"By the damned, I mean the excluded," explained the author; and by the excluded he means certain phenomena which Science has not applied itself to account for. These are such as black rains, red rains, strange substances, animal, vegetable and mineral, falling upon the earth, bodies of planetary size "floating or navigating through inter-planetary space," and so on. These data are surprisingly numerous, and their compilation represents research of a particular difficult kind, as the records of these singular occurrences are principally to be found in newspapers and magazines, covering a period of many years. To read of them is to be inspired with an interest which has no need of the book's sensational title; nor is it increased by the author's quasi-scientific speculations in which he presents in a staccato style that soon produces the wearying effect of a series of explosions.