PART II (continued 4)

Oct. 10, 1916—a reddish shadow that spread over part of the lunar crater Plato; reported from the Observatory of Florence, Italy (Sci. Amer., 121-181).

Nov. 25, 1916—about twenty-five bright flashes, in rapid succession, in the sky of Cardiff, Wales, according to Arthur Mee (Eng. Mec., 104-239).

Col. Markwick writes, in the Jour. B. A. A., 27-188, that, at 6.10 P. M., April 15, 1917, he had seen, upon the sun, a solitary spot, different from all sunspots that he had seen in an experience of forty-three years. Col. Markwick had written to Mr. Maunder, of the Greenwich Observatory, and had been told that, in photographs taken of the sun upon this day, one at 11.17 and another at 11.20 o’clock, there was no sign of a sunspot.

July 4, 1917—an eclipse of the sun, and an extraordinary luminous object said to have been a meteor, in France (Bull. Soc. Astro, de France, 31-299). About 6.20 P. M., this day, there was an explosion over the town of Colby, Wisconsin, and a stone fell from the sky (Science, Sept. 14, 1917).

Aug. 29, 1917—a luminous object that was seen moving upon the moon (Bull. Soc. Astro. de France, 31-439).

Feb. 21, 1919—an intensely black line extending out from the lunar crater Lexall (Eng. Mec., 109-517).

Upon May 19, 1919, while Harry Hawker was at sea, untraceable messages, meaningless in the languages of this earth, were picked up by wireless, according to dispatches to the newspapers. They were interpreted as the letters K U J and V K A J.

In October, 1913, occurred something that may not be so very mysterious because of nearness to the sea. One supposes that if extra-mundane vessels have sometimes come close to this earth, then sailing away, terrestrial aëronauts may have occasionally left this earth, or may have been seized and carried away from this earth. Upon the morning of Oct. 13, 1913, Albert Jewel started to fly in his aëroplane from Hempstead Plains, Long Island, to Staten Island. The route that he expected to take was over Jamaica Bay, Brooklyn, Coney Island, and the Narrows. 232New York Times, Oct. 14, 1913—“That was the last seen or heard of him ... he has been as completely lost as if he had evaporated into air.” But as to the disappearance of Capt. James there are circumstances that do call for especial attention. New York Times, June 2, 1919—that Capt. Mansell R. James was lost somewhere in the Berkshire Hills, upon his flight from Boston to Atlantic City, or, rather, upon the part of his route between Lee, Mass., and Mitchel Field, Long Island. He had left Lee upon May 29th. Over the Berkshires, or in the Berkshires, he had disappeared. According to later dispatches, searching parties had “scoured” the Berkshires, without finding a trace of him. Upon June 4th, army planes arrived and searched systematically. There was general excitement, in this mystery of Capt. James. Rewards were offered; all subscribers of the Southern New England Telephone Company were enlisted in a quest for news of any kind; boy scouts turned out. Up to this date of writing there has been nothing but a confusion of newspaper dispatches: that two children had seen a plane, about thirteen miles north of Long Island Sound; that two men had seen a plane fall into the Hudson River, near Poughkeepsie; that, in a gully of Mount Riga, near Millerstown, N. Y., had been found the remains of a plane; that part of a plane had been washed ashore from Long Island Sound, near Branford. The latest interest in the subject that I know of was in the summer of 1921. A heavy object was known to be at the bottom of the Hudson River, near Poughkeepsie, and was thought to be Capt. James’ plane. It was dredged up and found to be a log.

For an extraordinary story of windows, in Newark, N. J., that were perforated by unfindable bullets, see New York Evening Telegram, Sept. 19, 1919, and the Newark Evening News. The occurrence is a counterpart of Mikkelsen’s experience.

