarism: we got it from the geologists, who 

 demonstrate by this reasoning the foreign origin of erratics. We 

 fear we're a little gross and scientific at times. 



But it's my acceptance that a great deal of scientific literature 

 must be read between the lines. It's not every one who has the 

 lamentableness of a Sir John Evans. Just as a great deal of Vol- 

 taire's meaning was inter-linear, we suspect that a Captain Duff 

 merely hints rather than to risk having a Prof. Lawrence Smith fly 

 at him and call him "a half-insane man." Whatever Captain Duff's 

 meaning may have been, and whether he smiled like a Voltaire when 

 he wrote it, Captain Duff writes of "the extremely soft nature of 

 the stone, rendering it equally useless as an offensive or defensive 

 weapon." 



Story, by a correspondent, in Nature, 34-53, of a Malay, of "con- 

 siderable social standing" and one thing about our data is that, 

 damned though they be, they do so often bring us into awful good 

 company who knew of a tree that had been struck, about a month 

 before, by something in a thunderstorm. He searched among 

 the roots of this tree and found a "thunderstone." Not said whether 



