Genre:

Poetry, Drollery

Subjects:

Cosmology, Heat, Spontaneous Generation, Controversy

    Response to William Thomson's presidential address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, a version of which was published as Thomson 1872. Claims, in opposition to Thomson, that a meteoric stone 'with lichen overgrown' would have fallen to the earth with any life contained in it 'burnt off'. Supposing Thomson to be correct, imagines 'showers of fish and frogs' and a rain of 'cats and dogs'. Says 'pooh' to Thomson, and considers the idea of aerolites containing mould 'too hot to hold'.