The detonations at Reading were heard seven years apart. Here it is not quite seven years later. London Times, Sept. 26, 1919—that upon Sept. 25, a shock had been felt at Reading; that inquiries had led to information of no known explosion near Reading. In the Times, Oct. 14, Mr. H. L. Hawkins writes that the shock was “quite definitely an earthquake, but its origin was superficial” and that the shock “was transmitted through the 233earth more than through the air.” In the London Daily Chronicle, Sept. 27, Mr. Hawkins, having considered all suggestions that the shock was a subterranean earthquake, had written: “However, as the whole thing terminated in a bump and a big bang, without subsequent shaking of the ground, it points more to an explosion of a natural type up in the air than to a real earthquake.” And, in the London Daily Mail, Mr. Hawkins is quoted: that if the detonation were local, he would believe that it was an aërial explosion (“meteoric”); but, if it were widespread, it would be considered an earthquake. And in the whole series of the Reading phenomena, this violent detonation was most distinctly local to Reading.

Reading Observer, Sept. 27, 1919—“The most probable explanation of the occurrence is that there was an explosion somewhere near enough to affect the town.... Officials at the Greenwich Observatory were unable to throw any light on the matter, and said that their instruments showed no signs of earth-disturbance.”

It is said that the sound and shock were violent, and that, in the residential parts of Reading, the streets were crowded with persons discussing the occurrence.

There was a similar shock in Michigan, Nov. 27, 1919. In many cities, persons rushed from their homes, thinking that there had been an earthquake (New York Times, Nov. 28). But, in Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan, a “blinding glare” was seen in the sky. Our acceptance is that this occurrence is, upon a small scale, of the type of many catastrophes in Italy and South America, for instance, when just such “blinding glares” have been seen in the sky, data of which have been suppressed by conventional scientists, or data of which have not impressed conventional scientists.

English Mechanic, 110-257—J. W. Scholes, of Huddersfield, writes that, upon Dec. 19, 1919, he saw, near the lunar crater Littrow, “a very conspicuous black-ink mark.” Upon page 282, W. J. West, of Gosport, writes that he had seen the mark upon the 7th of December.

March 22, 1920—a light in the sky of this earth, and an illumination upon the moon (Eng. Mec., 111-142). That so close 234to this earth is the moon that illuminations known as “auroral” often affect both this earth and the moon.

July 20 and 21, and Sept. 13, 1920—dull rumbling sounds and quakes at Comrie, Perthshire (London Times, July 23 and Sept. 14, 1920).

According to a dispatch to the Los Angeles Times—clipping sent to me by Mr. L. A. Hopkins, of Chicago—thunder and lightning and heavy rain, at Portland, Oregon, July 21, 1920: objects falling from the sky; glistening, white fragments that looked like “bits of polished china.” “The explanation of the local Weather Bureau is that they may have been picked up by a whirlwind and carried to the district where they were found.” The objection to this standardized explanation is the homogeneousness of the falling objects. How can one conceive of winds raging over some region covered with the usual great diversity of loose objects and substances, having a liking for little white stones, sorting over maybe a million black ones, green ones, white ones, and red ones, to make the desired selection? One supposes that a storm brought to this earth fragments of a manufactured object, made of something like china, from some other world.

In the Literary Digest, Sept. 2, 1921, is published a letter from Carl G. Gowman, of Detroit, Michigan, upon the fall from the sky, in southwest China, Nov. 17 (1920?) of a substance that resembled blood. It fell upon three villages close together, and was said to have fallen somewhere else forty miles away. The quantity was great: in one of the villages, the substance “covered the ground completely.” Mr. Gowman accepts that this substance did fall from the sky, because it was found upon roofs as well as upon the ground. He rejects the conventional red-dust explanation, because the spots did not dissolve in several subsequent rains. He says that anything like pollen is out of the question, because at the time nothing was in bloom.

Nov. 23, 1920—a correspondent writes, to the English Mechanic, 112-214, that he saw a shaft of light projecting from the moon, or a spot so bright that it appeared to project, from the limb of the moon, in the region of Funerius.

About Jan. 1, 1921—several irregular, black objects that crossed 235the sun. To the Rev. William Ellison (Eng. Mec., 112-276) they looked like pieces of burnt paper.

July 25, 1921—a loud report, followed by a sharp tremor, and a rumbling sound, at Comrie (London Times, July 27, 1921).

