168 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



were assailed with stones and other missiles coming from an unseen 

 quarter. Two children were injured, every window broken, and 

 several articles of furniture were destroyed. Although there was a 

 strong body of policemen scattered in the neighborhood, they could 

 not trace the direction whence the stones were thrown." 



"Other missiles" make a complication here. But if the expression 

 means tin cans and old shoes, and if we accept that the direction 

 could not be traced because it never occurred to any one to look 

 upward why we've lost a good deal of our provincialism by this 

 time. 



London Times, Sept. 16, 1841: 



That, in the home of Mrs. Charton, at Sutton Courthouse, Sutton 

 Lane, Chiswick, windows had been broken "by some unseen agent." 

 Every attempt to detect the perpetrator failed. The mansion was 

 detached and surrounded by high walls. No other building was 

 near it. 



The police were called. Two constables, assisted by members of 

 the household, guarded the house, but the windows continued to be 

 broken "both in front and behind the house." 



Or the floating islands that are often stationary in the Super- 

 Sargasso Sea; and atmospheric disturbances that sometimes affect 

 them, and bring things down within small areas, upon this earth, 

 from temporarily stationary sources. 



Super-Sargasso Sea and the beaches of its floating islands from 

 which I think, or at least accept, pebbles have fallen: 



Wolverhampton, England, June, 1860 violent storm fall of 

 so many little black pebbles that they were cleared away by shovel- 

 ing (La Set. Pour Tons, 5-264); great number of small black stones 

 that fell at Birmingham, England, Aug., 1858 violent storm said 

 to be similar to some basalt a few leagues from Birmingham (Rept. 

 Brit. Assoc., 1864-37); pebbles described as "common water-worn 

 pebbles" that fell at Palestine, Texas, July 6, 1888 "of a forma- 

 tion not found near Palestine" (W. H. Perry, Sergeant, Signal 

 Corps), Monthly Weather Review, July, 1888); round, smooth 

 pebbles at Kandahor, 1834 (Am. J. Sci., 1-26-161); "a number of 

 stones of peculiar formation and shapes, unknown in this neighbor- 

 hood, fell in a tornado at Hillsboro, 111., May 18, 1883." (Monthly 

 Weather Review, May, 1883.) 



Pebbles from aerial beaches and terrestrial pebbles as products of 

 whirlwinds, so merge in these instances that, though it's interesting 

 to hear of things of peculiar shape that have fallen from the sky, 



