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The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
52
What
rain,
I
don't
know.
Also
it
is
spoken
of
as
"dried"
several
times.
That's
one
of
the
most
important
of
the
details.
But
the
relief
of
outraged
propriety,
expressed
in
the
Supplement,
is
amusing
to
some
of
us,
who,
I
fear,
may
be
a
little
improper
at
times.
Very
spirit
of
the
Salvation
Army,
when
some
third-rate
scientist
comes
out
with
an
explanation
of
the
vermiform
appendix
or
the
os
coccygis
that
would
have
been
acceptable
to
Moses.
To
give
completeness
to
"the
proper
explanation,"
it
is
said
that
Mr.
Brandeis
had
identified
the
substance
as
"flesh-colored"
nostoc.
Prof.
Lawrence
Smith,
of
Kentucky,
one
of
the
most
resolute
of
the
exclusionists:
New
York
Times,
March
12,
1876:
That
the
substance
had
been
examined
and
analyzed
by
Prof.
Smith,
according
to
whom
it
gave
every
indication
of
being
the
"dried"
spawn
of
some
reptile,
"doubtless
of
the
frog"--or
up
from
one
place
and
down
in
another.
As
to
"dried,"
that
may
refer
to
condition
when
Prof.
Smith
received
it.
In
the
Scientific
American
Supplement,
2-473,
Dr.
A.
Mead
Edwards,
President
of
the
Newark
Scientific
Association,
writes
that,
when
he
saw
Mr.
Brandeis'
communication,
his
feeling
was
of
conviction
that
propriety
had
been
re-established,
or
that
the
problem
had
been
solved,
as
he
expresses
it:
knowing
Mr.
Brandeis
well,
he
had
called
upon
that
upholder
of
respectability,
to
see
the
substance
that
had
been
identified
as
nostoc.
But
he
had
also
called
upon
Dr.
Hamilton,
who
had
a
specimen,
and
Dr.
Hamilton
had
declared
it
to
be
lung-tissue.
Dr.
Edwards
writes
of
the
substance
that
had
so
completely,
or
beautifully--if
beauty
is
completeness--been
identified
as
nostoc--"It
turned
out
to
be
lung-tissue
also."
He
wrote
to
other
persons
who
had
specimens,
and
identified
other
specimens
as
masses
of
cartilage
or
muscular
fibers.
"As
to
whence
it
came,
I
have
no
theory."
Nevertheless
he
endorses
the
local
explanation--and
a
bizarre
thing
it
is:
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