The Book of the Damned

Hailstones, we don't care so much about. The matter of stratification seems significant, but we think more of the fall of lumps of ice from the sky, as possible data of the Super-Sargasso Sea: Lumps of ice, a foot in circumference, Derbyshire, England, May 12, 1811 (Annual Register, 1811-54); cuboidal mass, six inches in diameter, that fell at Birmingham, 26 days later (Thomson, Intro. to Meteorology, p. 179); size of pumpkins, Bangalore, India, May 22, 1851 (Rept. Brit. Assoc., 1855-35); masses of ice of a pound and a half each, New Hampshire, Aug. 13, 1851 (Lummis, Meteorology, p. 129); masses of ice, size of a man's head, in the Delphos tornado (Ferrel, Popular Treatise, p. 428); large as a man's hand, killing thousands of sheep, Texas, May 3, 1877 (Monthly Weather Review, May, 1877); "pieces of ice so large that they could not be grasped in one hand," in a tornado, in Colorado, June 24, 1877 (Monthly Weather Review, June, 1877); lumps of ice four and a half inches long, Richmond, England, Aug. 2, 1879 (Symons' Met. Mag., 14-100); mass of ice, 21 inches in circumference that fell with hail, Iowa, June, 1881 (Monthly Weather Review, June, 1881); "pieces of ice" eight inches long, and an inch and a half thick, Davenport, Iowa, Aug. 30, 1882 (Monthly Weather Review, Aug., 1882); lump of ice size of a brick; weight two pounds, Chicago, July 12, 1883 (Monthly Weather Review, July, 1883); lumps of ice that weighed one pound and a half each, India, May (?), 1888 (Nature, 37-42); lump of ice weighing four pounds, Texas, Dec. 6, 1893 (Sc. Am., 68-58); lumps of ice one pound in weight, Nov. 14, 1901, in a tornado, Victoria (Meteorology of Australia, p. 34).