July 31, 1921—a common indication of other lands from which come objects and substances to this earth—but our reluctance to bother with anything so ordinarily marvellous—

Because we have conceived of intenser times and furies of differences of potential between this earth and other worlds: torrents of dinosaurs, in broad volumes that were streaked with lesser animals, pouring from the sky, with a foam of tusks and fangs, enveloped in a bloody vapor that was falsely dramatized by the sun, with rainbow-mockery. Or, in terms of planetary emotions, such an outpouring was the serenade of some other world to this earth. If poetry is imagery, and, if a flow of images be solid poetry, such a recitation was in three-dimensional hyperbole that was probably seen, or overheard, and criticized in Mars, and condemned for its extravagance in Jupiter. Some other world, meeting this earth, ransacking his solid imagination and uttering her living metaphors: singing a flood of mastodons, purring her butterflies, bellowing an ardor of buffaloes. Sailing away—sneaking up close to the planet Venus, murmuring her antelopes, or arching his periphery and spitting horses at her—

Poor, degenerate times—nowadays something comes close to this earth and lisps little commonplaces to her—

July 31, 1921—a shower of little frogs that fell upon Anton Wagner’s farm, near Stirling, Conn. (New York Evening World, Aug. 1, 1921).

At sunset, Aug. 7, 1921, an unknown luminous object was seen, near the sun, at Mt. Hamilton, by an astronomer, Prof. Campbell, and by one of those who may some day go out and set foot upon regions that are supposed not to be: by an aviator, Capt. Rickenbacker. In the English Mechanic, 114-211, another character in these fluttering vistas of the opening of the coming drama of Extra-geography, Col. Markwick, a conventional astronomer and also a recorder of strange things, lists other observations upon this object, the earliest upon the 6th, by Dr. Emmert, 236of Detroit. In the English Mechanic, 114-241, H. P. Hollis, once upon a time deliciously “exact” and positive, says something, in commenting upon these observations, that looks like a little weakness in Exclusionism, because the old sureness is turning slightly shaky—“that there are more wonderful things in the sky than we suspect, or that it is easy to be self-deceived.”

It is funny to read of an “earthquake,” described in technical lingo, and to have a datum that indicates that it was no earthquake at all, in the usual seismologic sense, but a concussion from an explosion in the sky. Aug. 7, 1921—a severe shock at New Canton, Virginia. See Bull. Seis. Soc. Amer., 11-197—Prof. Stephen Taber’s explanation that the shock had probably originated in the slate belt of Buckingham County, intensity about V on the R.-F. scale. But then it is said that, according to the “authorities” of the McCormick Observatory, the concussion was from an explosion in the sky. The time is coming when nothing funny will be seen in this subject, if some day be accepted at least parts of the masses of data that I am now holding back, until I can more fully develop them—that some of the greatest catastrophes that have devastated the face of this earth have been concussions from explosions in the sky, so repeating in a local sky weeks at a time, months sometimes, or intermittently for centuries, that fixed origins above the ravaged areas are indicated.

New York Tribune, Sept. 2, 1921:

“J. C. H. Macbeth, London Manager of the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, Ltd., told several hundred men, at a luncheon of the Rotary Club, of New York, yesterday, that Signor Marconi believed he had intercepted messages from Mars, during recent atmospheric experiments with wireless on board his yacht Electra, in the Mediterranean. Mr. Macbeth said that Signor Marconi had been unable to conceive of any other explanation of the fact that, during his experiments he had picked up magnetic wave-lengths of 150,000 metres, whereas the maximum length of wave-production in the world today is 14,000 metres. The regularity of the signals, Mr. Macbeth declared, disposed of any assumption that the waves might have been caused by electrical disturbance. The signals were unintelligible, consisting 237apparently of a code, the speaker said, and the only signal recognized was one resembling the letter V in the Marconi code.” See datum of May 19, 1919.

