g
were described as crystals of pyrites, or sulphate of iron. I had no
notion of metallic objects that might have been shaped or molded by
means other than crystallization, until I came to Arago's account of
these occurrences (_OEuvres_, 11-644). Here the analysis gives 70 per
cent. red oxide of iron, and sulphur and loss by ignition 5 per cent. It
seems to me acceptable that iron with considerably less than 5 per cent.
sulphur in it is not iron pyrites--then little, rusty iron objects,
shaped by some other means, have fallen, four months apart, at the same
place. M. Arago expresses astonishment at this phenomenon of recurrence
so familiar to us.

Altogether, I find opening before us, vistas of heresies to which I, for
one, must shut my eyes. I have always been in sympathy with the
dogmatists and exclusionists: that is plain in our opening lines: that
to seem to be is falsely and arbitrarily and dogmatically to exclude. It
is only that exclusionists who are good in the nineteenth century are
evil in the twentieth century. Constantly we feel a merging away into
infinitude; but that this book shall approximate to form, or that our
data shall approximate to organization, or that we shall approximate to
intelligibility, we have to call ourselves back constantly from
wandering off into infinitude. The thing that we do, however, is to make
our own outline, or the difference between what we include and what we
exclude, vague.

The crux here, and the limit beyond which we may not go--very much--is:

Acceptance that there is a region that we call the Super-Sargasso
Sea--not yet fully accepted, but a provisional position that has
received a great deal of support--

But is it a part of this earth, and does it revolve with and over this
earth--

Or does it flatly overlie this earth, not revolving with and over this
earth--

That this earth does not revolve, and is not round, or roundish, at all,
but is continuous with the rest of its system, so that, if one could
break away from the traditions of the geographers, one might walk and
walk, and come to Mars, and then find Mars continuous with Jupiter?

I suppose some day such queries will sound absurd--the thing will be so
obvious--

Because it is very difficult for me to conceive of little metallic
objects hanging precisely over a small town in Russia, for four months,
if revolving, unattached, with a revolving earth--

It may be that something aimed at that town, and the