Page:The Book of the Damned (Fort, 1919).djvu/124

118 held for ages in suspension in the Super-Sargasso Sea—falling, or shaken, down occasionally by storms

But, by preponderance of description, we can not accept that "thunderstones" ever were attached to handles, or are prehistoric axes As to attempts to communicate with this earth, by means of wedge-shaped objects especially adapted to the penetration of vast, gelatinous areas spread around this earth

In the ''Proc. Roy. Irish Acad.'', 9-337, there is an account of a stone wedge that fell from the sky, near Cashel, Tipperary, Aug. 2, 1865. The phenomenon is not questioned, but the orthodox preference is to call it, not ax-like, nor wedge-shaped, but "pyramidal." For data of other pyramidal stones said to have fallen from the sky, see ''Rept. Brit. Assoc.'', 1861-34. One fell at Segowolee, India, March 6, 1853. Of the object that fell at Cashel, Dr. Haughton says in the Proceedings: "A singular feature is observable in this stone, that I have never seen in any other:—the rounded edges of the pyramid are sharply marked by lines on the black crust, as perfect as if made by a ruler." Dr. Haughton's idea is that the marks may have been made by "some peculiar tension in the cooling." It must have been very peculiar, if in all aerolites not wedge-shaped, no such phenomenon had ever been observed. It merges away with one or two instances, known, after Dr. Haughton's time, of seeming stratification in meteorites. Stratification in meteorites, however, is denied by the faithful.

I begin to suspect something else.

A whopper is coming.

Later it will be as reasonable, by familiarity, as anything else ever said.

If some one should study the stone of Cashel, as Champollion studied the Rosetta stone, he might—or, rather, would inevitably—find meaning in those lines, and translate them into English Nevertheless I begin to suspect something else: something more subtle and esoteric than graven characters upon stones that have fallen from the sky, in attempts to communicate. The notion that other worlds are attempting to communicate with this world is widespread: my own notion is that it is not attempt at all—that it was achievement centuries ago.

I should like to send out a report that a "thunderstone" had fallen, say, somewhere in New Hampshire