Lab
Library
Journal
Shop
Sign in
to keep
Share image
1
375
The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
145
Monthly
Notices
of
the
Royal
Astronomical
Society,
337-365:
Padre
Sechi
explains
that
a
stone
said
to
have
fallen,
in
a
thunderstorm,
at
Supino,
Italy,
September,
1875,
had
been
knocked
from
a
roof.
Nature,
33-153:
That
it
had
been
reported
that
a
good-sized
stone,
of
form
clearly
artificial,
had
fallen
at
Naples,
November,
1885.
The
stone
was
described
by
two
professors
of
Naples,
who
had
accepted
it
as
inexplicable
but
veritable.
They
were
visited
by
Dr.
H.
Johnstone-Lavis,
the
correspondent
to
Nature,
whose
investigations
had
convinced
him
that
the
object
was
a
"shoemaker's
lapstone."
Now
to
us
of
the
initiated,
or
to
us
of
the
wider
outlook,
there
is
nothing
incredible
in
the
thought
of
shoemakers
in
other
worlds--but
I
suspect
that
this
characterization
is
tactical.
This
object
of
worked
stone,
or
this
shoemaker's
lapstone,
was
made
of
Vesuvian
lava,
Dr.
Johnstone-Lavis
thinks:
most
probably
of
lava
of
the
flow
of
1631,
from
the
La
Scala
quarries.
We
condemn
"most
probably"
as
bad
positivism.
As
to
the
"men
of
position,"
who
had
accepted
that
this
thing
had
fallen
from
the
sky--"I
have
now
obliged
them
to
admit
their
mistake,"
says
Dr.
Johnstone-Lavis--or
it's
always
the
stranger
in
Naples
who
knows
La
Scala
lava
better
than
the
natives
know
it.
Explanation:
That
the
thing
had
been
knocked
from,
or
thrown
from,
a
roof.
As
to
attempt
to
trace
the
occurrence
to
any
special
roof--nothing
said
upon
that
subject.
Or
that
Dr.
Johnstone-Lavis
called
a
carved
stone
a
"lapstone,"
quite
as
Mr.
Symons
called
a
spherical
object
a
"cannon
ball":
bent
upon
a
discrediting
incongruity:
Marker
Marker
Fine marker
White-out
Fine white-out
Circle
Paint
Unmarker
Hand
Scalpel
Dice
Sieve
Purify
Undo
Redo
Start over
