The Book of the Damned (14 page)
Read The Book of the Damned Online
Authors: Charles Fort
This matter of enormousness of numbers suggests to me something of a migratory nature—but that snakes in the United States do not migrate in the month of January, if ever.
As to falls or flutterings of winged insects from the sky, prevailing notions of swarming would seem explanatory enough: nevertheless, in instances of ants, there are some peculiar circumstances.
L’Astronomie,
1889-353:
Fall of fishes, June 13, 1889, in Holland; ants, Aug. 1, 1889, Strasbourg; little toads, Aug. 2, 1889, Savoy.
Fall of ants, Cambridge, England, summer of 1874—“some were wingless.”
(Scientific American,
30-193.) Enormous fall of ants, Nancy, France, July 21, 1887—“most of them were wingless.”
(Nature,
36-349.) Fall of enormous, unknown ants—size of wasps—Manitoba, June, 1895.
(Sci. Amer.,
72-385.)
However, our expression will be:
That wingless, larval forms of life, in numbers so enormous that migration from some place external to this earth is suggested, have fallen from the sky.
That these “migrations”—if such can be our acceptance—have occurred at a time of hibernation and burial far in the ground of larvae in the northern latitudes of this earth; that there is significance in recurrence of these falls in the last of January—or that we have the square of an incredibility in such a notion as that of selection of larvae by whirlwinds, compounded with selection of the last of January.
I accept that there are “snow worms” upon this earth—whatever their origin may have been. In the
Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. of Philadelphia,
1899-125, there is a description of yellow worms and black worms that have been found together on glaciers in Alaska. Almost positively were there no other forms of insect life upon these glaciers, and there was no vegetation to support insect life, except microscopic organisms. Nevertheless the description of this probably polymorphic species fits a description of larvae said to have fallen in Switzerland, and less definitely fits another description. There is no opposition here, if our data of falls are clear. Frogs of everyday ponds look like frogs said to have fallen from the sky—except the whitish frogs of Birmingham. However, all falls of larvae have not positively occurred in the last of January:
London
Times,
April 14, 1837:
That, in the parish of Bramford Speke, Devonshire, a large number of black worms, about three-quarters of an inch in length, had fallen in a snowstorm.
In Timb’s
Year Book,
1877-26, it is said that, in the winter of 1876, at Christiania, Norway, worms were found crawling upon the ground. The occurrence is considered a great mystery, because the worms could not have come up from the ground, inasmuch as the ground was frozen at the time, and because they were reported from other places, also, in Norway.
Immense number of black insects in a snowstorm, in 1827, at Pakroff, Russia.
(Scientific American,
30-193.)
Fall, with snow, at Orenburg, Russia, Dec. 14, 1830, of a multitude of small, black insects, said to have been gnats, but also said to have had flea-like motions.
(Amer. Jour. Sci.,
1-22-375.)
Large number of worms found in a snowstorm, upon the surface of snow about four inches thick, near Sangerfield, N.Y., Nov. 18, 1850
(Scientific American,
6-96). The writer thinks that the worms had been brought to the surface of the ground by rain, which had fallen previously.
Scientific American,
Feb. 21, 1891:
“A puzzling phenomenon has been noted frequently in some parts of the Valley Bend District, Randolph County, Va., this winter. The crust of the snow has been covered two or three times with worms resembling the ordinary cut worms. Where they come from, unless they fall with the snow is inexplicable.” In the
Scientific American,
March 7, 1891, the Editor says that similar worms had been seen upon the snow near Utica, N.Y., and in Oneida and Herkimer Counties; that some of the worms had been sent to the Department of Agriculture at Washington. Again two species, or polymorphism. According to Prof. Riley, it was not polymorphism, “but two distinct species”—which, because of our data, we doubt. One kind was larger than the other: color differences not distinctly stated. One is called the larvae of the common soldier beetle and the other “seems to be a variety of the bronze cut worm.” No attempt to explain the occurrence in snow.
Fall of great numbers of larvae of beetles, near Mortagne, France, May, 1858. The larvae were inanimate as if with cold.
(Annales Société Entomologique de France,
1858.)
