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The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
33
But
after
two
of
these
showers,
vast
quantities
of
a
substance
described
sometimes
as
"pumice
stone,"
but
sometimes
as
"slag,"
were
washed
upon
the
sea
coast
near
Slains.
A
chemist's
opinion
is
given
that
this
substance
was
slag:
that
it
was
not
a
volcanic
product:
slag
from
smelting
works.
We
now
have,
for
black
rains,
a
concomitant
that
is
irreconcilable
with
origin
from
factory
chimneys.
Whatever
it
may
have
been
the
quantity
of
this
substance
was
so
enormous
that,
in
Mr.
Rust's
opinion,
to
have
produced
so
much
of
it
would
have
required
the
united
output
of
all
the
smelting
works
in
the
world.
If
slag
it
were,
we
accept
that
an
artificial
product
has,
in
enormous
quantities,
fallen
from
the
sky.
If
you
don't
think
that
such
occurrences
are
damned
by
Science,
read
Scottish
Showers
and
see
how
impossible
it
was
for
the
author
to
have
this
matter
taken
up
by
the
scientific
world.
The
first
and
second
rains
corresponded,
in
time,
with
ordinary
ebullitions
of
Vesuvius.
The
third
and
fourth,
according
to
Mr.
Rust,
corresponded
with
no
known
volcanic
activities
upon
this
earth.
La
Science
Pour
Tous,
11-26:
That,
between
October,
1863,
and
January,
1866,
four
more
black
rains
fell
at
Slains,
Scotland.
The
writer
of
this
supplementary
account
tells
us,
with
a
better,
or
more
unscrupulous,
orthodoxy
than
Mr.
Rust's,
that
of
the
eight
black
rains,
five
coincided
with
eruptions
of
Vesuvius
and
three
with
eruptions
of
Etna.
The
fate
of
all
explanation
is
to
close
one
door
only
to
have
another
fly
wide
open.
I
should
say
that
my
own
notions
upon
this
subject
will
be
considered
irrational,
but
at
least
my
gregariousness
is
satisfied
in
associating
here
with
the
preposterous--or
this
writer,
and
those
who
think
in
his
rut,
have
to
say
that
they
can
think
of
four
discharges
from
one
far-distant
volcano,
passing
over
a
great
part
of
Europe,
precipitating
nowhere
else,
discharging
precisely
over
one
small
northern
parish--
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