red, and having upon it a "fine nap." Upon removing this
covering, a buff-colored, pulpy substance of the consistency of
soft-soap, was found--"of an offensive, suffocating smell."

A few minutes of exposure to the air changed the buff color to "a livid
color resembling venous blood." It absorbed moisture quickly from the
air and liquefied. For some of the chemic reactions, see the _Journal_.

There's another lost quasi-soul of a datum that seems to me to belong
here:

London _Times_, April 19, 1836:

Fall of fish that had occurred in the neighborhood of Allahabad, India.
It is said that the fish were of the chalwa species, about a span in
length and a seer in weight--you know.

They were dead and dry.

Or they had been such a long time out of water that we can't accept that
they had been scooped out of a pond, by a whirlwind--even though they
were so definitely identified as of a known local species--

Or they were not fish at all.

I incline, myself, to the acceptance that they were not fish, but
slender, fish-shaped objects of the same substance as that which fell at
Amherst--it is said that, whatever they were, they could not be eaten:
that "in the pan, they turned to blood."

For details of this story see the _Journal of the Asiatic Society of
Bengal_, 1834-307. May 16 or 17, 1834, is the date given in the
_Journal_.

In the _American Journal of Science_, 1-25-362, occurs the inevitable
damnation of the Amherst object:

Prof. Edward Hitchcock went to live in Amherst. He says that years
later, another object, like the one said to have fallen in 1819, had
been found at "nearly the same place." Prof. Hitchcock was invited by
Prof. Graves to examine it. Exactly like the first one. Corresponded in
size and color and consistency. The chemic reactions were the same.

Prof. Hitchcock recognized it in a moment.

It was a gelatinous fungus.

He did not satisfy himself as to just the exact species it belonged to,
but he predicted that similar fungi might spring up within twenty-four
hours--

But, before evening, two others sprang up.

Or we've arrived at one of the oldest of the exclusionists'
conventions--or nostoc. We shall have many data of gelatinous substance
said to have fallen from the sky: almost always the exclusionists argue
that it was only nostoc, an Alga, or, in some respects, a fungous
growth. The rival convention is "spawn of frogs or of fishes." These two
conventions have made a strong com