But, in the summer of 1921, the planet Mars was far from opposition. The magnetic vibrations may have come from some other world. They may have had the origin of the sounds that have been heard at regular intervals—

The San Salvadors of the sky—

And we return to the principle that has been our re-enforcement throughout: that existence is infinite serialization, and that, except in particulars, it repeats—

That the dot that spread upon the western horizon of Lisbon, March 4, 1493, can not be the only ship that comes back from the unknown, cargoed with news—

And it may be Sept. this, nineteen hundred and twenty or thirty something, or Feb. that, nineteen hundred and twenty or thirty something else—and, later, see record of it in Eng. Mec., or Sci. Amer., vol. and p. something or another—a speck in the sky of this earth—the return of somebody from a San Salvador of the Sky—and the denial by the heavens themselves, which may answer with explosions the vociferations below them, of false calculations upon their remotenesses. If the heavens do not participate with snow, the sky scrapers will precipitate torn up papers and shirts and skirts, too, when the papers give out.

There will be a procession. Somebody will throw little black pebbles to the crowds. Over his procession will fly blue-fringed cupids. Later he will be insulted and abused and finally hounded to his death. But, in that procession, he will lead by the nose an outrageous thing that should not be: about ten feet long, short-winged, waddling on webbed feet. Insult and abuse and death—he will snap his fingers under the nose of the outrageous thing. It will be worth a great deal to lead that by the nose and demonstrate that such things had been seen in the sky, though they had been supposed to be angels. It will be a great moment for somebody. He will come back to New York, and march up Broadway with his angel.

Some now unheard-of De Soto, of this earth, will see for himself the Father of Cloudbursts.

238A Balboa of greatness now known only to himself will stand on a ridge in the sky between two auroral seas.

Fountains of Everlasting Challenge.

Argosies in parallel lines and rabbles of individual adventurers. Well enough may it be said that they are seeds in the sky. Of such are the germs of colonies.

239

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

That the Geo-system is an incubating organism, of which this earth is the nucleus—but an organism that is so strongly characterized by conditions and features of its own that likening it to any object internal to it is the interpreting of a thing in terms of a constituent—so that we think of an organism that is incompletely, or absurdly inadequately, expressible in terms of the egg-like and the larval and other forms of the immature—a geo-nucleated system that is dependent upon its externality as, in one way or another, is every similar, but lesser and included, thing—stimulated by flows of force that are now said to be meteoric, though many so-called “meteoric” streams seem more likely to be electric, that radiate from the umbilical channels of its constellations—vitalized by its sun, which is itself replenished by the comets, which, coming from external reservoirs of force, impart to the sun their freightages, and, unaffected by gravitation, return to an external existence, some of them even touching the sun, but showing no indication of supposed solar attraction.

In a technical sense we give up the doctrine of Evolution. Ours is an expression upon Super-embryonic Development, in one enclosed system. Ours is an expression upon Design underlying and manifesting in all things within this one system, with a Final Designer left out, because we know of no designing force that is not itself the product of remoter design. In terms of our own experience we can not think of an ultimate designer, any more than we can think of ultimacy in any other respect. But we are discussing a system that, in our conception, is not a final entity; so then no metaphysical expression upon it is required.

I point out that this expression of ours is not meant for aid and comfort to the reactionaries of the type of Col. W. J. Bryan, for instance: it is not altogether anti-Darwinian: the concept of Development replaces the concept of Evolution, but we accept the process of Selection, not to anything loosely known as Environment, 240but relatively to underlying Schedule and Design, predetermined and supervised, as it were, but by nothing that we conceive of in anthropomorphic terms.

I define what I mean by dynamic design, in the development of any embryonic thing: a pre-determined, or not accidental, or not irresponsible, passage along a schedule of phases to a climax of unification of many parts. Some of the aspects of this process are the simultaneous varying of parts, with destiny, and not with independence, for their rule, or with future co-ordinations and functions for their goal; and their survival while still incipient, not because they are fittest relatively to contemporaneous environment, so not because of usefulness or advantage in the present, inasmuch as at first they are not only functionless but also discordant with established relations, but surviving because they are in harmony with the dynamic plan of a whole being: and the presence of forces of suppression, or repression, as well as forces of stimulation and protection, so that parts are held back, or are not permitted to develop before their time.

