n6 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



stone implements except in this one nefarious convenience to him. 



All explanations are localizations. They fade away before the 

 universal. It is difficult to express that black rains in England do 

 not originate in the smoke of factories less difficult to express that 

 black rains of South Africa do not. We utter little stress upon the 

 absurdity of Dr. Bodding's explanation, because, if anything's ab- 

 surd everything's absurd, or, rather, has in it some degree or aspect 

 of absurdity, and we've never had experience with any state except 

 something somewhere between ultimate absurdity and final reason- 

 ableness. Our acceptance is that Dr. Bodding's elaborate explana- 

 tion does not apply to cut-stone objects found in tree trunks in other 

 lands: we accept that for the general, a local explanation is inade- 

 quate. 



As to "thunderstones" not said to have fallen luminously, and not 

 said to have been found sticking in trees, we are told by faithful 

 hypnotics that astonished rustics come upon prehistoric axes that 

 have been washed into sight by rains, and jump to the conclusion 

 that the things had fallen from the sky. But simple rustics come 

 upon many prehistoric things: scrapers, pottery, knives, hammers. 

 We have no record of rusticity coming upon old pottery after a rain, 

 reporting the fall of a bowl from the sky. 



Just now, my own acceptance is that wedge-shaped stone objects, 

 formed by means similar to human workmanship, have often fallen 

 from the sky. Maybe there are messages upon them. My accept- 

 ance is that they have been called "axes" to discredit them: or 

 the more familiar a term, the higher the incongruity with vague 

 concepts of the vast, remote, tremendous, unknown. 



In Notes and Queries, 2-8-92, a writer says that he had a 

 "thunderstone," which he had brought from Jamaica. The descrip- 

 tion is of a wedge-shaped object; not of an ax: 



"It shows no mark of having been attached to a handle." 



Of ten "thunderstones," figured upon different pages in Blinken- 

 berg's book, nine show no sign of ever having been attached to a 

 handle: one is perforated. 



But in a report by Dr. C. Leemans, Director of the Leyden Mu- 

 seum of Antiquities, objects, said by the Japanese to have fallen 

 from the sky, are alluded to throughout as "wedges." In the 

 Archaeologic Journal, 11-118, in a paper upon the "thunderstones" 

 of Java, the objects are called "wedges" and not "axes." 



Our notion is that rustics and savages call wedge-shaped objects 

 that fall from the sky, "axes": that scientific men, when it suits 



