This is what had occurred at Bath, England, 23 years before.
London _Times_, April 24, 1871:
That, upon the 22nd of April, 1871, a storm of glutinous drops neither jellyfish nor ma.s.ses of frog sp.a.w.n, but something of a [line missing here in original text. Ed.] railroad station, at Bath. "Many soon developed into a worm-like chrysalis, about an inch in length." The account of this occurrence in the _Zoologist_, 2-6-2686, is more like the Eton-datum: of minute forms, said to have been infusoria; not forms about an inch in length.
_Trans. Ent. Soc. of London_, 1871-proc. xxii:
That the phenomenon has been investigated by the Rev. L. Jenyns, of Bath. His description is of minute worms in filmy envelopes. He tries to account for their segregation. The mystery of it is: What could have brought so many of them together? Many other falls we shall have record of, and in most of them segregation is the great mystery. A whirlwind seems anything but a segregative force. Segregation of things that have fallen from the sky has been avoided as most deep-dyed of the d.a.m.ned.
Mr. Jenyns conceives of a large pool, in which were many of these spherical ma.s.ses: of the pool drying up and concentrating all in a small area; of a whirlwind then scooping all up together--
But several days later, more of these objects fell in the same place.
That such marksmanship is not attributable to whirlwinds seems to me to be what we think we mean by common sense:
It may not look like common sense to say that these things had been stationary over the town of Bath, several days--
The seven black rains of Slains;
The four red rains of Siena.
An interesting sidelight on the mechanics of orthodoxy is that Mr.
Jenyns dutifully records the second fall, but ignores it in his explanation.
R.P. Greg, one of the most notable of cataloguers of meteoritic phenomena, records (_Phil. Mag._: 4-8-463) falls of viscid substance in the years 1652, 1686, 1718, 1796, 1811, 1819, 1844. He gives earlier dates, but I practice exclusions, myself. In the _Report of the British a.s.sociation_, 1860-63, Greg records a meteor that seemed to pa.s.s near the ground, between Barsdorf and Freiburg, Germany: the next day a jelly-like ma.s.s was found in the snow--
Unseasonableness for either sp.a.w.n or nostoc.
Greg"s comment in this instance is: "Curious if true." But he records without modification the fall of a meteorite at Gotha, Germany, Sept. 6, 1835, "leaving a jelly-like ma.s.s on the ground." We are told that this substance fell only three feet away from an observer. In the _Report of the British a.s.sociation_, 1855-94, according to a letter from Greg to Prof. Baden-Powell, at night, Oct. 8, 1844, near Coblenz, a German, who was known to Greg, and another person saw a luminous body fall close to them. They returned next morning and found a gelatinous ma.s.s of grayish color.
According to Chladni"s account (_Annals of Philosophy_, n.s., 12-94) a viscous ma.s.s fell with a luminous meteorite between Siena and Rome, May, 1652; viscous matter found after the fall of a fire ball, in Lusatia, March, 1796; fall of a gelatinous substance, after the explosion of a meteorite, near Heidelberg, July, 1811. In the _Edinburgh Philosophical Journal_, 1-234, the substance that fell at Lusatia is said to have been of the "color and odor of dried, brown varnish." In the _Amer. Jour. Sci._, 1-26-133, it is said that gelatinous matter fell with a globe of fire, upon the island of Lethy, India, 1718.
In the _Amer. Jour. Sci._, 1-26-396, in many observations upon the meteors of November, 1833, are reports of falls of gelatinous substance:
That, according to newspaper reports, "lumps of jelly" were found on the ground at Rahway, N.J. The substance was whitish, or resembled the coagulated white of an egg:
That Mr. H.H. Garland, of Nelson County, Virginia, had found a jelly-like substance of about the circ.u.mference of a twenty-five-cent piece:
That, according to a communication from A.C. Twining to Prof. Olmstead, a woman at West Point, N.Y., had seen a ma.s.s the size of a teacup. It looked like boiled starch:
That, according to a newspaper, of Newark, N.J., a ma.s.s of gelatinous substance, like soft soap, had been found. "It possessed little elasticity, and, on the application of heat, it evaporated as readily as water."
It seems incredible that a scientist would have such hardihood, or infidelity, as to accept that these things had fallen from the sky: nevertheless, Prof. Olmstead, who collected these lost souls, says:
"The fact that the supposed deposits were so uniformly described as gelatinous substance forms a presumption in favor of the supposition that they had the origin ascribed to them."
