Lo! Read Online Free PDF

opinion of experimental science than I have of everything else, but I have been an experimenter, myself, and have impressions of the servile politeness of experiments. They have such an obliging, or ingratiating, way that there’s no trusting the flatterers. In the Redruth (Cornwall, England) Independent, Aug. 13, and following issues, 1886, correspondents tell of a shower of snails near Redruth. There were experiments. One correspondent, who believed that the creatures were sea snails, put some in salt water. They lived. Another correspondent, who believed that they were not sea snails, put some in salt water. They died.
    I do not know how to find out anything new without being offensive. To the ignorant, all things are pure: all knowledge is, or implies, the degradation of something. One who learns of metabolism, looks at a Venus, and realizes she’s partly rotten. However, she smiles at him, and he renews his ignorance. All things in the sky are pure to those who have no telescopes. But spots on the sun, and lumps on the planets—and, being a person of learning, or, rather, erudition, myself, I’ve got to besmirch something, or nobody will believe I am—and I replace the pure, blue sky with the wormy heavens—
    London Evening Standard, Jan. 3, 1924—red objects falling with snow at Halmstead, Sweden.
    They were red worms, from one to four inches in length. Thousands of them streaking down with the snowflakes—red ribbons in a shower of confetti—a carnival scene that boosts my discovery that meteorology is a more picturesque science than most persons, including meteorologists, have suspected—and I fear me that my attempt to besmirch has not been successful, because the worms of heaven seem to be a jolly lot. However, I cheer up at thought of chances to come, because largely I shall treat of human nature.
    But how am I to know whether these things fell from the sky in Sweden, or were imagined in Sweden?
    I shall be scientific about it. Said Sir Isaac Newton—or virtually said he—“If there is no change in the direction of a moving body, the direction of a moving body is not changed. But,” continued he, “if something be changed, it is changed as much as it is changed.” So red worms fell from the sky, in Sweden, because from the sky, in Sweden, red worms fell. How do geologists determine the age of rocks? By the fossils in them. And how do they determine the age of the fossils? By the rocks they’re in. Having started with the logic of Euclid, I go on with the wisdom of a Newton.
    Near Orleans Daily Picayune, Feb. 4, 1892—enormous numbers of unknown brown worms that had fallen from the sky, near Clifton, Indiana. San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 14, 1892—myriads of unknown scarlet worms—somewhere in Massachusetts—not seen to fall from the sky, but found, covering several acres, after a snowstorm.
    It is as if with intelligence, or with the equivalence of intelligence, something has specialized upon transporting, or distributing, immature and larval forms of life. If the gods send worms, that would be kind if we were robins.
    In Insect Life, 1892, p. 335, the Editor, Prof. C.V. Riley, tells of four other mysterious appearances of worms, early in the year 1892. Some of the specimens he could not definitely identify. It is said that at Lancaster, Pa., people in a snowstorm caught falling worms on their umbrellas.
    The wise men of our tribes have tried to find God in a poem, or in whatever they think they mean by a moral sense in people, or in inscriptions in a book of stone, which by one of the strangest freaks of omission is not now upon exhibition in from fifteen to twenty synagogues in Asia Minor, and all up and down Italy—
    Crabs and periwinkles—
    Ordinary theologians have overlooked crabs and periwinkles—
    Or mystery versus the fishmonger.
    Upon May 28, 1881, near the city of Worcester, England, a fishmonger, with a procession of carts, loaded with several kinds of crabs and periwinkles, and