128 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



nail lay upon the surface of the stone, to within an inch of the head 

 that inch of it was embedded in the stone. 



Although its caste is high, this is a thing profoundly of the damned 

 sort of a Brahmin as regarded by a Baptist. Its case was stated 

 fairly; Brewster related all circumstances available to him but 

 there was no discussion at the meeting of the British Association: 

 no explanation was offered 



Nevertheless the thing can be nullified 



But the nullification that we find is as much against orthodoxy, in 

 one respect as it is against our own expression that inclusion in 

 quartz or sandstone indicates antiquity or there would have to be 

 a revision of prevailing dogmas upon quartz and sandstone and age 

 indicated by them, if the opposing data should be accepted. Of 

 course it may be contended by both the orthodox and us heretics 

 that the opposition is only a yarn from a newspaper. By an odd 

 combination, we find our two lost souls that have tried to emerge, 

 chucked back to perdition by one blow: 



Pop. Sci. News, 1884-41: 



That, according to the Carson Appeal, there had been found 

 in a mine, quartz crystals that could have had only 15 years in 

 which to form: that, where a mill had been built, sandstone had 

 been found, when the mill was torn down, that had hardened in 12 

 years: that in this sandstone was a piece of wood, "with a nail in 

 it." 



Annals of Scientific Discovery, 1853-71: 



That, at the meeting of the British Association, 1853, Sir David 

 Brewster had announced that he had to bring before the meeting, 

 an object "of so incredible a nature that nothing short of the 

 strongest evidence was necessary to render the statement at all 

 probable." 



A crystal lens had been found in the treasure-house at Ninevah. 



In many of the temples and treasure houses of old civiliza- 

 tions upon this earth have been preserved things that have fallen 

 from the sky or meteorites. 



Again we have a Brahmin. This thing is buried alive in the heart 

 of propriety: it is in the British Museum. 



Carpenter, in The Microscope and Its Revelations, gives two 

 drawings of it. Carpenter argues that it is impossible to accept 

 that optical lenses had ever been made by the ancients. Never 

 occurred to him some one a million miles or so up in the air 

 looking through his telescope lens drops out. 



