The Book of the Damned

As to other falls, or another fall, it is said in the Amer. Jour. Sci., 1-28-361, that, April 11, 1832--about a month after the fall of the substance of Kourianof--fell a substance that was wine-yellow, transparent, soft, and smelling like rancid oil. M. Herman, a chemist who examined it, named it "sky oil." For analysis and chemic reactions, see the Journal. The Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, 13-368, mentions an "unctuous" substance that fell near Rotterdam, in 1832. In Comptes Rendus, 13-215, there is an account of an oily, reddish matter that fell at Genoa, February, 1841. Whatever it may have been-- Altogether, most of our difficulties are problems that we should leave to later developers of super-geography, I think. A discoverer of America should leave Long Island to someone else. If there be, plying back and forth from Jupiter and Mars and Venus, super-constructions that are sometimes wrecked, we think of fuel as well as cargoes. Of course the most convincing data would be of coal falling from the sky: nevertheless, one does suspect that oil-burning engines were discovered ages ago in more advanced worlds--but, as I say, we should leave something to our disciples--so we'll not especially wonder whether these butter-like or oily substances were food or fuel. So we merely note that in the Scientific American, 24-323, is an account of hail that fell, in the middle of April, 1871, in Mississippi, in which was a substance described as turpentine. Something that tasted like orange water, in hailstones, about the first of June, 1842, near Nimes, France; identified as nitric acid (Jour. de Pharmacie, 1845-273).