A super-dragnet?
That something was trawling overhead?
The birds of Baton Rouge.
Mr. Gosling wrote that the item of chains, or suggestion of a basket
that had been attached, had originated with Mr. Bassett, who had not
seen the object. Mr. Gosling mentioned a balloon that had escaped from
Paris in July. He tells of a balloon that fell in Chicago, September 17,
or three weeks later than the Bermuda object.
It's one incredibility against another, with disregards and convictions
governed by whichever of the two Dominants looms stronger in each
reader's mind. That he can't think for himself any more than I can is
understood.
My own correlates:
I think that we're fished for. It may be that we're highly esteemed by
super-epicures somewhere. It makes me more cheerful when I think that we
may be of some use after all. I think that dragnets have often come down
and have been mistaken for whirlwinds and waterspouts. Some accounts of
seeming structure in whirlwinds and waterspouts are astonishing. And I
have data that, in this book, I can't take up at all--mysterious
disappearances. I think we're fished for. But this is a little
expression on the side: relates to trespassers; has nothing to do with
the subject that I shall take up at some other time--or our use to some
other mode of seeming that has a legal right to us.
_Nature_, 33-137:
"Our Paris correspondent writes that in relation to the balloon which is
said to have been seen over Bermuda, in September, no ascent took place
in France which can account for it."
Last of August: not September. In the London _Times_ there is no mention
of balloon ascents in Great Britain, in the summer of 1885, but mention
of two ascents in France. Both balloons had escaped. In _L'Aeronaute_,
August, 1885, it is said that these balloons had been sent up from fetes
of the fourteenth of July--44 days before the observation at Bermuda.
The aeronauts were Gower and Eloy. Gower's balloon was found floating on
the ocean, but Eloy's balloon was not found. Upon the 17th of July it
was reported by a sea captain: still in the air; still inflated.
But this balloon of Eloy's was a small exhibition balloon, made for
short ascents from fetes and fair grounds. In _La Nature_, 1885-2-131,
it is said that it was a very small balloon, incapable of remaining long
in the air.
As to contemporaneous ballooning in the United States, I find only one
account: an ascent in Connecticut, July 29, 1885. Upon leaving this
balloon, the aeronauts had pulled the "rip cord," "turning it inside
out." (_New York Times_, Aug. 10, 1885.)
To the Intermediatist, the accusation of "anthropomorphism" is
meaningless. There is nothing in anything that is unique or positively
different. We'd be materialists were it not quite as rational to express
the material in terms of the immaterial as to express the immaterial in
terms of the material. Oneness of allness in quasiness. I will engage to
write the formula of any novel in psycho-chemic terms, or draw its
graph in psycho-mechanic terms: or write, in romantic terms, the
circumstances and sequences of any chemic or electric or magnetic
reaction: or express any historic event in algebraic terms--or see Boole
and Jevons for economic situations expressed algebraically.
I think of the Dominants as I think of persons--not meaning that they
are real persons--not meaning that we are real persons--
Or the Old Dominant and its jealousy, and its suppression of all things
and thoughts that endangered its supremacy. In reading discussions of
papers, by scientific societies, I have often noted how, when they
approached forbidden--or irreconcilable--subjects, the discussions were
thrown into confusion and ramification. It's as if scientific
discussions have often been led astray--as if purposefully--as if by
something directive, hovering over them. Of course I mean only the
Spirit of all Development. Just so, in any embryo, cells that would tend
to vary from the appearances of their era are compelled to correlate.
In _Nature_, 90-169, Charles Tilden Smith writes that, at Chisbury,
Wiltshire, England, April 8, 1912, he saw something in the sky--
"--unlike anything that I had ever seen before."
"Although I have studied the skies for many years, I have never seen
anything like it."
He saw two stationary dark patches upon clouds.
The extraordinary part:
They were stationary upon clouds that were rapidly moving.
They were fan-shaped--or triangular--and varied in size, but kept the
same position upon different clouds as cloud after cloud came along. For
more than half an hour Mr. Smith watched these dark patches--
His impression as to the one that appeared first:
That it was "really a heavy shadow cast upon a thin veil of clouds by
some unseen object away in the west, which was intercepting the sun's
rays."
