162 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



Three or four inches long. 



In the coffins were miniature wooden figures. They were dressed 

 differently both in style and material. There were two tiers of 

 eight coffins each, and a third tier begun, with one coffin. 



The extraordinary datum, which has especially made mystery 

 here: 



That the coffins had been deposited singly, in the little cave, and 

 at intervals of many years. In the first tier, the coffins were quite 

 decayed, and the wrappings had moldered away. In the second tier, 

 the effects of age had not advanced so far. And the top coffin was 

 quite recent-looking. 



In the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquarians of Scotland, 

 3-12-460, there is a full account of this find. Three of the coffins 

 and three of the figures are pictured. 



So Elvera with its downy forests and its microscopic oyster shells 

 and if the Elvereans be not very far-advanced, they take baths 

 with sponges the size of pin heads 



Or that catastrophes have occurred: that fragments of Elvera have 

 fallen to this earth: 



In Popular Science, 20-83, Francis Bingham, writing of the corals 

 and sponges and shells and crinoids that Dr. Hahn had asserted that 

 he had found in meteorites, says, judging by the photographs of 

 them, that their "notable peculiarity" is their "extreme smallness." 

 The corals, for instance, are about one-twentieth the size of terres- 

 trial corals. "They represent a veritable pigmy animal world," says 

 Bingham. 



The inhabitants of Monstrator and Elvera were primitives, I think, 

 at the time of their occasional visits to this earth though, of course, 

 in a quasi-existence, anything that we semi-phantoms call evidence 

 of anything may be just as good evidence of anything else. Logi- 

 cians and detectives and jurymen and suspicious wives and members 

 of the Royal Astronomic Society recognize this indeterminateness, 

 but have the delusion that in the method of agreement there is final, 

 or real evidence. The method is good enough for an "existence" 

 that is only semi-real, but also it is the method of reasoning by which 

 witches were burned, and by which ghosts have been feared. I'd 

 not like to be so unadvanced as to deny witches and ghosts, but I 

 do think that there never have been witches and ghosts like those 

 of popular supposition. But stories of them have been supported 

 by astonishing fabrications of details and of different accounts in 

 agreement. 



