Not absolutely, hypocritically, I think it's pathetic, myself. If anyone
should doubt the sincerity of Leverrier, in this matter, we note,
whether it has meaning or not, that a few months later he died.
I think we'll take up Monstrator, though there's so much to this subject
that we'll have to come back.
According to the _Annual Register_, 9-120, upon the 9th of August, 1762,
M. de Rostan, of Basle, France, was taking altitudes of the sun, at
Lausanne. He saw a vast, spindle-shaped body, about three of the sun's
digits in breadth and nine in length, advancing slowly across the disk
of the sun, or "at no more than half the velocity with which the
ordinary solar spots move." It did not disappear until the 7th of
September, when it reached the sun's limb. Because of the spindle-like
form, I incline to think of a super-Zeppelin, but another observation,
which seems to indicate that it was a world, is that, though it was
opaque, and "eclipsed the sun," it had around it a kind of
nebulosity--or atmosphere? A penumbra would ordinarily be a datum of a
sun spot, but there are observations that indicate that this object was
at a considerable distance from the sun:
It is recorded that another observer, at Paris, watching the sun, at
this time, had not seen this object:
But that M. Croste, at Sole, about forty-five German leagues northward
from Lausanne, had seen it, describing the same spindle-form, but
disagreeing a little as to breadth. Then comes the important point: that
he and M. de Rostan did not see it upon the same part of the sun. This,
then, is parallax, and, compounded with invisibility at Paris, is great
parallax--or that, in the course of a month, in the summer of 1762, a
large, opaque, spindle-shaped body traversed the disk of the sun, but at
a great distance from the sun. The writer in the _Register_ says: "In a
word, we know of nothing to have recourse to, in the heavens, by which
to explain this phenomenon." I suppose he was not a hopeless addict to
explaining. Extraordinary--we fear he must have been a man of loose
habits in some other respects.