Upon page 244, of this volume of _Nature_, is a letter from another
correspondent, to the effect that similar shadows are cast by mountains
upon clouds, and that no doubt Mr. Smith was right in attributing the
appearance to "some unseen object, which was intercepting the sun's
rays." But the Old Dominant that was a jealous Dominant, and the wrath
of the Old Dominant against such an irreconcilability as large, opaque
objects in the sky, casting down shadows upon clouds. Still the
Dominants are suave very often, or are not absolute gods, and the way
attention was led away from this subject is an interesting study in
quasi-divine bamboozlement. Upon page 268, Charles J.P. Cave, the
meteorologist, writes that, upon April 5 and 8, at Ditcham Park,
Petersfield, he had observed a similar appearance, while watching some
pilot balloons--but he describes something not in the least like a
shadow on clouds, but a stationary cloud--the inference seems to be that
the shadows at Chisbury may have been shadows of pilot balloons. Upon
page 322, another correspondent writes upon shadows cast by mountains;
upon page 348 someone else carries on the divergence by discussing this
third letter: then someone takes up the third letter mathematically; and
then there is a correction of error in this mathematic demonstration--I
think it looks very much like what I think it looks like.
But the mystery here:
That the dark patches at Chisbury could not have been cast by stationary
pilot balloons that were to the west, or that were between clouds and
the setting sun. If, to the west of Chisbury, a stationary object were
high in the air, intercepting the sun's rays, the shadow of the
stationary object would not have been stationary, but would have moved
higher and higher with the setting of the sun.
I have to think of something that is in accord with no other data
whatsoever:
A luminous body--not the sun--in the sky--but, because of some unknown
principle or atmospheric condition, its light extended down only about
to the clouds; that from it were suspended two triangular objects, like
the object that was seen in Bermuda; that it was this light that fell
short of the earth that these objects intercepted; that the objects were
drawn up and lowered from something overhead, so that, in its light,
their shadows changed size.
If my grope seem to have no grasp in it, and, if a stationary balloon
will, in half an hour, not cast a stationary shadow from the setting
sun, we have to think of two triangular objects that accurately
maintained positions in a line between sun and clouds, and at the same
time approached and receded from clouds. Whatever it may have been, it's
enough to make the devout make the sign of the crucible, or whatever the
devotees of the Old Dominant do in the presence of a new correlate.
Vast, black thing poised like a crow over the moon.
It is our acceptance that these two shadows of Chisbury looked, from the
moon, like vast things, black as crows, poised over the earth. It is our
acceptance that two triangular luminosities and then two triangular
patches, like vast black things, poised like crows over the moon, and,
like the triangularities at Chisbury, have been seen upon, or over, the
moon:
_Scientific American_, 46-49:
Two triangular, luminous appearances reported by several observers in
Lebanon, Conn., evening of July 3, 1882, on the moon's upper limb. They
disappeared, and two dark triangular appearances that looked like
notches were seen three minutes later upon the lower limb. They
approached each other, met and instantly disappeared.
The merger here is notches that have at times been seen upon the moon's
limb: thought to be cross sections of craters (_Monthly Notices,
R.A.S._, 37-432). But these appearances of July 3, 1882, were vast upon
the moon--"seemed to be cutting off or obliterating nearly a quarter of
its surface."
Something else that may have looked like a vast black crow poised over
this earth from the moon:
_Monthly Weather Review_, 41-599:
Description of a shadow in the sky, of some unseen body, April 8, 1913,
Fort Worth, Texas--supposed to have been cast by an unseen cloud--this
patch of shade moved with the declining sun.
_Rept. Brit. Assoc._, 1854-410:
Account by two observers of a faint but distinctly triangular object,
visible for six nights in the sky. It was observed from two stations
that were not far apart. But the parallax was considerable. Whatever it
was, it was, acceptably, relatively close to this earth.
I should say that relatively to phenomena of light we are in confusion
as great as some of the discords that orthodoxy is in relatively to
light. Broadly and intermediatistically, our position is:
That light is not really and necessarily light--any more than is
anything else really and necessarily anything--but an interpretation of
a mode of force, as I suppose we have to call it, as light. At sea
level, the earth's atmosphere interprets sunlight as red or orange or
yellow. High up on mountains the sun is blue. Very high up on mountains
the zenith is black. Or it is orthodoxy to say that in inter-planetary
space, where there is no air, there is no light. So then the sun and
comets are black, but this earth's atmosphere, or, rather, dust
particles in it, interpret radiations from these black objects as light.
We look up at the moon.
The jet-black moon is so silvery white.
I have about fifty notes indicating that the moon has atmosphere:
nevertheless most astronomers hold out that the moon has no atmosphere.
They have to: the theory of eclipses would not work out otherwise. So,
arguing in conventional terms, the moon is black. Rather
astonishing--explorers upon the moon--stumbling and groping in intense
darkness--with telescopes powerful enough, we could see them stumbling
and groping in brilliant light.