If we accept that these circumstances of embryonic development are the circumstances of all wider development, within one enclosed system, the doctrine of Darwinian Evolution, as applied generally, will, in our minds, have to be replaced by an expression upon Super-embryonic Development, and Darwinism, unmodified, will become to us one more of the insufficiencies of the past. Darwinism concerns itself with the adaptations of the present, and does heed the part that the past has played, but, in Darwinism, there is no place for the influence of the future upon the present.

Consider any part of an embryonic thing—the heart of an embryo—and at first it is only a loop. It will survive, and it will be nourished in its functionless incipiency; also it will not be permitted to become a fully developed heart before its scheduled time arrives; its circumstances are dominated by what it will be in the future. The eye of an embryo is a better instance.

Consider anything of a sociologic nature that ever has grown: that there never has been an art, science, religion, invention that was not at first out of accord with established environment, visionary, preposterous in the light of later standards, useless in its incipiency, and resisted by established forces so that, seemingly 241animating it and protectively underlying it, there may have been something that in spite of its unfitness made it survive for future usefulness. Also there are data for the acceptance that all things, in wider being, are held back as well as protected and prepared for, and not permitted to develop before comes scheduled time. Langley’s flying machine makes me think of something of the kind—that this machine was premature; that it appeared a little before the era of aviation upon this earth, and that therefore Langley could not fly. But this machine was capable of flying, because, some years later, Curtis did fly in it. Then one thinks that the Wright Brothers were successful, because they did synchronize with a scheduled time. I have heard that it is questionable that Curtis made no alterations in Langley’s machine. There is no lack of instances. One of the greatest of secrets that have eventually been found out was for ages blabbed by all the pots and kettles in the world—but that the secret of the steam engine could not, to the lowliest of intellects, or to supposititiously highest of intellects, more than adumbratorily reveal itself until came the time for its co-ordination with the other phenomena and the requirements of the Industrial Age. And coal that was stored in abundance near the surface of the ground—and the needs of dwellers over coal mines, veins of which were often exposed upon the surface of the ground, for fuel—but that this secret, too, obvious, too, could not be revealed until the coming of the Industrial Age. Then the building of factories, the inventing of machines, the digging of coal, and the use of steam, all appearing by simultaneous variation, and co-ordinating. Shores of North America—nowadays, with less hero-worship than formerly, historians tell us that, to English and French fishermen, the coast of Newfoundland was well-known, long before the year 1492; nevertheless, to the world in general, it was not, or, according to our acceptances, could not be, known. About the year 1500, a Portuguese fleet was driven by storms to the coast of Brazil, and returned to Europe. Then one thinks that likely enough, before the year 1492, other vessels had been so swept to the coasts of the western hemisphere, and had returned—but that data of westward lands could not emerge from the suppressions of that era—but that the data did survive, or were preserved for future usefulness—that there are 242“Thou shalt nots” engraved upon something underlying all things, and then effacing, when phases pass away.

We conceive now of all building—within one enclosed system—in terms of embryonic building, and of all histories as local aspects of Super-embryonic Development. Cells of an embryo build falsely and futilely, in the sense that what they construct will be only temporary and will be out of adjustment later. If however there are conditions by which successive stages must be traversed before the arrival of maturity, ours is an expression upon the functioning of the false and the futile, in which case these terms, as derogations, should not be applied. We see that the cells that build have no basis of their own; that for their formations there is nothing of reason and necessity of their own, because they flourish in other formations quite as well. We see that they need nothing of basis, nor of guidance of their own, because basis and guidance are of the essence of the whole. All are responses, or correlates, to a succession of commandments, as it were, or of dominant, directing, supervising spirits of different eras: that they take on appearances that are concordant with the general gastrula era, changing when comes the stimulus to agree with the reptilian era, and again responding harmoniously when comes the time of the mammalian era. It is in accordance with our experience that never has human mind, scientific, religious, philosophic, formulated one basic thought, one finally true law, principle, or major premise from which guidance could be deduced. If any thought were true and final it would include the deduced. We conceive that there has been guidance, just the same, if human beings be conceived of as cellular units in one developing organism; and that human minds no more need foundations of their own than need the sub-embryonic cells that build so preposterously, according to standards of later growth, but build as they are guided to build. In this view, human reason is tropism, or response to stimuli, and reasoning is the trial-and-error process of the most primitive unicellular organisms, a susceptibility to underlying mandates, then a groping in perhaps all possible distortions until adjustment with underlying requirements is reached. In this view, then, though there are, for instance, no atoms in the Daltonian sense, if in the service of a building science, the 243false doctrine of the atoms be needed, the mind that responds, perhaps not to stimulus, but to requirement, which seems to be a negative stimulus, and so conceives, is in adjustment and reaches the state known as success. I accept, myself, that there may be Final Truth, and that it may be attainable, but never in a service that is local or special in any one science or nation or world.

