by some indefinite person living near a pond
somewhere.

It was a tremendous fall from a vast sky-area.

Likely enough all the marsh paper in the world could not have supplied
it.

At the same time, this substance was falling "in great quantities," in
Norway and Pomerania. Or see Kirkwood, _Meteoric Astronomy_, p. 66:

"Substance like charred paper fell in Norway and other parts of northern
Europe, Jan. 31, 1686."

Or a whirlwind, with a distribution as wide as that, would not
acceptably, I should say, have so specialized in the rare substance
called "marsh paper." There'd have been falls of fence rails, roofs of
houses, parts of trees. Nothing is said of the occurrence of a tornado
in northern Europe, in January, 1686. There is record only of this one
substance having fallen in various places.

Time went on, but the conventional determination to exclude data of all
falls to this earth, except of substances of this earth, and of ordinary
meteoric matter, strengthened.

_Annals of Philosophy_, 16-68:

The substance that fell in January, 1686, is described as "a mass of
black leaves, having the appearance of burnt paper, but harder, and
cohering, and brittle."

"Marsh paper" is not mentioned, and there is nothing said of the
"conifervae," which seemed so convincing to the royal Irishmen. Vegetable
composition is disregarded, quite as it might be by someone who might
find it convenient to identify a crook-necked squash as a big fishhook.

Meteorites are usually covered with a black crust, more or less
scale-like. The substance of 1686 is black and scale-like. If so be
convenience, "leaf-likeness" is "scale-likeness." In this attempt to
assimilate with the conventional, we are told that the substance is a
mineral mass: that it is like the black scales that cover meteorites.

The scientist who made this "identification" was Von Grotthus. He had
appealed to the god Chemical Analysis. Or the power and glory of
mankind--with which we're not always so impressed--but the gods must
tell us what we want them to tell us. We see again that, though nothing
has identity of its own, anything can be "identified" as anything. Or
there's nothing that's not reasonable, if one snoopeth not into its
exclusions. But here the conflict did not end. Berzelius examined the
substance. He could not find nickel in it. At that time, the presence of
nickel was the "positive" test of meteoritic matter. Whereupon, with a
supposititious "po