The Book of the Damned

Or they were not fish at all. I incline, myself, to the acceptance that they were not fish, but slender, fish-shaped objects of the same substance as that which fell at Amherst--it is said that, whatever they were, they could not be eaten: that "in the pan, they turned to blood." For details of this story see the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1834-307. May 16 or 17, 1834, is the date given in the Journal. In the American Journal of Science, 1-25-362, occurs the inevitable damnation of the Amherst object: Prof. Edward Hitchcock went to live in Amherst. He says that years later, another object, like the one said to have fallen in 1819, had been found at "nearly the same place." Prof. Hitchcock was invited by Prof. Graves to examine it. Exactly like the first one. Corresponded in size and color and consistency. The chemic reactions were the same. Prof. Hitchcock recognized it in a moment. It was a gelatinous fungus. He did not satisfy himself as to just the exact species it belonged to, but he predicted that similar fungi might spring up within twenty-four hours-- But, before evening, two others sprang up. Or we've arrived at one of the oldest of the exclusionists' conventions--or nostoc. We shall have many data of gelatinous substance said to have fallen from the sky: almost always the exclusionists argue that it was only nostoc, an Alga, or, in some respects, a fungous growth. The rival convention is "spawn of frogs or of fishes." These two conventions have made a strong combination. In instances where testimony was not convincing that gelatinous matter had been seen to fall, it was said that the gelatinous substance was nostoc, and had been upon the ground in the first place: when the testimony was too good that it had fallen, it was said to be spawn that had been carried from one place to another in a whirlwind.