Trans. Ent. Soc. of London,
1871-183, records “snowing of larvae,” in Silesia, 1806; “appearance of many larvae on the snow,” in Saxony, 1811; “larvae found alive on the snow,” 1828; larvae and snow which “fell together,” in the Eifel, Jan. 30, 1847; “fall of insects,” Jan. 24, 1849, in Lithuania; occurrence of larvae estimated at 300,000 on the snow in Switzerland, in 1856. The compiler says that most of these larvae live underground, or at the roots of trees; that whirlwinds uproot trees, and carry away the larvae—conceiving of them as not held in masses of frozen earth—all as neatly detachable as currants in something. In the
Revue et Magasin de Zoologie,
1849-72, there is an account of the fall in Lithuania, Jan. 24, 1849—that black larvae had fallen in enormous numbers.
Larvae thought to have been of beetles, but described as “caterpillars,” not seen to fall, but found crawling on the snow, after a snowstorm, at Warsaw, Jan. 20, 1850.
(All the Year Round,
8-253.)
Flammarion
(The Atmosphere,
p. 414) tells of a fall of larvae that occurred Jan. 30, 1869, in a snowstorm, in Upper Savoy: “They could not have been hatched in the neighborhood, for, during the days preceding, the temperature had been very low”; said to have been of a species common in the south of France. In
La Science Pour Tous,
14-183, it is said that with these larvae there were developed insects.
L’Astronomie,
1890-313:
That, upon the last of January, 1890, there fell, in a great tempest, in Switzerland, incalculable numbers of larvae: some black and some yellow; numbers so great that hosts of birds were attracted.
Altogether we regard this as one of our neatest expressions for external origins and against the whirlwind explanation. If an exclusionist says that, in January, larvae were precisely and painstakingly picked out of frozen ground, in incalculable numbers, he thinks of a tremendous force—disregarding its refinements: then if origin and precipitation be not far apart, what becomes of an infinitude of other débris, conceiving of no time for segregation?
If he thinks of a long translation—all the way from the south of France to Upper Savoy, he may think then of a very fine sorting over by differences of specific gravity—but in such a fine selection, larvae would be separated from developed insects.
As to differences in specific gravity—the yellow larvae that fell in Switzerland January, 1890, were three times the size of the black larvae that fell with them. In accounts of this occurrence, there is no denial of the fall.
Or that a whirlwind never brought them together and held them together and precipitated them and only them together—
That they came from Genesistrine.
There’s no escape from it. We’ll be persecuted for it. Take it or leave it—
Genesistrine.
The notion is that there is somewhere aloft a place of origin of life relatively to this earth. Whether it’s the planet Genesistrine, or the moon, or a vast amorphous region super-jacent to this earth, or an island in the Super-Sargasso Sea, should perhaps be left to the researches of other super—or extra—geographers. That the first unicellular organisms may have come here from Genesistrine—or that men or anthropomorphic beings may have come here before amoebae: that, upon Genesistrine, there may have been an evolution expressible in conventional biologic terms, but that evolution upon this earth has been—like evolution in modern Japan—induced by external influences; that evolution, as a whole, upon this earth, has been a process of population by immigration or by bombardment. Some notes I have upon remains of men and animals encysted, or covered with clay or stone, as if fired here as projectiles, I omit now, because it seems best to regard the whole phenomenon as a tropism—as a geotropism—probably atavistic, or vestigial, as it were, or something still continuing long after expiration of necessity; that, once upon a time, all kinds of things came here from Genesistrine, but that now only a few kinds of bugs and things, at long intervals, feel the inspiration.
Not one instance have we of tadpoles that have fallen to this earth. It seems reasonable that a whirlwind could scoop up a pond, frogs and all, and cast down the frogs somewhere else: but, then, more reasonable that a whirlwind could scoop up a pond, tadpoles and all—because tadpoles are more numerous in their season than are the frogs in theirs: but the tadpole season is earlier in the spring, or in a time that is more tempestuous. Thinking in terms of causation—as if there were real causes—our notion is that, if X is likely to cause Y, but is more likely to cause Z, but does not cause Z, X is not the cause of Y. Upon this quasi-sorites, we base our acceptance that the little frogs that have fallen to this earth are not products of whirlwinds: that they came from externality, or from Genesistrine.
I think of Genesistrine in terms of biologic mechanics: not that somewhere there are persons who collect bugs in or about the last of January and frogs in July and August, and bombard this earth, any more than do persons go through northern regions, catching and collecting birds, every autumn, then casting them southward.
