BOOK OF THE DAMNED 241 



The sources of information of the Weather Bureau are wide- 

 spread. 



It has no records of such falls. 



So a drag net that was let down from above somewhere 



Or something that I learned from the more scientific of the in- 

 vestigators of psychic phenomena: 



The reader begins their works with prejudice against telepathy 

 and everything else of psychic phenomena. The writers deny spirit- 

 communication, and say that the seeming data are data of "only 

 telepathy." Astonishing instances of seeming clairvoyance "only 

 telepathy." After a while the reader finds himself agreeing that it's 

 only telepathy which, at first, had been intolerable to him. 



So maybe, in 1896, a super-dragnet did not sweep through this 

 earth's atmosphere, gathering up all the birds within its field, the 

 meshes then suddenly breaking 



Or that the birds of Baton Rouge were only from the Super- 

 Sargasso Sea 



Upon which we shall have another expression. We thought we'd 

 settled that, and we thought we'd established that, but nothing's 

 ever settled, and nothing's ever established, in a real sense, if, in a 

 real sense, there is nothing in quasiness. 



I suppose there had been a storm somewhere, the storm in Florida, 

 perhaps, and many birds had been swept upward into the Super- 

 Sargasso Sea. It has frigid regions and it has tropical regions that 

 birds of diverse species had been swept upward, into an icy region, 

 where, huddling together for warmth, they had died. Then, later, 

 they had been dislodged meteor coming along boat bicycle 

 dragon don't know what did come along something dislodged 

 them. 



So leaves of trees, carried up there in whirlwinds, staying there 

 years, ages, perhaps only a few months, but then falling to this 

 earth at an unseasonable time for dead leaves fishes carried up 

 there, some of them dying and drying, some of them living in vol- 

 umes of water that are in abundance up there, or that fall some- 

 times in the deluges that we call "cloudbursts." 



The astronomers won't think kindly of us, and we haven't done 

 anything to endear ourselves to the meteorologists but we're weak 

 and mawkish Intermediatists several times we've tried to get the 

 aeronauts with us extraordinary things up there: things that cura- 

 tors of museums would give up all hope of ever being fixed stars, to 