Or, just because of familiarity, it is not now obvious to us how the
preposterousnesses of the old system must have seemed to the correlates
of the system preceding it.
Ye jet-black silvery moon.
Altogether, then, it may be conceivable that there are phenomena of
force that are interpretable as light as far down as the clouds, but not
in denser strata of air, or just the opposite of familiar
interpretations.
I now have some notes upon an occurrence that suggests a force not
interpreted by air as light, but interpreted, or reflected by the ground
as light. I think of something that, for a week, was suspended over
London: of an emanation that was not interpreted as light until it
reached the ground.
_Lancet_, June 1, 1867:
That every night for a week, a light had appeared in Woburn Square,
London, upon the grass of a small park, enclosed by railings. Crowds
gathering--police called out "for the special service of maintaining
order and making the populace move on." The Editor of the _Lancet_ went
to the Square. He says that he saw nothing but a patch of light falling
upon an arbor at the northeast corner of the enclosure. Seems to me that
that was interesting enough.
In this Editor we have a companion for Mr. Symons and Dr. Gray. He
suggests that the light came from a street lamp--does not say that he
could trace it to any such origin himself--but recommends that the
police investigate neighboring street lamps.
I'd not say that such a commonplace as light from a street lamp would
not attract and excite and deceive great crowds for a week--but I do
accept that any cop who was called upon for extra work would have needed
nobody's suggestion to settle that point the very first thing.
Or that something in the sky hung suspended over a London Square for a
week.
21
_Knowledge_, Dec. 28, 1883:
"Seeing so many meteorological phenomena in your excellent paper,
_Knowledge_, I am tempted to ask for an explanation of the following,
which I saw when on board the British India Company's steamer _Patna_,
while on a voyage up the Persian Gulf. In May, 1880, on a dark night,
about 11:30 P.M., there suddenly appeared on each side of the ship an
enormous luminous wheel, whirling around, the spokes of which seemed to
brush the ship along. The spokes would be 200 or 300 yards long, and
resembled the birch rods of the dames' schools. Each wheel contained
about sixteen spokes, and, although the wheels must have been some 500
or 600 yards in diameter, the spokes could be distinctly seen all the
way round. The phosphorescent gleam seemed to glide along flat on the
surface of the sea, no light being visible in the air above the water.
The appearance of the spokes could be almost exactly represented by
standing in a boat and flashing a bull's eye lantern horizontally along
the surface of the water, round and round. I may mention that the
phenomenon was also seen by Captain Avern, of the _Patna_, and Mr.
Manning, third officer.
"Lee Fore Brace.
"P.S.--The wheels advanced along with the ship for about twenty
minutes.--L.F.B."
_Knowledge_, Jan. 11, 1884:
Letter from "A. Mc. D.":
That "Lee Fore Brace," "who sees 'so many meteorological phenomena in
your excellent paper,' should have signed himself 'The Modern Ezekiel,'
for his vision of wheels is quite as wonderful as the prophet's." The
writer then takes up the measurements that were given, and calculates a
velocity at the circumference of a wheel, of about 166 yards per second,
apparently considering that especially incredible. He then says: "From
the nom de plume he assumes, it might be inferred that your
correspondent is in the habit of 'sailing close to the wind.'" He asks
permission to suggest an explanation of his own. It is that before 11:30
P.M. there had been numerous accidents to the "main brace," and that it
had required splicing so often that almost any ray of light would have
taken on a rotary motion.
In _Knowledge_, Jan. 25, 1884, Mr. "Brace" answers and signs himself
"J.W. Robertson":
"I don't suppose A. Mc. D. means any harm, but I do think it's rather
unjust to say a man is drunk because he sees something out of the
common. If there's one thing I pride myself upon, it's being able to say
that never in my life have I indulged in anything stronger than water."
From this curiosity of pride, he goes on to say that he had not intended
to be exact, but to give his impressions of dimensions and velocity. He
ends amiably: "However, 'no offense taken, where I suppose none is
meant.'"
To this letter Mr. Proctor adds a note, apologizing for the publication
of "A. Mc. D's." letter, which had come about by a misunderstood
instruction. Then Mr. Proctor wrote disagreeable letters, himself,
about other persons--what else would you expect in a quasi-existence?
The obvious explanation of this phenomenon is that, under the surface of
the sea, in the Persian Gulf, was a vast luminous wheel: that it was the
light from its submerged spokes that Mr. Robertson saw, shining upward.
It seems clear that this light did shine upward from origin below the
surface of the sea. But at first it is not so clear how vast luminous
wheels, each the size of a village, ever got under the surface of the
Persian Gulf: also there may be some misunderstanding as to what they
were doing there.