But atavistic, or vestigial, geotropism in Genesistrine—or a million larvae start crawling, and a million little frogs start hopping—knowing no more what it’s all about than we do when we crawl to work in the morning and hop away at night.
I should say, myself that Genesistrine is a region in the Super-Sargasso Sea, and that parts of the Super-Sargasso Sea have rhythms of susceptibility to this earth’s attraction.
8
I accept that, when there are storms, the damnedest of excluded, excommunicated things—things that are leprous to the faithful—are brought down—from the Super-Sargasso Sea—or from what for convenience we call the Super-Sargasso Sea—which by no means has been taken into full acceptance yet.
That things are brought down by storms, just as, from the depths of the sea things are brought up by storms. To be sure it is orthodoxy that storms have little, if any, effect below the waves of the ocean—but—of course—only to have an opinion is to be ignorant of, or to disregard a contradiction, or something else that modifies an opinion out of distinguishability.
Symons’ Meteorological Magazine,
47-180:
That, along the coast of New Zealand, in regions not subject to submarine volcanic action, deep-sea fishes are often brought up by storms.
Iron and stones that fall from the sky; and atmospheric disturbances:
“There is absolutely no connection between the two phenomena.”
(Symons.)
The orthodox belief is that objects moving at planetary velocity would, upon entering this earth’s atmosphere, be virtually unaffected by hurricanes; might as well think of a bullet swerved by someone fanning himself. The only trouble with the orthodox reasoning is the usual trouble—its phantom-dominant—it’s basing upon a myth—data we’ve had, and more we’ll have, of things in the sky having no independent velocity.
There are so many storms and so many meteors and meteorites that it would be extraordinary if there were no concurrences. Nevertheless so many of these concurrences are listed by Prof. Baden-Powell
(Rept. Brit. Assoc.,
1850-54) that one—notices.
See
Rept. Brit. Assoc.,
1860—other instances.
The famous fall of stones at Siena, Italy, 1794—“in a violent storm.”
See
Greg’s Catalogues—
many instances. One that stands out is—“bright ball of fire and light in a hurricane in England, Sept. 2, 1786.” The remarkable datum here is that this phenomenon was visible forty minutes. That’s about 800 times the duration that the orthodox give to meteors and meteorites.
See the
Annual Register—
many instances.
In
Nature,
Oct. 25, 1877, and the London
Times,
Oct. 15, 1877, something that fell in a gale of Oct. 14, 1877, is described as a “huge ball of green fire.” This phenomenon is described by another correspondent, in
Nature,
17-10, and an account of it by another correspondent was forwarded to
Nature
by W.F. Denning.
There are so many instances that some of us will revolt against the insistence of the faithful that it is only coincidence, and accept that there is connection of the kind called causal. If it is too difficult to think of stones and metallic masses swerved from their courses by storms, if they move at high velocity, we think of low velocity, or of things having no velocity at all, hovering a few miles above this earth, dislodged by storms, and falling luminously.
But the resistance is so great here, and “coincidence” so insisted upon that we’d better have some more instances:
Aerolite in a storm at St. Leonards-on-sea, England, Sept. 17, 1885—no trace of it found
(Annual Register,
1885); meteorite in a gale, March 1, 1886, described in the
Monthly Weather Review,
March, 1886; meteorite in a thunderstorm, off coast of Greece, Nov. 19, 1899
(Nature,
61-111); fall of a meteorite in a storm, July 7, 1883, near Lachine, Quebec
(Monthly Weather Review,
July, 1883); same phenomenon noted in
Nature,
28-319; meteorite in a whirlwind, Sweden, Sept. 24, 1883
(Nature,
29-15).
London Roy. Soc. Proc.,
6-276:
A triangular cloud that appeared in a storm, Dec. 17, 1852; a red nucleus, about half the apparent diameter of the moon, and a long tail; visible thirteen minutes; explosion of the nucleus.
Nevertheless, in
Science Gossip,
n.s., 6-65, it is said that, though meteorites have fallen in storms, no connection is supposed to exist between the two phenomena, except by the ignorant peasantry.
