y a farmer, after a severe storm--described as a
"fearful storm"--by a signal staff, which had been split by something. I
should say that nearness to a signal staff may be considered familiar
ground.

Whether he jumped, or arrived at the conclusion by a more leisurely
process, the farmer thought that the flint object had fallen in the
storm.

In this instance we have a lamentable scientist with us. It's impossible
to have positive difference between orthodoxy and heresy: somewhere
there must be a merging into each other, or an overlapping.
Nevertheless, upon such a subject as this, it does seem a little
shocking. In most works upon meteorites, the peculiar, sulphurous odor
of things that fall from the sky is mentioned. Sir John Evans (_Stone
Implements_, p. 57) says--with extraordinary reasoning powers, if he
could never have thought such a thing with ordinary reasoning
powers--that this flint object "proved to have been the bolt, by its
peculiar smell when broken."

If it did so prove to be, that settles the whole subject. If we prove
that only one object of worked stone has fallen from the sky, all piling
up of further reports is unnecessary. However, we have already taken the
stand that nothing settles anything; that the disputes of ancient Greece
are no nearer solution now than they were several thousand years
ago--all because, in a positive sense, there is nothing to prove or
solve or settle. Our object is to be more nearly real than our
opponents. Wideness is an aspect of the Universal. We go on widely.
According to us the fat man is nearer godliness than is the thin man.
Eat, drink, and approximate to the Positive Absolute. Beware of
negativeness, by which we mean indigestion.

The vast majority of "thunderstones" are described as "axes," but
Meunier (_La Nature_, 1892-2-381) tells of one that was in his
possession; said to have fallen at Ghardia, Algeria, contrasting
"profoundment" (pear-shaped) with the angular outlines of ordinary
meteorites. The conventional explanation that it had been formed as a
drop of molten matter from a larger body seems reasonable to me; but
with less agreeableness I note its fall in a thunderstorm, the datum
that turns the orthodox meteorologist pale with rage, or induces a
slight elevation of his eyebrows, if you mention it to him.

Meunier tells of another "thunderstone" said to have fallen in North
Africa. Meunier, too, is a little lamentable here: he quotes a soldier
of ex