It is our expression that temporary isolations characterize embryonic growth and super-embryonic growth quite as distinctly as do expansions and co-ordinations. Local centers of development in an egg—and they are isolated before they sketch out attempting relations. Or in wider being—hemisphere isolated from hemisphere, and nation from nation—then the breaking down of barriers—the appearance of Japan out of obscurity—threads of a military plasm are cast across an ocean by the United States.

Shafts of light that have pierced the obscurity surrounding planets—and something like a star shines in Aristarchus of the moon. Embryonic heavens that have dreamed—and that their mirages will be realized some day. Sounds and an interval; sounds and the same interval; sounds again—that there is one integrating organism and that we have heard its pulse.

244

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Feb. 7, 1922—an explosion “of startling intensity” in the sky of the northwestern point of the London Triangle (Nature, Feb. 23, 1922).

Repeating phenomena in a local sky—in L’Astronomie, 36-201, it is said that, at Orsay (Seine-et-Oise) Feb. 15, 1922, a detonation was heard in the sky, and that 9 hours later a similar sound was heard, and that an illumination was seen in the sky. It is said that, 10 nights later, at Verneuil, in the adjoining province, Oise, a great, fiery mass was seen falling from the sky.

March 12, 1922—rocks that had been falling “from the clouds,” for three weeks, at Chico, a town in an “earthquake region” in California (New York Times, March 12, 1922). Large, smooth rocks that “seemed to come straight from the clouds.”

In the San Francisco Chronicle, in issues dating from the 12th to the 18th of March—clippings sent to me by Mr. Maynard Shipley, writer and lecturer upon scientific subjects, if there be such subjects—the accounts are of stones that, for four months, had been falling intermittently from the sky, almost always upon the roofs of two adjoining warehouses, in Chico, but, upon one occasion, falling three blocks away: “a downpour of oval-shaped stones”; “a heavy shower of warm rocks.” San Francisco Call, March 16—“warm rocks.” It is said that crowds gathered, and that upon the 17th of March a “deluge” of rocks fell upon a crowd, injuring one person. The police “combed” all surroundings: the only explanation that they could think of was that somebody was firing stones from a catapult. One person was suspected by them, but, upon the 14th of March, a rock fell when he was known not to be in the neighborhood.

The circumstances point to one origin of these stones, stationary in the sky, above the town of Chico.

Upon the first of January, 1922, the attention of Marshal J. A. 245Peck, of Chico, had been called to the phenomena. After investigating more than two months, he said (San Francisco Examiner, March 14) “I could find no one through my investigations who could explain the matter. At various times I have heard and seen the stones. I think someone with a machine is to blame.”

Prof. C. K. Studley, vice-president of the Teachers’ College, Chico, is quoted in the Examiner:

“Some of the rocks are so large that they could not be thrown by any ordinary means. One of the rocks weighs 16 ounces. They are not of meteoric origin, as seems to have been hinted, because two of them show signs of cementation, either natural or artificial, and no meteoric factor was ever connected with a cement factory.”

Once upon a time, dogmatists supposed, asserted, angrily declared sometimes, that all stones that fall from the sky must be of “true meteoric material.” That time is now of the past. See Nature, 105-759—a description of two dissimilar stones, cemented together, seen to fall from the sky, at Cumberland Falls, Ky., April 9, 1919.