But some of us peasants have gone through the
Report of the British Association,
1852. Upon page 239, Dr. Buist, who had never heard of the Super-Sargasso Sea, says that, though it is difficult to trace connection between the phenomena, three aerolites had fallen in five months, in India, during thunderstorms, in 1851 (may have been 1852). For accounts by witnesses, see page 229 of the
Report.
Or—we are on our way to account for “thunderstones.”
It seems to me that, very strikingly here, is borne out the general acceptance that ours is only an intermediate existence, in which there is nothing fundamental, or nothing final to take as a positive standard to judge by.
Peasants believed in meteorites.
Scientists, excluded meteorites.
Peasants believe in “thunderstones.”
Scientists exclude “thunderstones.”
It is useless to argue that peasants are out in the fields, and that scientists are shut up in laboratories and lecture rooms. We cannot take for a real base that, as to phenomena with which they are more familiar, peasants are more likely to be right than are scientists: a host of biologic and meteorologic fallacies of peasants rises against us.
I should say that our “existence” is like a bridge—except that that comparison is in static terms—but like the Brooklyn Bridge, upon which multitudes of bugs are seeking a fundamental—coming to a girder that seems firm and final—but the girder is built upon supports. A support then seems final. But it is built upon underlying structures. Nothing final can be found in all the bridge, because the bridge itself is not a final thing in itself, but is a relationship between Manhattan and Brooklyn. If our “existence” is a relationship between the Positive Absolute and the Negative Absolute, the quest for finality in it is hopeless: everything in it must be relative, if the “whole” is not a whole, but is, itself, a relation.
In the attitude of Acceptance, our pseudo-base is:
Cells of an embryo are in the reptilian era of the embryo;
Some cells feel stimuli to take on new appearances.
If it be of the design of the whole that the next era be mammalian, those cells that turn mammalian will be sustained against resistance, by inertia, of all the rest, and will be relatively right, though not finally right, because they, too, in time will have to give way to characters of other eras of higher development.
If we are upon the verge of a new era, in which Exclusionism must be overthrown, it will avail thee not to call us base-born and frowsy peasants.
In our crude, bucolic way, we now offer an outrage upon common sense that we think will someday be an unquestioned commonplace:
That manufactured objects of stone and iron have fallen from the sky:
That they have been brought down from a state of suspension, in a region of inertness to this earth’s attraction, by atmospheric disturbances.
The “thunderstone” is usually “a beautifully polished, wedge-shaped piece of greenstone,” says a writer in the
Cornhill Magazine,
50-517. It isn’t: it’s likely to be of almost any kind of stone, but we call attention to the skill with which some of them have been made. Of course this writer says it’s all superstition. Otherwise he’d be one of us crude and simple sons of the soil.
Conventional damnation is that stone implements, already on the ground—“on the ground in the first place”—are found near where lightning was seen to strike: that are supposed by astonished rustics, or by intelligence of a low order, to have fallen in or with lightning.
Throughout this book, we class a great deal of science with bad fiction. When is fiction bad, cheap, low? If coincidence is overworked. That’s one way of deciding. But with single writers, coincidence seldom is overworked: we find the excess in the subject at large. Such a writer as the one of the
Cornhill Magazine
tells us vaguely of beliefs of peasants: there is no massing of instance after instance after instance. Here ours will be the method of mass-formation.
Conceivably lightning may strike the ground near where there was a wedge-shaped object in the first place: again and again and again: lightning striking ground near wedge-shaped object in China; lightning striking ground near wedge-shaped object in Scotland; lightning striking ground near wedge-shaped object in Central Africa: coincidence in France; coincidence in Java; coincidence in South America—
We grant a great deal but note a tendency to restlessness. Nevertheless this is the psycho-tropism of science to all “thunderstones” said to have fallen luminously.
As to greenstone, it is in the island of Jamaica, where the notion is general that axes of a hard greenstone fall from the sky—“during the rains.”
(Jour. Inst. Jamaica,
2-4.) Some other time we shall inquire into this localization of objects of a specific material. “They are of a stone nowhere else to be found in Jamaica.”
(Notes and Queries,
2-8-24.)
In my own tendency to exclude, or in the attitude of one peasant or savage who thinks he is not to be classed with other peasants or savages, I am not very much impressed with what natives think. It would be hard to tell why. If the word of a Lord Kelvin carries no more weight, upon scientific subjects, than the word of a Sitting Bull, unless it be in agreement with conventional opinion—I think it must be because savages have bad table manners. However, my snobbishness, in this respect, loosens up somewhat before very widespread belief by savages and peasants. And the notion of “thunderstones” is as wide as geography itself.
