232 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



that he had, himself, seen nothing but water fall from the sky. 

 Whether I'm emphasizing what a deluge it was or not, he says that 

 so terrific had been the downpour that he had not been able to see 

 three steps away from him. The natives said that the fishes had 

 fallen from the sky. Three days later the pools dried up and many 

 dead fishes were found, but, in the first place though that's an 

 expression for which we have an instinctive dislike the fishes had 

 been active and uninjured. Then follows material for another of 

 our little studies in the phenomena of disregard. A psycho-tropism 

 here is mechanically to take pen in hand and mechanically write 

 that fishes found on the ground after a heavy rainfall came from 

 overflowing streams. The writer of the account says that some of 

 the fishes had been found in his courtyard, which was surrounded 

 by high walls paying no attention to this, a correspondent (La 

 Science Pour Tous, 6-317) explains that in the heavy rain a body 

 of water had probably overflowed, carying fishes with it. We are 

 told by the first writer that these fishes of Singapore were of a 

 species that was very abundant near Singapore. So I think, myself, 

 that a whole lakeful of them had been shaken down from the Super- 

 Sargasso Sea, under the circumstances we have thought of. How- 

 ever, if appearance of strange fishes after an earthquake be more 

 pleasing in the sight, or to the nostrils, of the New Dominant, we 

 faithfully and piously supply that incense An account of the oc- 

 currence at Singapore was read by M. de Castelnau, before the 

 French Academy. M. de Castelnau recalled that, upon a former 

 occasion, he had submitted to the Academy the circumstance that 

 fishes of a new species had appeared at the Cape of Good Hope, 

 after an earthquake. 



It seems proper, and it will give luster to the new orthodoxy, now 

 to have an instance in which, not merely quake and fall of rocks, or 

 meteorites, or quake and either eclipse or luminous appearances in 

 the sky have occurred, but in which are combined all the phenomena, 

 one or more of which, when accompanying earthquake, indicate, in 

 our acceptance, the proximity of another world. This time a longer 

 duration is indicated than in other instances. 



In the Canadian Institute Proceedings, 2-7-198, there is an ac- 

 count, by the Deputy Commissioner at Dhurmsalla, of the extraor-' 

 dinary Dhurmsalla meteorite coated with ice. But the combina- 

 tion of events related by him is still more extraordinary: 



That within a few months of the fall of this meteorite there had 