Miriam Allen de Ford (P. O. Box 573, San Francisco, Cal.—or see the Readers’ Guide) has sent me an account of her own observations. About the middle of March, 1922, she was in Chico, and investigated. Went to the scene of the falling rocks; discussed the subject with persons in the crowd. “While I was discussing it with some bystanders, I looked up at the cloudless sky, and suddenly saw a rock falling straight down, as if becoming visible when it came near enough. This rock struck the roof with a thud, and bounced off on the track beside the warehouse, and I could not find it.” “I learned that the rocks had been falling since July, 1921, though no publicity arose until November.”

There have been other phenomena at Chico. In the New York Times, Sept. 2, 1878, it is said that, upon the 20th of August, 1878, according to the Chico Record, a great number of small fishes fell from the sky, at Chico, covering the roof of a store, and falling in the streets, upon an area of several acres. Perhaps the most important observation is that they fell from a cloudless sky. Several occurrences are listed as earthquakes, by Dr. Holden, in 246his Catalog; but the detonations that were heard at Oroville, a town near Chico, Jan. 2, 1887, are said, in the Monthly Weather Review, 1887-24, to have been in the sky. Upon the night of March 5-6, 1885, according to the Chico Chronicle, a large object, of very hard material, weighing several tons, fell from the sky, near Chico (Monthly Weather Review, March, 1885). In the year 1893, an iron object, said to be meteoritic, was found at Oroville (Mems. Nat. Acad. Sci., 13-345).

My own idea is either that there is land over the town of Chico, and not far away, inasmuch as objects from it fall with a very narrow distribution, or that far away, and therefore invisible, there may be land from which objects have been carried in a special current to one very small part of this earth’s surface. If anyone would like to read an account of stones that fell intermittently for several days, clearly enough as if in a current, or in a field of special force, of some kind, at Livet, near Clavaux, France, December, 1842, see the London Times, Jan. 13, 1843. There have been other such occurrences. Absurdly, when they were noticed at all, they were supposed to be psychic phenomena. I conceive that there is no more of the psychic to these occurrences than there is to the arrival of seeds from the West Indies upon the coast of England. Stones that fell upon a house, near the Pantheon, Paris, for three weeks, January, 1849—see Dr. Wallace’s Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, p. 284. Several times, in the course of this book, I have tried to be reasonable. I have asked what such repeating phenomena in one local sky do indicate, if they do not indicate fixed origins in the sky. And if such occurrences, supported by many data in other fields, do not indicate the stationariness of this earth, with new lands not far away—tell me what it is all about. The falling stones of Chico—new lands in the sky—or what?

Boston Transcript, March 21, 1922—clipping sent to me by Mr. J. David Stern, Editor and Publisher of the Camden (N. J.) Daily Courier—

“Geneva, March 21—During a heavy snow storm in the Alps recently thousands of exotic insects resembling spiders, caterpillars, and huge ants fell on the slopes and quickly died. Local naturalists are unable to explain the phenomenon, but one theory is 247that the insects were blown in on the wind from a warmer climate.”

The fall of unknown insects in a snow storm is not the circumstance that I call most attention to. It is worth noting that I have records of half a dozen similar occurrences in the Alps, usually about the last of January, but the striking circumstance is that insects of different species and of different specific gravities fell together. The conventional explanation is that a wind, far away, raised a great variety of small objects, and segregated them according to specific gravity, so that twigs and grasses fell in one place, dust some other place, pebbles somewhere else, and insects farther along somewhere. This would be very fine segregation. There was no very fine segregation in this occurrence. Something of a seasonal, or migratory, nature, from some other world, localized in the sky, relatively to the Alps, is suggested.

May 4, 1922—discovery, by F. Burnerd, of three long mounds in the lunar crater Archimedes. See the English Mechanic, 115-194, 218, 268, 278. It seems likely that these constructions had been recently built.

St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, May 18, 1922 (Associated Press)—particles of matter falling continuously for several days. “The phenomenon is supposed here to be of volcanic origin, but all the volcanoes of the West Indies are reported as quiet.”

