He says that, in his opinion, lightning had flashed down the chimney, and had fused some of the brick of it.
He does think it remarkable that the lightning did not then scatter the contents of the grate, which were disturbed only as if a heavy body had fallen. If we admit that climbing up the chimney to find out is too rigorous a requirement for a man who may have been large, dignified and subject to expansions, the only unreasonableness we find in what he says—as judged by our more modern outlook, is:
"I suppose that no one would suggest that bricks are manufactured in the atmosphere."
Sounds a little unreasonable to us, because it is so of the positivistic spirit of former times, when it was not so obvious that the highest incredibility and laughability must merge away with the "proper"—as the Sci. Am. Sup. would say. The preposterous is always interpretable in terms of the "proper," with which it must be continuous—or—clay-like masses such as have fallen from the sky—tremendous heat generated by their velocity—they bake—bricks.
We begin to suspect that Mr. Symons exhausted himself at Notting Hill. It's a warning to efficiency-fanatics.
Then the instance of three lumps of earthy matter, found upon a well-frequented path, after a thunderstorm, at Reading, July 3, 1883. There are so many records of the fall of earthy matter from the sky that it would seem almost uncanny to find resistance here, were we not so accustomed to the uncompromising stands of orthodoxy—which, in our metaphysics, represent good, as attempts, but evil in their insufficiency. If I thought it necessary, I'd list one hundred and fifty instances of earthy matter said to have fallen from the sky. It is his antagonism to atmospheric disturbance associated with the fall of things from the sky that blinds and hypnotizes a Mr. Symons here. This especial Mr. Symons rejects the Reading substance because it was not "of true meteoritic material." It's uncanny—or it's not uncanny at all, but universal—if you don't take something for a standard of opinion, you can't have any opinion at all: but, if you do take a standard, in some of its applications it must be preposterous. The carbonaceous meteorites, which are unquestioned—though avoided, as we have seen—by orthodoxy, are more glaringly of untrue meteoritic material than was this substance of Reading. Mr. Symons says that these three lumps were upon the ground "in the first place."
Whether these data are worth preserving or not, I think that the appeal that this especial Mr. Symons makes is worthy of a place in the museum we're writing. He argues against belief in all external origins "for our credit as Englishmen." He is a patriot, but I think that these foreigners had a small chance "in the first place" for hospitality from him.
Then comes a "small lump of iron (two inches in diameter)" said to have fallen, during a thunderstorm, at Brixton, Aug. 17, 1887. Mr. Symons says: "At present I cannot trace it."
He was at his best at Notting Hill: there's been a marked falling off in his later manner:
In the London Times, Feb. 1, 1888, it is said that a roundish object of iron had been found, "after a violent thunderstorm," in a garden at Brixton, Aug. 17, 1887. It was analyzed by a chemist, who could not identify it as true meteoritic material. Whether a product of workmanship like human workmanship or not, this object is described as an oblate spheroid, about two inches across its major diameter. The chemist's name and address are given: Mr. J. James Morgan: Ebbw Vale.