Page:The Book of the Damned (Fort, 1919).djvu/36

30 Loud noises were heard in the sky.

Stones fell from the sky.

According to Chladni, these concomitants occurred, and to me they seem—rather brutal?—or not associable with something so soft and gentle as a fall of pollen?

Black rains and black snows—rains as black as a deluge of ink—jet-black snowflakes.

Such a rain as that which fell in Ireland, May 14, 1849, described in the Annals of Scientific Discovery, 1850, and the Annual Register, 1849. It fell upon a district of 400 square miles, and was the color of ink, and of a fetid odor and very disagreeable taste.

The rain at Castlecommon, Ireland, April 30, 1887—"thick, black rain." (Amer. Met. Jour., 4-193.)

A black rain fell in Ireland, Oct. 8 and 9, 1907. (Symons' Met. Mag. 43-2.) "It left a most peculiar and disagreeable smell in the air."

The orthodox explanation of this rain occurs in Nature, March 2, 1908—cloud of soot that had come from South Wales, crossing the Irish Channel and all of Ireland.

So the black rain of Ireland, of March, 1898: ascribed in ''Symons' Met. Mag.'' 33-40, to clouds of soot from the manufacturing towns of North England and South Scotland.

Our Intermediatist principle of pseudo-logic, or our principle of Continuity is, of course, that nothing is unique, or individual: that all phenomena merge away into all other phenomena: that, for instance—suppose there should be vast celestial super-oceanic, or inter-planetary vessels that come near this earth and discharge volumes of smoke at times. We're only supposing such a thing as that now, because, conventionally, we are beginning modestly and tentatively. But if it were so, there would necessarily be some phenomenon upon this earth, with which that phenomenon would merge. Extra-mundane smoke and smoke from cities merge, or both would manifest in black precipitations in rain.

In Continuity, it is impossible to distinguish phenomena at their merging-points, so we look for them at their extremes. Impossible to distinguish between animal and vegetable in some infusoria—but hippopotamus and violet. For all practical purposes they're distinguishable enough. No one but a Barnum or a Bailey would send one a bunch of hippopotami as a token of regard.

So away from the great manufacturing centers: