e 430, and _Jour. Roy. Met. Soc._, 20-273. As to
discussion--not a word. Or Science and its continuity with
Presbyterianism--data like this are damned at birth. The _Weather
Review_ does sprinkle, or baptize, or attempt to save, this infant--but
in all the meteorological literature that I have gone through, after
that date--not a word, except mention once or twice. The Editor of the
_Review_ says:

"An examination of the weather map shows that these hailstorms occur on
the south side of a region of cold northerly winds, and were but a small
part of a series of similar storms; apparently some special local whirls
or gusts carried heavy objects from this earth's surface up to the cloud
regions."

Of all incredibilities that we have to choose from, I give first place
to a notion of a whirlwind pouncing upon a region and scrupulously
selecting a turtle and a piece of alabaster. This time, the other
mechanical thing "there in the first place" cannot rise in response to
its stimulus: it is resisted in that these objects were coated with
ice--month of May in a southern state. If a whirlwind at all, there must
have been very limited selection: there is no record of the fall of
other objects. But there is no attempt in the _Review_ to specify a
whirlwind.

These strangely associated things were remarkably separated.

They fell eight miles apart.

Then--as if there were real reasoning--they must have been high to fall
with such divergence, or one of them must have been carried partly
horizontally eight miles farther than the other. But either supposition
argues for power more than that of a local whirl or gust, or argues for
a great, specific disturbance, of which there is no record--for the
month of May, 1894.

Nevertheless--as if I really were reasonable--I do feel that I have to
accept that this turtle had been raised from this earth's surface,
somewhere near Vicksburg--because the gopher turtle is common in the
southern states.

Then I think of a hurricane that occurred in the state of Mississippi
weeks or months before May 11, 1894.

No--I don't look for it--and inevitably find it.

Or that things can go up so high in hurricanes that they stay up
indefinitely--but may, after a while, be shaken down by storms. Over and
over have we noted the occurrence of strange falls in storms. So then
that the turtle and the piece of alabaster may have had far different
origins--from different worlds, perhaps--have entered a re