been burned. It was fibrous. M. Tissandier astonishes us by saying that he cannot identify this substance. We thought that anything could be "identified" as anything. He can say only that the cloud in question must have been an extraordinary conglomeration.
Annual Registe r, 1832-447:
That, March, 1832, there fell, in the fields of Kourianof, Russia, a combustible yellowish substance, covering, at least two inches thick, an area of 600 or 700 square feet. It was resinous and yellowish: so one inclines to the conventional explanation that it was pollen from pine trees—but, when torn, it had the tenacity of cotton. When placed in water, it had the consistency of resin. "This resin had the color of amber, was elastic, like India rubber, and smelled like prepared oil mixed with wax."
So in general our notion of cargoes—and our notion of cargoes of food supplies:
In Philosophical Transactions, 19-224, is an extract from a letter by Mr. Robert Vans, of Kilkenny, Ireland, dated Nov. 15, 1695: that there had been "of late," in the counties of Limerick and Tipperary, showers of a sort of matter like butter or grease... having "a very stinking smell."
There follows an extract from a letter by the Bishop of Cloyne, upon "a very odd phenomenon," which was observed in Munster and Leinster: that for a good part of the spring of 1695 there fell a substance which the country people called "butter"—"soft, clammy, and of a dark yellow"—that cattle fed "indifferently" in fields where this substance lay.
"It fell in lumps as big as the end of one's finger." It had a "strong ill scent." His Grace calls it a "stinking dew."
In Mr. Vans' letter, it is said that the "butter" was supposed to have medicinal properties, and "was gathered in pots and other vessels by some of the inhabitants of this place."
And:
In all the following volumes of Philosophical Transactions there is no speculation upon this extraordinary subject. Ostracism. The fate of this datum is a good instance of damnation, not by denial, and not by explaining away, but by simple disregard. The fall is listed by Chladni, and is mentioned in other catalogues, but, from the absence of all inquiry, and of all but formal mention, we see that it has been under excommunication as much as was ever anything by the preceding system. The datum has been buried alive. It is as irreconcilable with the modern system of dogmas as ever were geologic strata and vermiform appendix with the preceding system—
If, intermittently, or "for a good part of the spring," this substance fell in two Irish provinces, and nowhere else, we have, stronger than before, a sense of a stationary region overhead, or a region that receives products like this earth's products, but from external sources, a region in which this earth's gravitational and meteorological forces are relatively inert—if for many weeks a good part of this substance did hover before finally falling. We suppose that, in 1685, Mr. Vans and the Bishop of Cloyne could describe what they saw as well as could witnesses in 1885: nevertheless, it is going far back; we shall have to have many modern instances before we can accept.
As to other falls, or another fall, it is said in the Amer. Jour. Sci., 1-28-361, that, April 11, 1832—about a month after the fall of the substance of Kourianof—fell a substance that was wine-yellow, transparent, soft, and smelling like rancid oil. M. Herman, a chemist who examined it, named it "sky oil." For analysis and chemic reactions, see the Journal. The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, 13-368, mentions an "unctuous" substance that fell near Rotterdam, in 1832. In Comptes Rendus, 13-215, there is an account of an oily, reddish matter that fell at Genoa, February, 1841.
Whatever it may have been—
Altogether, most of our difficulties are problems that we should leave to later developers of super-geography, I think. A discoverer of America should leave Long Island to someone else. If there be, plying back and forth from Jupiter and Mars and Venus, super-constructions that are sometimes wrecked, we think of fuel as well as cargoes. Of course the most convincing data would be of coal falling from the sky: nevertheless, one does suspect that oil-burning engines were discovered ages ago in more advanced worlds—but, as I say, we should leave something to our disciples—so we'll not especially wonder whether these butter-like or oily substances were food or fuel. So we merely note that in the Scientific American, 24-323, is an account of hail that fell, in the middle of April, 1871, in Mississippi, in which was a substance described as turpentine.
Something that tasted like orange water, in hailstones, about the first of June, 1842, near Nîmes, France; identified as nitric acid (Jour. de Pharmacie, 1845-273).
Hail and ashes, in Ireland, 1755 (Sci. Amer., 5-168).
That, at Elizabeth, N.J., June 9, 1874, fell hail in which was a substance, said, by Prof. Leeds, of Stevens Institute, to be carbonate of soda (Sci. Amer., 30-262).
We are getting a little away from the lines of our composition, but it will be an important point later that so many extraordinary falls have occurred with hail. Or—if they were of substances that had had origin upon some other part of this earth's surface—had the hail, too, that origin? Our acceptance here will depend upon the number of instances. Reasonably enough, some of the things that fall to this earth should coincide with falls of hail.
As to vegetable substances in quantities so great as to suggest lost cargoes, we have a note in the Intellectual Observer, 3-468: that, upon the first of May, 1863, a rain fell at Perpignan, "bringing down with it a red substance, which proved on examination to be a red meal mixed with fine sand." At various points along the Mediterranean, this substance fell.
There is, in Philosophical Transactions, 16-281, an account of a seeming cereal, said to have fallen in Wiltshire, in 1686—said that some of the "wheat" fell "enclosed in hailstones"—but the writer in Transactions, says that he had examined the grains, and that they were nothing but seeds of ivy berries dislodged from holes and chinks where birds had hidden them. If birds still hide ivy seeds, and if winds still blow, I don't see why the phenomenon has not repeated in more than two hundred years since.
Or the red matter in rain, at Siena, Italy, May, 1830; said, by Arago, to have been vegetable matter (Arago, Œuvres, 12-468).
Somebody should collect data of falls at Siena alone.
In the Monthly Weather Review, 29-465, a correspondent writes that, upon Feb. 16, 1901, at Pawpaw, Michigan, upon a day that was so calm that his windmill did not run, fell a brown dust that looked like vegetable matter. The Editor of the Review concludes that this was no widespread fall from a tornado, because it had been reported from nowhere else.
Rancidness—putridity—decomposition—a note that has been struck many times. In a positive sense, of course, nothing means anything, or every meaning is continuous with all other meanings: or that all evidences of guilt, for instance, are just as good evidences of innocence—but this condition seems to mean—things lying around among the stars a long time. Horrible disaster in the time of Julius Caesar; remains from it not reaching this earth till the time of the Bishop of Cloyne: we leave to later research the discussion of bacterial action and decomposition, and whether bacteria could survive in what we call space, of which we know nothing—
Chemical News, 35-183:
Dr. A.T. Machattie, F.C.S., writes that, at London, Ontario, Feb. 24, 1868, in a violent storm, fell, with snow, a dark-colored substance, estimated at 500 tons, over a belt 50 miles by 10 miles. It was examined under a microscope, by Dr. Machattie, who found it to consist mainly of vegetable matter "far advanced in decomposition." The substance was examined by Dr. James Adams, of Glasgow, who gave his opinion that it
