BOOK OF THE DAMNED 243 



they were common on the ground, and had been sustained, of course 

 not in the air, but in a region gravitationally inert; and had been 

 precipitated by the disturbances of April rains. 



I have no records of leaves that have so fallen from the sky, in 

 October or November, the season when one might expect dead leaves 

 to be raised from one place and precipitated somewhere else. I em- 

 phasize that this occurred in April. 



La Nature, 1889-2-94: 



That, upon April 19, 1889, dried leaves, of different species, oak, 

 elm, etc., fell from the sky. This day, too, was a calm day. The 

 fall was tremendous. The leaves were seen to fall fifteen minutes, 

 but, judging from the quantity on the ground, it is the writer's 

 opinion that they had already been falling half an hour. I think 

 that the geyser of corpses that sprang from Riobamba toward the 

 sky must have been an interesting sight. If I were a painter, I'd 

 like that subject. But this cataract of dried leaves, too, is a study 

 in the rhythms of the dead. In this datum, the point most agree- 

 able to us is the very point that the writer in La Nature empha- 

 sizes. Windlessness. He says that the surface of the Loire was 

 "absolutely smooth." The river was strewn with leaves as far as 

 he could see. 



L'Astronomie, 1894-194: 



That, upon the yth of April, 1894, dried leaves fell at Clairvaux 

 and Outre- Aube, France. The fall is described as prodigious. Half 

 an hour. Then, upon the nth, a fall of dried leaves occurred at 

 Pontcarre. 



It is in this recurrence that we found some of our opposition to 

 the conventional explanation. The Editor (Flammarion) explains. 

 He says that the leaves had been caught up in a cyclone which had 

 expended its force; that the heavier leaves had fallen first. We 

 think that that was all right for 1894, and that it was quite good 

 enough for 1894. But, in these more exacting days, we want to 

 know how wind-power insufficient to hold some leaves in the air 

 could sustain others four days. 



The factors in this expression are unseasonableness, not for dried 

 leaves, but for prodigious numbers of dried leaves; direct fall, wind- 

 lessness, month of April, and localization in France. The factor of 

 localization is interesting. Not a note have I upon fall of leaves 

 from the sky, except these notes. Were the conventional explana- 

 tion, or "old correlate" acceptable, it would seem that similar occur- 



