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[p. 55] | suppose one thinks--but grain in bags never has fallen-- Object of Amherst--its covering like "milled cloth"-- Or barrels of corn lost from a vessel would not sink--but a host of them clashing together, after a wreck-- they burst open; the corn sinks, or does when saturated; the barrel staves float longer-- If there be not an overhead traffic in commodities similar to our own commodities carried over this earth's oceans--I'm not the deep-sea fish | think | am. | have no data other than the mere suggestion of the Amherst object of bags or barrels, but my notion is that bags and barrels from a wreck on one of this earth's oceans, would, by the time they reached the bottom, no longer be recognizable as bags or barrels; that, if we can have data of the fall of fibrous material that may have been cloth or paper or wood, we shall be satisfactory and grotesque enough. Proc. Roy. Irish Acad., 1-379: "In the year 1686, some workmen, who had been fetching water from a pond, seven German miles from Memel, on returning to their work after dinner (during which there had been a snowstorm) found the flat ground around the pond covered with a coal-black, leafy mass; and a person who lived near said he had seen it fall like flakes with the snow." Some of these flake-like formations were as large as a table-top. "The mass was damp and smelt disagreeably, like rotten seaweed, but, when dried, the smell went off." "It tore fibrously, like paper."