In contemporaneous scientific publications considerable attention was given to Prof. Olmstead"s series of papers upon this subject of the November meteors. You will not find one mention of the part that treats of gelatinous matter.
5
I shall attempt not much of correlation of dates. A mathematic-minded positivist, with his delusion that in an intermediate state twice two are four, whereas, if we accept Continuity, we cannot accept that there are anywhere two things to start with, would search our data for periodicities. It is so obvious to me that the mathematic, or the regular, is the attribute of the Universal, that I have not much inclination to look for it in the local. Still, in this solar system, "as a whole," there is considerable approximation to regularity; or the mathematic is so nearly localized that eclipses, for instance, can, with rather high approximation, be foretold, though I have notes that would deflate a little the astronomers" vainglory in this respect--or would if that were possible. An astronomer is poorly paid, uncheered by crowds, considerably isolated: he lives upon his own inflations: deflate a bear and it couldn"t hibernate. This solar system is like every other phenomenon that can be regarded "as a whole"--or the affairs of a ward are interfered with by the affairs of the city of which it is a part; city by county; county by state; state by nation; nation by other nations; all nations by climatic conditions; climatic conditions by solar circ.u.mstances; sun by general planetary circ.u.mstances; solar system "as a whole" by other solar systems--so the hopelessness of finding the phenomena of entirety in the ward of a city. But positivists are those who try to find the unrelated in the ward of a city. In our acceptance this is the spirit of cosmic religion. Objectively the state is not realizable in the ward of a city. But, if a positivist could bring himself to absolute belief that he had found it, that would be a subjective realization of that which is unrealizable objectively. Of course we do not draw a positive line between the objective and the subjective--or that all phenomena called things or persons are subjective within one all-inclusive nexus, and that thoughts within those that are commonly called "persons" are sub-subjective. It is rather as if Intermediateness strove for Regularity in this solar system and failed: then generated the mentality of astronomers, and, in that secondary expression, strove for conviction that failure had been success.
I have tabulated all the data of this book, and a great deal besides--card system--and several proximities, thus emphasized, have been revelations to me: nevertheless, it is only the method of theologians and scientists--worst of all, of statisticians.
For instance, by the statistic method, I could "prove" that a black rain has fallen "regularly" every seven months, somewhere upon this earth. To do this, I"d have to include red rains and yellow rains, but, conventionally, I"d pick out the black particles in red substances and in yellow substances, and disregard the rest. Then, too, if here and there a black rain should be a week early or a month late--that would be "acceleration" or "r.e.t.a.r.dation." This is supposed to be legitimate in working out the periodicities of comets. If black rains, or red or yellow rains with black particles in them, should not appear at all near some dates--we have not read Darwin in vain--"the records are not complete." As to other, interfering black rains, they"d be either gray or brown, or for them we"d find other periodicities.
Still, I have had to notice the year 1819, for instance. I shall not note them all in this book, but I have records of 31 extraordinary events in 1883. Someone should write a book upon the phenomena of this one year--that is, if books should be written. 1849 is notable for extraordinary falls, so far apart that a local explanation seems inadequate--not only the black rain of Ireland, May, 1849, but a red rain in Sicily and a red rain in Wales. Also, it is said (Timb"s _Year Book_, 1850-241) that, upon April 18 or 20, 1849, shepherds near Mt.
Ararat, found a substance that was not indigenous, upon areas measuring 8 to 10 miles in circ.u.mference. Presumably it had fallen there.
We have already gone into the subject of Science and its attempted positiveness, and its resistances in that it must have relations of service. It is very easy to see that most of the theoretic science of the 19th century was only a relation of reaction against theologic dogma, and has no more to do with Truth than has a wave that bounds back from a sh.o.r.e. Or, if a shop girl, or you or I, should pull out a piece of chewing gum about a yard long, that would be quite as scientific a performance as was the stretching of this earth"s age several hundred millions of years.
