n Mississippi, in which was a substance
described as turpentine.

Something that tasted like orange water, in hailstones, about the first
of June, 1842, near Nimes, France; identified as nitric acid (_Jour. de
Pharmacie_, 1845-273).

Hail and ashes, in Ireland, 1755 (_Sci. Amer._, 5-168).

That, at Elizabeth, N.J., June 9, 1874, fell hail in which was a
substance, said, by Prof. Leeds, of Stevens Institute, to be carbonate
of soda (_Sci. Amer._, 30-262).

We are getting a little away from the lines of our composition, but it
will be an important point later that so many extraordinary falls have
occurred with hail. Or--if they were of substances that had had origin
upon some other part of this earth's surface--had the hail, too, that
origin? Our acceptance here will depend upon the number of instances.
Reasonably enough, some of the things that fall to this earth should
coincide with falls of hail.

As to vegetable substances in quantities so great as to suggest lost
cargoes, we have a note in the _Intellectual Observer_, 3-468: that,
upon the first of May, 1863, a rain fell at Perpignan, "bringing down
with it a red substance, which proved on examination to be a red meal
mixed with fine sand." At various points along the Mediterranean, this
substance fell.

There is, in _Philosophical Transactions_, 16-281, an account of a
seeming cereal, said to have fallen in Wiltshire, in 1686--said that
some of the "wheat" fell "enclosed in hailstones"--but the writer in
_Transactions_, says that he had examined the grains, and that they were
nothing but seeds of ivy berries dislodged from holes and chinks where
birds had hidden them. If birds still hide ivy seeds, and if winds still
blow, I don't see why the phenomenon has not repeated in more than two
hundred years since.

Or the red matter in rain, at Siena, Italy, May, 1830; said, by Arago,
to have been vegetable matter (Arago, _OEuvres_, 12-468).

Somebody should collect data of falls at Siena alone.

In the _Monthly Weather Review_, 29-465, a correspondent writes that,
upon Feb. 16, 1901, at Pawpaw, Michigan, upon a day that was so calm
that his windmill did not run, fell a brown dust that looked like
vegetable matter. The Editor of the _Review_ concludes that this was no
widespread fall from a tornado, because it had been reported from
nowhere else.

Rancidness--putridity--decomposition--a note that has been struck many
times. In a positive sense, of course, noth