The Book of the Damned

Or we did have to utter a little stress upon this matter, after all. They're so hairy and attractive, these scientists of the 19th century. We feel the zeal of a Sitting Bull when we think of their scalps. We shall have to have an expression of our own upon this confusing subject. We have expressions: we don't call them explanations: we've discarded explanations with beliefs. Though everyone who scalps is, in the oneness of allness, himself likely to be scalped, there is such a discourtesy to an enemy as the wearing of wigs. Cannon balls and wedges, and what may they mean? Bombardments of this earth-- Attempts to communicate-- Or visitors to this earth, long ago--explorers from the moon--taking back with them, as curiosities, perhaps, implements of this earth's prehistoric inhabitants--a wreck--a cargo of such things held for ages in suspension in the Super-Sargasso Sea--falling, or shaken, down occasionally by storms-- But, by preponderance of description, we cannot accept that "thunderstones" ever were attached to handles, or are prehistoric axes-- As to attempts to communicate with this earth by means of wedge-shaped objects especially adapted to the penetration of vast, gelatinous areas spread around this earth-- In the Proc. Roy. Irish Acad., 9-337, there is an account of a stone wedge that fell from the sky, near Cashel, Tipperary, Aug. 2, 1865. The phenomenon is not questioned, but the orthodox preference is to call it, not ax-like, nor wedge-shaped, but "pyramidal." For data of other pyramidal stones said to have fallen from the sky, see Rept. Brit. Assoc., 1861-34. One fell at Segowolee, India, March 6, 1853. Of the object that fell at Cashel, Dr. Haughton says in the Proceedings: "A singular feature is observable in this stone, that I have never seen in any other:--the rounded edges of the pyramid are sharply marked by lines on the black crust, as perfect as if made by a ruler." Dr. Haughton's idea is that the marks may have been made by "some peculiar tension in the cooling." It must have been very peculiar, if in all aerolites not wedge-shaped, no such phenomenon had ever been observed. It merges away with one or two instances known, after Dr. Haughton's time, of seeming stratification in meteorites. Stratification in meteorites, however, is denied by the faithful.