g to a
witness, quoted by the correspondent, a thick cloud, accompanied by rain
and a violent wind, had appeared. This cloud was composed of a woolly
substance in lumps the size of a fist, which fell to the ground. The
Editor (Tissandier) says of this substance that it was white, but was
something that had been burned. It was fibrous. M. Tissandier astonishes
us by saying that he cannot identify this substance. We thought that
anything could be "identified" as anything. He can say only that the
cloud in question must have been an extraordinary conglomeration.

_Annual Register, 1832-447:_

That, March, 1832, there fell, in the fields of Kourianof, Russia, a
combustible yellowish substance, covering, at least two inches thick, an
area of 600 or 700 square feet. It was resinous and yellowish: so one
inclines to the conventional explanation that it was pollen from pine
trees--but, when torn, it had the tenacity of cotton. When placed in
water, it had the consistency of resin. "This resin had the color of
amber, was elastic, like India rubber, and smelled like prepared oil
mixed with wax."

So in general our notion of cargoes--and our notion of cargoes of food
supplies:

In _Philosophical Transactions_, 19-224, is an extract from a letter by
Mr. Robert Vans, of Kilkenny, Ireland, dated Nov. 15, 1695: that there
had been "of late," in the counties of Limerick and Tipperary, showers
of a sort of matter like butter or grease... having "a very stinking
smell."

There follows an extract from a letter by the Bishop of Cloyne, upon "a
very odd phenomenon," which was observed in Munster and Leinster: that
for a good part of the spring of 1695 there fell a substance which the
country people called "butter"--"soft, clammy, and of a dark
yellow"--that cattle fed "indifferently" in fields where this substance
lay.

"It fell in lumps as big as the end of one's finger." It had a "strong
ill scent." His Grace calls it a "stinking dew."

In Mr. Vans' letter, it is said that the "butter" was supposed to have
medicinal properties, and "was gathered in pots and other vessels by
some of the inhabitants of this place."

And:

In all the following volumes of _Philosophical Transactions_ there is no
speculation upon this extraordinary subject. Ostracism. The fate of this
datum is a good instance of damnation, not by denial, and not by
explaining away, but by simple disregard. The fall is listed by
Chladni, and is mentioned in other c