r he jumps or leaps, or whether only the frowsy and
base-born are so athletic, his is the impression, by assimilation, that
this especial object is a ball of sandstone. Or human mentality: its
inhabitants are conveniences. It may be that Mr. Symons' paper was
written before this object was exhibited to the members of the Society,
and with the charity with which, for the sake of diversity, we
intersperse our malices, we are willing to accept that he "investigated"
something that he had never seen. But whoever listed this object was
uncareful: it is listed as "sandstone."

We're making excuses for them.

Really--as it were--you know, we're not quite so damned as we were.

One does not apologize for the gods and at the same time feel quite
utterly prostrate before them.

If this were a real existence, and all of us real persons, with real
standards to judge by, I'm afraid we'd have to be a little severe with
some of these Mr. Symonses. As it is, of course, seriousness seems out
of place.

We note an amusing little touch in the indefinite allusion to "a man,"
who with his un-named family, had "considered" that he had seen a stone
fall. The "man" was the Rev. W. Carus-Wilson, who was well-known in his
day.

The next instance was reported by W.B. Tripp, F.R.M.S.--that, during a
thunderstorm, a farmer had seen the ground in front of him plowed up by
something that was luminous.

Dug.

Bronze ax.

My own notion is that an expedition to the North Pole could not be so
urgent as that representative scientists should have gone to that farmer
and there spent a summer studying this one reported occurrence. As it
is--un-named farmer--somewhere--no date. The thing must stay damned.

Another specimen for our museum is a comment in _Nature_ upon these
objects: that they are "of an amusing character, thus clearly showing
that they were of terrestrial, and not a celestial, character." Just why
celestiality, or that of it which, too, is only of Intermediateness
should not be quite as amusing as terrestriality is beyond our reasoning
powers, which we have agreed are not ordinary. Of course there is
nothing amusing about wedges and spheres at all--or Archimedes and
Euclid are humorists. It is that they were described derisively. If
you'd like a little specimen of the standardization of orthodox
opinion--

_Amer. Met. Jour._, 4-589:

"They are of an amusing character, thus clearly showing that they were
of a terrestrial and no