re was a shower of a substance resembling
silk. The quantity was as tremendous as might be a whole cargo, lost
somewhere between Jupiter and Mars, having drifted around perhaps for
centuries, the original fabrics slowly disintegrating. In _Annales de
Chimie_, 2-15-427, it is said that samples of this substance were sent
to France by M. Laine, and that they proved to have some resemblances to
silky filaments which, at certain times of the year, are carried by the
wind near Paris.

In the _Annals of Philosophy_, n.s., 12-93, there is mention of a
fibrous substance like blue silk that fell near Naumberg, March 23,
1665. According to Chladni (_Annales de Chimie_, 2-31-264), the quantity
was great. He places a question mark before the date.

One of the advantages of Intermediatism is that, in the oneness of
quasiness, there can be no mixed metaphors. Whatever is acceptable of
anything, is, in some degree or aspect, acceptable of everything. So it
is quite proper to speak, for instance, of something that is as firm as
a rock and that sails in a majestic march. The Irish are good monists:
they have of course been laughed at for their keener perceptions. So
it's a book we're writing, or it's a procession, or it's a museum, with
the Chamber of Horrors rather over-emphasized. A rather horrible
correlation occurs in the _Scientific American_, 1859-178. What
interests us is that a correspondent saw a silky substance fall from the
sky--there was an aurora borealis at the time--he attributes the
substance to the aurora.

Since the time of Darwin, the classic explanation has been that all
silky substances that fall from the sky are spider webs. In 1832, aboard
the _Beagle_, at the mouth of La Plata River, 60 miles from land, Darwin
saw an enormous number of spiders, of the kind usually known as
"gossamer" spiders, little aeronauts that cast out filaments by which
the wind carries them.

It's difficult to express that silky substances that have fallen to this
earth were not spider webs. My own acceptance is that spider webs are
the merger; that there have been falls of an externally derived silky
substance, and also of the webs, or strands, rather, of aeronautic
spiders indigenous to this earth; that in some instances it is
impossible to distinguish one from the other. Of course, our expression
upon silky substances will merge away into expressions upon other
seeming textile substances, and I don't know how much better off we'll
b