288 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



1876-89; Nature, 13-414). As to the "red snow" of polar and 

 mountainous regions, we have no opposition, because that "snow" 

 has never been seen to fall from the sky: it is a growth of micro- 

 organisms, or of a "protococcus," that spreads over snow that is on 

 the ground. This time nothing is said of "sand from the Sahara." 

 It is said of the red matter that fell in London, March 12, 1876, 

 that it was composed of corpuscles 



Of course: 



That they looked like "vegetable cells." 



A note: 



That nine days before had fallen the red substance flesh 

 whatever it may have been of Bath County, Kentucky. 



I think that a super-egotist, vast, but not so vast as it had sup- 

 posed, had refused to move to one side for a comet. 



We summarize our general super-geographical expressions: 



Gelatinous regions, sulphurous regions, frigid and tropical re- 

 gions: a region that has been Source of Life relatively to this 

 earth: regions wherein there is density so great that things from 

 them, entering this earth's thin atmosphere, explode. 



We have had a datum of explosive hailstones. We now have 

 support to the acceptance that they had been formed in a medium 

 far denser than air of this earth at sea-level. In the Popular Science 

 News, 22-38, is an account of ice that had been formed, under 

 great pressure, in the laboratory of the University of Virginia. 

 When released, and brought into contact with ordinary air, this ice 

 exploded. 



And again the flesh-like substance that fell in Kentucky: its 

 flake-like formation. Here is a phenomenon that is familiar to us: 

 it suggests flattening, under pressure. But the extraordinary in- 

 ference is pressure not equal on all sides. In the Annual Record of 

 Science, 1873-350, it is said that, in 1873, after a heavy thunder- 

 storm in Louisiana, a tremendous number of fish scales were found, 

 for a distance of forty miles, along the banks of the Mississippi 

 River: bushels of them picked up in single places: large scales 

 that were said to be of the gar fish, a fish that weighs from five 

 to fifty pounds. It seems impossible to accept this identification: 

 one thinks of a substance that had been pressed into flakes or scales. 

 And round hailstones with wide thin margins of ice irregularly around 

 them still, such hailstones seem to me more like things that had 

 been stationary: had been held in a field of thin ice. In the 



