178 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



The story, as told in the London Times, Aug. 14, 1849, is that, 

 upon the evening of the i3th of August, 1849, after a loud peal of 

 thunder, a mass of ice said to have been 20 feet in circumference, 

 had fallen upon the estate of Mr. Moffat, of Balvullich, Ross- 

 shire. It is said that this object fell alone, or without hailstones. 



Altogether, though it is not so strong for the Super-Sargasso Sea, 

 I think this is one of our best expressions upon external origins. 

 That large blocks of ice could form in the moisture of this earth's 

 atmosphere is about as likely as that blocks of stone could form in 

 a dust whirl. Of course, if ice or water comes to this earth from 

 external sources, we think of at least minute organisms in it, and 

 on, with our data, to frogs, fishes; on to anything that's thinkable, 

 coming from external sources. It's of great importance to us to 

 accept that large lumps of ice have fallen from the sky, but what we 

 desire most perhaps because of our interest in its archaeologic 

 and paleontologic treasures is now to be through with tentative- 

 ness and probation, and to take the Super-Sargasso Sea into full 

 acceptance in our more advanced fold of the chosen of this twentieth 

 century. 



In the Report of the British Association, 1855-37, it is said 

 that, at Poorhundur, India, Dec. n, 1854, flat pieces of ice, many 

 of them weighing several pounds each, I suppose had fallen from 

 the sky. They are described as "large ice-flakes." 



Vast fields of ice in the Super-Arctic regions, or strata, of the 

 Super-Sargasso Sea. When they break up, their fragments are 

 flake-like. In our acceptance, there are aerial ice-fields that are 

 remote from this earth; that break up, fragments grinding against 

 one another, rolling in vapor and water, of different constituency in 

 different regions, forming slowly as stratified hailstones but that 

 there are ice-fields near this earth, that break up into just such 

 flat pieces of ice as cover any pond or river when ice of a pond or 

 river is broken, and are sometimes soon precipitated to the earth, 

 in this familiar flat formation. 



Symons' Met. Mag., 43-154: 



A correspondent writes that, at Braemar, July 2, 1908, when the 

 sky was clear overhead, and the sun shining, flat pieces of ice fell 

 from somewhere. The sun was shining, but something was going 

 on somewhere: thunder was heard. 



Until I saw the reproduction of a photograph in the Scientific 

 American, Feb. 21, 1914, I had supposed that these ice-fields must 

 be, say, at least ten or twenty miles away from this earth, and 



