estic things in a barnyard: and how wild things from forests
outside seem to them. Or the homeopathist--but we shall shovel data of
coal.

And, if over and over, we shall learn of masses of soft coal that have
fallen upon this earth, if in no instance has it been asserted that the
masses did not fall, but were upon the ground in the first place; if we
have many instances, this time we turn down good and hard the mechanical
reflex that these masses were carried from one place to another in
whirlwinds, because we find it too difficult to accept that whirlwinds
could so select, or so specialize in a peculiar substance. Among writers
of books, the only one I know of who makes more than brief mention is
Sir Robert Ball. He represents a still more antique orthodoxy, or is an
exclusionist of the old type, still holding out against even meteorites.
He cites several falls of carbonaceous matter, but with disregards that
make for reasonableness that earthy matter may have been caught up by
whirlwinds and flung down somewhere else. If he had given a full list,
he would be called upon to explain the special affinity of whirlwinds
for a special kind of coal. He does not give a full list. We shall have
all that's findable, and we shall see that against this disease we're
writing, the homeopathist's prescription availeth not. Another
exclusionist was Prof. Lawrence Smith. His psycho-tropism was to
respond to all reports of carbonaceous matter falling from the sky, by
saying that this damned matter had been deposited upon things of the
chosen by impact with this earth. Most of our data antedate him, or were
contemporaneous with him, or were as accessible to him as to us. In his
attempted positivism it is simply--and beautifully--disregarded that,
according to Berthelot, Berzelius, Cloez, Wohler and others these masses
are not merely coated with carbonaceous matter, but are carbonaceous
throughout, or are permeated throughout. How anyone could so resolutely
and dogmatically and beautifully and blindly hold out would puzzle us
were it not for our acceptance that only to think is to exclude and
include; and to exclude some things that have as much right to come in
as have the included--that to have an opinion upon any subject is to be
a Lawrence Smith--because there is no definite subject.

Dr. Walter Flight (_Eclectic Magazine_, 89-71) says, of the substance
that fell near Alais, France, March 15, 1806, that it "emits a faint
bituminous