the _New York Times_, March 10, 1876.

Then the exclusionists.

Something that looked like beef: one flake of it the size of a square
envelope.

If we think of how hard the exclusionists have fought to reject the
coming of ordinary-looking dust from this earth's externality, we can
sympathize with them in this sensational instance, perhaps. Newspaper
correspondents wrote broadcast and witnesses were quoted, and this time
there is no mention of a hoax, and, except by one scientist, there is no
denial that the fall did take place.

It seems to me that the exclusionists are still more emphatically
conservators. It is not so much that they are inimical to all data of
externally derived substances that fall upon this earth, as that they
are inimical to all data discordant with a system that does not include
such phenomena--

Or the spirit or hope or ambition of the cosmos, which we call attempted
positivism: not to find out the new; not to add to what is called
knowledge, but to systematize.

_Scientific American Supplement_, 2-426:

That the substance reported from Kentucky had been examined by Leopold
Brandeis.

"At last we have a proper explanation of this much talked of
phenomenon."

"It has been comparatively easy to identify the substance and to fix its
status. The Kentucky 'wonder' is no more or less than nostoc."

Or that it had not fallen; that it had been upon the ground in the first
place, and had swollen in rain, and, attracting attention by greatly
increased volume, had been supposed by unscientific observers to have
fallen in rain--

What rain, I don't know.

Also it is spoken of as "dried" several times. That's one of the most
important of the details.

But the relief of outraged propriety, expressed in the _Supplement_, is
amusing to some of us, who, I fear, may be a little improper at times.
Very spirit of the Salvation Army, when some third-rate scientist comes
out with an explanation of the vermiform appendix or the os coccygis
that would have been acceptable to Moses. To give completeness to "the
proper explanation," it is said that Mr. Brandeis had identified the
substance as "flesh-colored" nostoc.

Prof. Lawrence Smith, of Kentucky, one of the most resolute of the
exclusionists:

_New York Times_, March 12, 1876:

That the substance had been examined and analyzed by Prof. Smith,
according to whom it gave every indication of being the "dried" spawn of
some reptile, "doubtless of t