All "things" are not things, but only relations, or expressions of relations: but all relations are striving to be the unrelated, or have surrendered to, and subordinated to, higher attempts. So there is a positivist aspect to this reaction that is itself only a relation, and that is the attempt to a.s.similate all phenomena under the materialist explanation, or to formulate a final, all-inclusive system, upon the materialist basis. If this attempt could be realized, that would be the attaining of realness; but this attempt can be made only by disregarding psychic phenomena, for instance--or, if science shall eventually give in to the psychic, it would be no more legitimate to explain the immaterial in terms of the material than to explain the material in terms of the immaterial. Our own acceptance is that material and immaterial are of a oneness, merging, for instance, in a thought that is continuous with a physical action: that oneness cannot be explained, because the process of explaining is the interpreting of something in terms of something else. All explanation is a.s.similation of something in terms of something else that has been taken as a basis: but, in Continuity, there is nothing that is any more basic than anything else--unless we think that delusion built upon delusion is less real than its pseudo-foundation.
In 1829 (Timb"s _Year Book_, 1848-235) in Persia fell a substance that the people said they had never seen before. As to what it was, they had not a notion, but they saw that the sheep ate it. They ground it into flour and made bread, said to have been pa.s.sable enough, though insipid.
That was a chance that science did not neglect. Manna was placed upon a reasonable basis, or was a.s.similated and reconciled with the system that had ousted the older--and less nearly real--system. It was said that, likely enough, manna had fallen in ancient times--because it was still falling--but that there was no tutelary influence behind it--that it was a lichen from the steppes of Asia Minor--from one place in a whirlwind and down in another place. "In the _American Almanac_, 1833-71, it is said that this substance--to the inhabitants of the region"--was "immediately recognized" by scientists who examined it: and that "the chemical a.n.a.lysis also identified it as a lichen."
This was back in the days when Chemical a.n.a.lysis was a G.o.d. Since then his devotees have been shocked and disillusioned. Just how a chemical a.n.a.lysis could so botanize, I don"t know--but it was Chemical a.n.a.lysis who spoke, and spoke dogmatically. It seems to me that the ignorance of inhabitants, contrasting with the local knowledge of foreign scientists, is overdone: if there"s anything good to eat, within any distance conveniently covered by a whirlwind--inhabitants know it. I have data of other falls, in Persia and Asiatic Turkey, of edible substances. They are all dogmatically said to be "manna"; and "manna" is dogmatically said to be a species of lichens from the steppes of Asia Minor. The position that I take is that this explanation was evolved in ignorance of the fall of vegetable substances, or edible substances, in other parts of the world: that it is the familiar attempt to explain the general in terms of the local; that, if we shall have data of falls of vegetable substance, in, say, Canada or India, they were not of lichens from the steppes of Asia Minor; that, though all falls in Asiatic Turkey and Persia are sweepingly and conveniently called showers of "manna,"
they have not been even all of the same substance. In one instance the particles are said to have been "seeds." Though, in _Comptes Rendus_, the substance that fell in 1841 and 1846 is said to have been gelatinous, in the _Bull. Sci. Nat. de Neuchatel_, it is said to have been of something, in lumps the size of a filbert, that had been ground into flour; that of this flour had been made bread, very attractive-looking, but flavorless.
The great difficulty is to explain segregation in these showers--
But deep-sea fishes and occasional falls, down to them, of edible substances; bags of grain, barrels of sugar; things that had not been whirled up from one part of the ocean-bottom, in storms or submarine disturbances, and dropped somewhere else--
I suppose one thinks--but grain in bags never has fallen--
Object of Amherst--its covering like "milled cloth"--
Or barrels of corn lost from a vessel would not sink--but a host of them clashing together, after a wreck--they burst open; the corn sinks, or does when saturated; the barrel staves float longer--
If there be not an overhead traffic in commodities similar to our own commodities carried over this earth"s oceans--I"m not the deep-sea fish I think I am.
I have no data other than the mere suggestion of the Amherst object of bags or barrels, but my notion is that bags and barrels from a wreck on one of this earth"s oceans, would, by the time they reached the bottom, no longer be recognizable as bags or barrels; that, if we can have data of the fall of fibrous material that may have been cloth or paper or wood, we shall be satisfactory and grotesque enough.
_Proc. Roy. Irish Acad._, 1-379:
"In the year 1686, some workmen, who had been fetching water from a pond, seven German miles from Memel, on returning to their work after dinner (during which there had been a snowstorm) found the flat ground around the pond covered with a coal-black, leafy ma.s.s; and a person who lived near said he had seen it fall like flakes with the snow."
Some of these flake-like formations were as large as a table-top. "The ma.s.s was damp and smelt disagreeably, like rotten seaweed, but, when dried, the smell went off."
"It tore fibrously, like paper."
Cla.s.sic explanation:
"Up from one place, and down in another."