or savage who thinks he is not to be classed with other peasants or savages, I am not very much impressed with what natives think. It would be hard to tell why. If the word of a Lord Kelvin carries no more weight, upon scientific subjects, than the word of a Sitting Bull, unless it be in agreement with conventional opinion—I think it must be because savages have bad table manners. However, my snobbishness, in this respect, loosens up somewhat before very widespread belief by savages and peasants. And the notion of "thunderstones" is as wide as geography itself.
The natives of Burmah, China, Japan, according to Blinkenberg (Thunder Weapons, p. 100)—not, of course, that Blinkenberg accepts one word of it—think that carved stone objects have fallen from the sky, because they think they have seen such objects fall from the sky. Such objects are called "thunderbolts" in these countries. They are called "thunderstones" in Moravia, Holland, Belgium, France, Cambodia, Sumatra, and Siberia. They're called "storm stones" in Lausitz; "sky arrows" in Slavonia; "thunder axes" in England and Scotland; "lightning stones" in Spain and Portugal; "sky axes" in Greece; "lightning flashes" in Brazil; "thunder teeth" in Amboina.
The belief is as widespread as is belief in ghosts and witches, which only the superstitious deny to-day.
As to beliefs by North American Indians, Tyler gives a list of references (Primitive Culture, 2-237). As to South American Indians—"Certain stone hatchets are said to have fallen from the heavens. (Jour. Amer. Folk Lore, 17-203.)
If you, too, revolt against coincidence after coincidence after coincidence, but find our interpretation of "thunderstones" just a little too strong or rich for digestion, we recommend the explanation of one, Tallius, written in 1649:
"The naturalists say they are generated in the sky by fulgurous exhalation conglobed in a cloud by the circumfused humor."
Of course the paper in the Cornhill Magazine was written with no intention of trying really to investigate this subject, but to deride the notion that worked-stone objects have ever fallen from the sky. A writer in the Amer. Jour. Sci., 1-21-325, read this paper and thinks it remarkable "that any man of ordinary reasoning powers should write a paper to prove that thunderbolts do not exist."
I confess that we're a little flattered by that.
Over and over:
