s think it remarkable that the lightning did not then scatter the
contents of the grate, which were disturbed only as if a heavy body had
fallen. If we admit that climbing up the chimney to find out is too
rigorous a requirement for a man who may have been large, dignified and
subject to expansions, the only unreasonableness we find in what he
says--as judged by our more modern outlook, is:

"I suppose that no one would suggest that bricks are manufactured in the
atmosphere."

Sounds a little unreasonable to us, because it is so of the positivistic
spirit of former times, when it was not so obvious that the highest
incredibility and laughability must merge away with the "proper"--as the
_Sci. Am. Sup._ would say. The preposterous is always interpretable in
terms of the "proper," with which it must be continuous--or--clay-like
masses such as have fallen from the sky--tremendous heat generated by
their velocity--they bake--bricks.

We begin to suspect that Mr. Symons exhausted himself at Notting Hill.
It's a warning to efficiency-fanatics.

Then the instance of three lumps of earthy matter, found upon a
well-frequented path, after a thunderstorm, at Reading, July 3, 1883.
There are so many records of the fall of earthy matter from the sky that
it would seem almost uncanny to find resistance here, were we not so
accustomed to the uncompromising stands of orthodoxy--which, in our
metaphysics, represent good, as attempts, but evil in their
insufficiency. If I thought it necessary, I'd list one hundred and fifty
instances of earthy matter said to have fallen from the sky. It is his
antagonism to atmospheric disturbance associated with the fall of things
from the sky that blinds and hypnotizes a Mr. Symons here. This especial
Mr. Symons rejects the Reading substance because it was not "of true
meteoritic material." It's uncanny--or it's not uncanny at all, but
universal--if you don't take something for a standard of opinion, you
can't have any opinion at all: but, if you do take a standard, in some
of its applications it must be preposterous. The carbonaceous
meteorites, which are unquestioned--though avoided, as we have seen--by
orthodoxy, are more glaringly of untrue meteoritic material than was
this substance of Reading. Mr. Symons says that these three lumps were
upon the ground "in the first place."

Whether these data are worth preserving or not, I think that the appeal
that this especial Mr. Symons makes is worthy