The Book of the Damned

As to the deposit--Tertiary coal. Composition--iron, carbon, and a small quantity of nickel. It has the pitted surface that is supposed by the faithful to be characteristic of meteorites. For a full account of this subject, see Comptes Rendus, 103-702. The scientists who examined it could reach no agreement. They bifurcated: then a compromise was suggested; but the compromise is a product of disregard: That it was of true meteoritic material, and had not been shaped by man; That it was not of true meteoritic material, but telluric iron that had been shaped by man: That it was true meteoritic material that had fallen from the sky, but had been shaped by man, after its fall. The data, one or more of which must be disregarded by each of these three explanations, are: "true meteoritic material" and surface markings of meteorites; geometric form; presence in an ancient deposit; material as hard as steel; absence upon this earth, in Tertiary times, of men who could work in material as hard as steel. It is said that, though of "true meteoritic material," this object is virtually a steel object. St. Augustine, with his orthodoxy, was never in--well, very much worse--difficulties than are the faithful here. By due disregard of a datum or so, our own acceptance that it was a steel object that had fallen from the sky to this earth, in Tertiary times, is not forced upon one. We offer ours as the only synthetic expression. For instance, in Science Gossip, 1887-58, it is described as a meteorite: in this account there is nothing alarming to the pious, because, though everything else is told, its geometric form is not mentioned.