it, that
they saw a stone fall from the sky, kill a sheep, and bury itself in the
ground.

They dug.

They found a stone ball.

Symons:

Coincidence. It had been there in the first place.

This object was exhibited at a meeting of the Royal Meteorological
Society by Mr. C. Carus-Wilson. It is described in the _Journal's_ list
of exhibits as a "sandstone" ball. It is described as "sandstone" by Mr.
Symons.

Now a round piece of sandstone may be almost anywhere in the ground--in
the first place--but, by our more or less discreditable habit of prying
and snooping, we find that this object was rather more complex and of
material less commonplace. In snooping through _Knowledge_, Oct. 9,
1885, we read that this "thunderstone" was in the possession of Mr. C.
Carus-Wilson, who tells the story of the witness and his family--the
sheep killed, the burial of something in the earth, the digging, and the
finding. Mr. C. Carus-Wilson describes the object as a ball of hard,
ferruginous quartzite, about the size of a cocoanut, weight about twelve
pounds. Whether we're feeling around for significance or not, there is a
suggestion not only of symmetry but of structure in this object: it had
an external shell, separated from a loose nucleus. Mr. Carus-Wilson
attributes this cleavage to unequal cooling of the mass.

My own notion is that there is very little deliberate misrepresentation
in the writings of scientific men: that they are quite as guiltless in
intent as are other hypnotic subjects. Such a victim of induced belief
reads of a stone ball said to have fallen from the sky. Mechanically in
his mind arise impressions of globular lumps, or nodules, of sandstone,
which are common almost everywhere. He assimilates the reported fall
with his impressions of objects in the ground, in the first place. To an
intermediatist, the phenomena of intellection are only phenomena of
universal process localized in human minds. The process called
"explanation" is only a local aspect of universal assimilation. It looks
like materialism: but the intermediatist holds that interpretation of
the immaterial, as it is called, in terms of the material, as it is
called, is no more rational than interpretation of the "material" in
terms of the "immaterial": that there is in quasi-existence neither the
material nor the immaterial, but approximations one way or the other.
But so hypnotic quasi-reasons: that globular lumps of sandstone are
common. Whethe