New York Tribune, July 3, 1922—that, for the fourth time in one month, a great volume of water, or a “cloudburst,” had poured from one local sky, near Carbondale, Pa.

Oct. 15, 1922—a large quantity of white substance that fell upon the shores of Lake Michigan, near Chicago. It fell upon the clothes of hundreds of persons, fell upon the campus of Northwestern University, likely enough fell upon the astronomical observatory of the University. It occurred to one of these hundreds, or thousands, of persons to collect some of this substance. He is Mr. L. A. Hopkins, 111 West Jackson Blvd., Chicago. He sent me a sample. I think that it is spider web, because it is viscous: when burned it chars with the crinkled effect of burned hair and feathers, and the odor is similar. But it is strong, tough substance, of a cottony texture, when rolled up. The interesting circumstance to me is that similar substance has fallen frequently 248upon this earth, in October, but that, in terrestrial terms, seasonal migrations of aëronautical spiders can not be thought of, because in the tropics and in Australia, as well as in the United States and in England, such showers have occurred in October. Then something seasonal, but seasonal in an extra-mundane sense, is suggested. See the Scientific Australian, Sept., 1916—that, from October 5 to 29, 1915, an enormous fall of similar substance occurred upon a region of thousands of square miles, in Australia.

Time after time, in data that I have only partly investigated, occur declarations that, during devastations commonly known as “earthquakes,” in Chile, the sky has flamed, or that “strange illuminations” in the sky have been seen. In the Bul. Seis. Soc. Amer., for instance, some of these descriptions have been noted, and have been hushed up with the explanation that they were the reports of unscientific persons.

Latest of the great quakes in Chile—1,500 dead “recovered” in one of the cities of the Province of Atacama. New York Tribune, Nov. 15, 1922—“Again, today, severe earthquakes shook the Province of Coquimbo and other places, and strange illuminations were observed over the sea, off La Serena and Copiapo.”

Back to Crater Mountain, Arizona, for an impression—but far more impressive are similar data as to these places of Atacama and Copiapo, in Chile. In the year 1845, M. Darlu, of Valparaiso, read, before the French Academy, a paper, in which he asserted that, in the desert of Atacama, which begins at Copiapo, meteorites are strewn upon the ground in such numbers that they are met at every step. If these objects fell all at one time in this earthquake region, we have another instance conceivably of mere coincidence between the aërial and the seismic. If they fell at different times, the indications are of a fixed relationship between this part of Chile and a center somewhere in the sky of falling objects commonly called “meteorites” and of cataclysms that devastate this part of Chile with concussions commonly called “earthquakes.” There is a paper upon this subject in Science, 14-434. Here the extreme abundance asserted by M. Darlu is questioned: it is said that only thirteen of these objects were known to science. But, according to descriptions, four of them are stones, or stone-irons, differing so that, in the opinion of the writer, and not 249merely so interpreted by me, these four objects fell at different times. Then the nine others are considered. They are nickel-irons. They, too, are different, one from another. So then it is said that these thirteen objects, all from one place, were, with reasonable certainty, the products of different falls.

Behind concepts that sometimes seem delirious, I offer—a reasonable certainty—

That, existing somewhere beyond this earth, perhaps beyond a revolving shell in which the nearby stars are openings, there are stationary regions, from which, upon many occasions, have emanated “meteors,” sometimes exploding catastrophically over Atacama, Chile, for instance. Coasts of South America have reeled, and the heavens have been afire. Reverberations in the sky—the ocean has responded with islands. Between sky and earth of Chile there have been flaming intimacies of destruction and slaughter and woe—

Silence that is conspiracy to hide past ignorance; that is imbecility, or that is the unawareness of profoundest hypnosis.

Hypnosis—

That the seismologists, too, have functioned in preserving the illusion of this earth’s isolation, and by super-embryonic processes have been hypnotized into oblivion of a secret that has been proclaimed with avalanches of fire from the heavens, and that has babbled from brooks of the blood of crushed populations, and that is monumentalized in ruins.

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes: nothing?