The Book of the Damned

It seems to me that the exclusionists are still more emphatically conservators. It is not so much that they are inimical to all data of externally derived substances that fall upon this earth, as that they are inimical to all data discordant with a system that does not include such phenomena—

Or the spirit or hope or ambition of the cosmos, which we call attempted positivism: not to find out the new; not to add to what is called knowledge, but to systematize.

Scientific American Supplement, 2-426:

That the substance reported from Kentucky had been examined by Leopold Brandeis.

"At last we have a proper explanation of this much talked of phenomenon."

"It has been comparatively easy to identify the substance and to fix its status. The Kentucky 'wonder' is no more or less than nostoc."

Or that it had not fallen; that it had been upon the ground in the first place, and had swollen in rain, and, attracting attention by greatly increased volume, had been supposed by unscientific observers to have fallen in rain—

What rain, I don't know.

Also it is spoken of as "dried" several times. That's one of the most important of the details.

But the relief of outraged propriety, expressed in the Supplement, is amusing to some of us, who, I fear, may be a little improper at times. Very spirit of the Salvation Army, when some third-rate scientist comes out with an explanation of the vermiform appendix or the os coccygis that would have been acceptable to Moses. To give completeness to "the proper explanation," it is said that Mr. Brandeis had identified the substance as "flesh-colored" nostoc.

Prof. Lawrence Smith, of Kentucky, one of the most resolute of the exclusionists:

New York Times, March 12, 1876:

That the substance had been examined and analyzed by Prof. Smith, according to whom it gave every indication of being the "dried" spawn of some reptile, "doubtless of the frog"—or up from

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