The natives of Burma, China, Japan, according to Blinkenberg
(Thunder Weapons,
p. 100)—not, of course, that Blinkenberg accepts one word of it—think that carved stone objects have fallen from the sky, because they think they have seen such objects fall from the sky. Such objects are called “thunderbolts” in these countries. They are called “thunderstones” in Moravia, Holland, Belgium, France, Cambodia, Sumatra, and Siberia. They’re called “storm stones” in Lausitz; “sky arrows” in Slavonia; “thunder axes” in England and Scotland; “lightning stones” in Spain and Portugal; “sky axes” in Greece; “lightning flashes” in Brazil; “thunder teeth” in Amboina.
The belief is as widespread as is belief in ghosts and witches, which only the superstitious deny today.
As to beliefs by North American Indians, Tyler gives a list of references
(Primitive Culture,
2-237). As to South American Indians—“Certain stone hatchets are said to have fallen from the heavens.”
(Jour. Amer. Folk Lore,
17-203.)
If you, too, revolt against coincidence after coincidence after coincidence, but find our interpretation of “thunderstones” just a little too strong or rich for digestion, we recommend the explanation of one, Tallius, written in 1649:
“The naturalists say they are generated in the sky by fulgurous exhalation conglobed in a cloud by the circumfused humor.”
Of course the paper in the
Cornhill Magazine
was written with no intention of trying really to investigate this subject, but to deride the notion that worked-stone objects have ever fallen from the sky. A writer in the
Amer. Jour. Sci.,
1-21-325, read this paper and thinks it remarkable “that any man of ordinary reasoning powers should write a paper to prove that thunderbolts do not exist.”
I confess that we’re a little flattered by that.
Over and over:
“It is scarcely necessary to suggest to the intelligent reader that thunderstones are a myth.”
We contend that there is a misuse of a word here: we admit that only we are intelligent upon this subject, if by intelligence is meant the inquiry of inequilibrium, and that all other intellection is only mechanical reflex—of course that intelligence, too, is mechanical, but less orderly and confined: less obviously mechanical—that as an acceptance of ours becomes firmer and firmer-established, we pass from the state of intelligence to reflexes in ruts. An odd thing is that intelligence is usually supposed to be creditable. It may be in the sense that it is mental activity trying to find out, but it is confession of ignorance. The bees, the theologians, the dogmatic scientists are the intellectual aristocrats. The rest of us are plebeians, not yet graduated to Nirvana, or to the instinctive and suave as differentiated from the intelligent and crude.
Blinkenberg gives many instances of the superstition of “thunderstones” which flourishes only where mentality is in a lamentable state—or universally. In Malacca, Sumatra, and Java, natives say that stone axes have often been found under trees that have been struck by lightning. Blinkenberg does not dispute this, but says it is coincidence: that the axes were of course upon the ground in the first place: that the natives jumped to the conclusion that these carved stones had fallen in or with lightning. In Central Africa, it is said that often have wedge-shaped, highly polished objects of stone, described as “axes,” been found sticking in trees that have been struck by lightning—or by what seemed to be lightning. The natives, rather like the unscientific persons of Memphis, Tenn., when they saw snakes after a storm, jumped to the conclusion that the “axes” had not always been sticking in the trees. Livingstone
(Last Journal,
pages 83, 89, 442, 448) says that he had never heard of stone implements used by natives of Africa. A writer in the
Report of the Smithsonian Institution,
1877-308, says that there are a few.
That they are said, by the natives, to have fallen in thunderstorms.
As to luminosity, it is my lamentable acceptance that bodies falling through this earth’s atmosphere, if not warmed even, often fall with a brilliant light, looking like flashes of lightning. This matter seems important: we’ll take it up later, with data.
In Prussia, two stone axes were found in the trunks of trees, one under the bark. (Blinkenberg,
Thunder Weapons,
p. 100.)
The finders jumped to the conclusion that the axes had fallen there.
Another stone ax—or wedge-shaped object of worked stone—said to have been found in a tree that had been struck by something that looked like lightning.
(Thunder Weapons,
p. 71.)