The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort-pages

Page 164 of 376

Page 164 of 376
The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort-pages

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[p. 133] head." the stone. Pretty little thing; not at all frowsy; rather damnable. London Times, Dec. 24, 1851: That Hiram De Witt, of Springfield, Mass., returning from California, had brought with him a piece of auriferous quartz about the size of a man's fist. It was accidentally dropped--split open--nail in it. There was a cut-iron nail, size of a six-penny nail, slightly corroded. "It was entirely straight and had a perfect Or--California--ages ago, when auriferous quartz was forming--super-carpenter, million of miles or so up in the air--drops a nail. To one not an intermediatist, it would seem incredible that this datum, not only of the damned, but of the lowest of the damned, or of the journalistic caste of the accursed, could merge away with something else damned only by disregard, and backed by what is called "highest scientific authority" Communication by Sir David Brewster (Rept. Brit. Assoc., 1845-51) That a nail had been found in a block of stone from Kingoodie Quarry, North Britain. The block in which the nail was found was nine inches thick, but as to what part of the quarry it had come from, there is no evidence--except that it could not have been from the surface. The quarry had been worked about twenty years. It consisted of alternate layers of hard stone and a substance called "till." The point of the nail, quite eaten with rust, projected into some "till," upon the surface of the block of stone. The rest of the nail lay upon the surface of the stone to within an inch of the head--that inch of it was embedded in