The Book of the Damned

That, in the Leyden Museum of Antiquities, there is a disk of quartz: 6 centimeters by 5 millimeters by about 5 centimeters; said to have fallen upon a plantation in the Dutch West Indies, after a meteoric explosion. Bricks. I think this is a vice we're writing. I recommend it to those who have hankered for a new sin. At first some of our data were of so frightful or ridiculous mien as to be hated, or eyebrowed, was only to be seen. Then some pity crept in? I think that we can now embrace bricks. The baked-clay-idea was all right in its place, but it rather lacks distinction, I think. With our minds upon the concrete boats that have been building terrestrially lately, and thinking of wrecks that may occur to some of them, and of a new material for the deep-sea fishes to disregard-- Object that fell at Richland, South Carolina--yellow to gray--said to look like a piece of brick. (Amer. Jour. Sci., 2-34-298.) Pieces of "furnace-made brick" said to have fallen--in a hailstorm--at Padua, August, 1834. (Edin. New Phil. Jour., 19-87.) The writer offered an explanation that started another convention: that the fragments of brick had been knocked from buildings by the hailstones. But there is here a concomitant that will be disagreeable to anyone who may have been inclined to smile at the now digestible--enough notion that furnace-made bricks have fallen from the sky. It is that in some of the hailstones--two per cent of them--that were found with the pieces of brick, was a light grayish powder.