272 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



entered this earth's atmosphere, having first crashed through a field 

 of ice "immediately afterward lumps of ice fell." 



One of the most astonishing of the phenomena of "ball lightning" 

 is a phenomenon of many meteorites: violence of explosion out of 

 all proportion to size and velocity. We accept that the icy meteor- 

 ites of Dhurmsalla could have fallen with no great velocity, but the 

 sound from them was tremendous. The soft substance that fell at 

 the Cape of Good Hope was carbonaceous, but was unburned, or 

 had fallen with velocity insufficient to ignite it. The tremendous 

 report that it made was heard over an area more than seventy miles 

 in diameter. 



That some hailstones have been formed in a dense medium, and 

 violently disintegrate in this earth's relatively thin atmosphere: 



Nature, 88-350: 



Large hailstones noted at the University of Missouri, Nov. n, 

 1911: they exploded with sounds like pistol shots. The writer says 

 that he had noticed a similar phenomenon, eighteen years before, at 

 Lexington, Kentucky. Hailstones that seemed to have been formed 

 in a denser medium: when melted under water they gave out bubbles 

 larger than their central air spaces. (Monthly Weather Review, 



33-445-) 



Our acceptance is that many objects have fallen from the sky, 

 but that many of them have disintegrated violently. This accept- 

 ance will coordinate with data still to come, but, also, we make it 

 easy for ourselves in our expressions upon super-constructions, if 

 we're asked why, from thinkable wrecks of them, girders, plates, or 

 parts recognizably of manufactured metal have not fallen from the 

 sky. However, as to composition, we have not this refuge, so it is 

 our expression that there have been reported instances of the fall 

 of manufactured metal from the sky. 



The meteorite of Rutherford, North Carolina, is of artificial ma- 

 terial: mass of pig iron. It is said to be fraudulent. (Amer. Jour. 

 Sci., 2-34-298.) 



The object that was said to have fallen at Marblehead, Mass., in 

 1858, is described in the Amer. Jour. Sci., 2-34-135, as "a furnace 

 product, formed in smelting copper ores, or iron ores containing 

 copper." It is said to be fraudulent. 



According to Ehrenberg, the substance reported by Capt. Callam 

 to have fallen upon his vessel, near Java, "offered complete resem- 

 blance to the residue resulting from combustion of a steel wire in a 

 flask of oxygen." (Zurcher, "Meteors" p. 239.) Nature, Nov. 21, 



