Page:The Book of the Damned (Fort, 1919).djvu/249

Rh they were common on the ground, and had been sustained, of course not in the air, but in a region gravitationally inert; and had been precipitated by the disturbances of April rains.

I have no records of leaves that have so fallen from the sky, in October or November, the season when one might expect dead leaves to be raised from one place and precipitated somewhere else. I emphasize that this occurred in April.

La Nature, 1889-2-94:

That, upon April 19, 1889, dried leaves, of different species, oak, elm, etc., fell from the sky. This day, too, was a calm day. The fall was tremendous. The leaves were seen to fall fifteen minutes, but, judging from the quantity on the ground, it is the writer's opinion that they had already been falling half an hour. I think that the geyser of corpses that sprang from Riobamba toward the sky must have been an interesting sight. If I were a painter, I'd like that subject. But this cataract of dried leaves, too, is a study in the rhythms of the dead. In this datum, the point most agreeable to us is the very point that the writer in La Nature emphasizes. Windlessness. He says that the surface of the Loire was "absolutely smooth." The river was strewn with leaves as far as he could see.

L'Astronomie, 1894-194:

That, upon the 7th of April, 1894, dried leaves fell at Clairvaux and Outre-Aube, France. The fall is described as prodigious. Half an hour. Then, upon the 11th, a fall of dried leaves occurred at Pontcarré.

It is in this recurrence that we found some of our opposition to the conventional explanation. The Editor (Flammarion) explains. He says that the leaves had been caught up in a cyclone which had expended its force; that the heavier leaves had fallen first. We think that that was all right for 1894, and that it was quite good enough for 1894. But, in these more exacting days, we want to know how wind-power insufficient to hold some leaves in the air could sustain others four days.

The factors in this expression are unseasonableness, not for dried leaves, but for prodigious numbers of dried leaves; direct fall, windlessness, month of April, and localization in France. The factor of localization is interesting. Not a note have I upon fall of leaves from the sky, except these notes. Were the conventional explanation, or "old correlate" acceptable, it would seem that similar