minous substances, which merge so that they
cannot be told apart.

Resinous substance said to have fallen at Kaba, Hungary, April 15, 1887
(_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1860-94).

A resinous substance that fell after a fireball? at Neuhaus, Bohemia,
Dec. 17, 1824 (_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1860-70).

Fall, July 28, 1885, at Luchon, during a storm, of a brownish substance;
very friable, carbonaceous matter; when burned it gave out a resinous
odor (_Comptes Rendus_, 103-837).

Substance that fell, Feb. 17, 18, 19, 1841, at Genoa, Italy, said to
have been resinous; said by Arago (_OEuvres_, 12-469) to have been
bituminous matter and sand.

Fall--during a thunderstorm--July, 1681, near Cape Cod, upon the deck of
an English vessel, the _Albemarle_, of "burning, bituminous matter"
(_Edin. New Phil. Jour._, 26-86); a fall, at Christiania, Norway, June
13, 1822, of bituminous matter, listed by Greg as doubtful; fall of
bituminous matter, in Germany, March 8, 1798, listed by Greg. Lockyer
(_The Meteoric Hypothesis_, p. 24) says that the substance that fell at
the Cape of Good Hope, Oct. 13, 1838--about five cubic feet of it:
substance so soft that it was cuttable with a knife--"after being
experimented upon, it left a residue, which gave out a very bituminous
smell."

And this inclusion of Lockyer's--so far as findable in all books that I
have read--is, in books, about as close as we can get to our
desideratum--that coal has fallen from the sky. Dr. Farrington, except
with a brief mention, ignores the whole subject of the fall of
carbonaceous matter from the sky. Proctor, in all of his books that I
have read--is, in books, about as close as we can get to the admission
that carbonaceous matter has been found in meteorites "in very minute
quantities"--or my own suspicion is that it is possible to damn
something else only by losing one's own soul--quasi-soul, of course.

_Sci. Amer._, 35-120:

That the substance that fell at the Cape of Good Hope "resembled a piece
of anthracite coal more than anything else."

It's a mistake, I think: the resemblance is to bituminous coal--but it
is from the periodicals that we must get our data. To the writers of
books upon meteorites, it would be as wicked--by which we mean departure
from the characters of an established species--quasi-established, of
course--to say that coal has fallen from the sky, as would be, to
something in a barnyard, a temptation that it climb a tree and catch a
bird. Dom