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—
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