Substance that fell, Feb. 17, 18, 19, 1841, at Genoa, Italy, said to have been resinous; said by Arago (Œuvres, 12-469) to have been bituminous matter and sand.
Fall—during a thunderstorm—July, 1681, near Cape Cod, upon the deck of an English vessel, the Albemarle, of "burning, bituminous matter" (Edin. New Phil. Jour., 26-86); a fall, at Christiania, Norway, June 13, 1822, of bituminous matter, listed by Greg as doubtful; fall of bituminous matter, in Germany, March 8, 1798, listed by Greg. Lockyer (The Meteoric Hypothesis, p. 24) says that the substance that fell at the Cape of Good Hope, Oct. 13, 1838—about five cubic feet of it: substance so soft that it was cuttable with a knife—"after being experimented upon, it left a residue, which gave out a very bituminous smell."
And this inclusion of Lockyer's—so far as findable in all books that I have read—is, in books, about as close as we can get to our desideratum—that coal has fallen from the sky. Dr. Farrington, except with a brief mention, ignores the whole subject of the fall of carbonaceous matter from the sky. Proctor, in all of his books that I have read—is, in books, about as close as we can get to the admission that carbonaceous matter has been found in meteorites "in very minute quantities"—or my own suspicion is that it is possible to damn something else only by losing one's own soul—quasi-soul, of course.
Sci. Amer., 35-120:
That the substance that fell at the Cape of Good Hope "resembled a piece of anthracite coal more than anything else."
It's a mistake, I think: the resemblance is to bituminous coal—but it is from the periodicals that we must get our data. To the writers of books upon meteorites, it would be as wicked—by which we mean departure from the characters of an established species—quasi-established, of course—to say that coal has fallen from the sky, as would be, to something in a barnyard, a temptation that it climb a tree and catch a bird. Domestic things in a barnyard: and how wild things from forests outside seem to them. Or the homeopathist—but we shall shovel data of coal.
And, if over and over, we shall learn of masses of soft coal that have fallen upon this earth, if in no instance has it been asserted that the masses did not fall, but were upon the ground in the first place; if we have many instances, this time we turn down good and hard the mechanical reflex that these masses were carried from one place to another in whirlwinds, because we find it too difficult to accept that whirlwinds could so select, or so specialize in a peculiar substance. Among writers of books, the only one I know of who makes more than brief mention is Sir Robert Ball. He represents a still more antique orthodoxy, or is an exclusionist of the old type, still holding out against even meteorites. He cites several falls of carbonaceous matter, but with disregards that make for reasonableness that earthy matter may have been caught up by whirlwinds and flung down somewhere else. If he had given a full list, he would be called upon to explain the special affinity of whirlwinds for a special kind of coal. He does not give a full list. We shall have all that's findable, and we shall see that against this disease we're writing, the homeopathist's prescription availeth not. Another exclusionist was Prof. Lawrence Smith. His psycho-tropism was to respond to all reports of carbonaceous matter falling from the sky, by saying that this damned matter had been deposited upon things of the chosen by impact with this earth. Most of our data antedate him, or were contemporaneous with him, or were as accessible to him as to us. In his attempted positivism it is simply—and beautifully—disregarded that, according to Berthelot, Berzelius, Cloez, Wohler and others these masses are not merely coated with carbonaceous matter, but are carbonaceous throughout, or are permeated throughout. How anyone could so resolutely and dogmatically and beautifully and blindly hold out would puzzle us were it not for our acceptance that only to think is to exclude and include; and to exclude some things that have as much right to come in as have the included—that to have an opinion upon any subject is to be a Lawrence Smith—because there is no definite subject.
Dr. Walter Flight (Eclectic Magazine, 89-71) says, of the substance that fell near Alais, France, March 15, 1806, that it "emits a faint bituminous substance" when heated, according to the observations of Bergelius and a commission appointed by the French Academy. This time we have not the reluctances expressed in such words as "like" and "resembling." We are told that this substance is "an earthy kind of coal."
As to "minute quantities" we are told that the substance that fell at the Cape of Good Hope has in it a little more than a quarter of organic matter, which, in alcohol, gives the familiar reaction of yellow, resinous matter. Other instances given by Dr. Flight are:
Carbonaceous matter that fell in 1840, in Tennessee; Cranbourne, Australia, 1861; Montauban, France, May 14, 1864 (twenty masses, some of them as large as a human head, of a substance that "resembled a dull-colored earthy lignite"); Goalpara, India, about 1867 (about 8 per cent of a hydrocarbon); at Ornans, France, July 11, 1868; substance with "an organic, combustible ingredient," at Hessle, Sweden, Jan. 1, 1860.