204 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



unacceptable that inhabitants of China, Scotland, and America 

 should all have conceived of the same system. 



Cup marks are strings of cup-like impressions in rocks. Some- 

 times there are rings around them, and sometimes they have only 

 semi-circles. Great Britain, America, France, Algeria, Circassia, 

 Palestine: they're virtually everywhere except in the far north, I 

 think. In China, cliffs are dotted with them. Upon a cliff, near 

 Lake Como, there is a maze of these markings. In Italy and Spain 

 and India they occur in enormous numbers. 



Given that a force, say like electric force, could, from a distance, 

 mark such a substance as rocks, as, from a distance of hundreds 

 of miles, selenium can be marked by telephotographers but I am 

 of two minds 



The Lost Explorers from Somewhere, and an attempt, from 

 Somewhere, to communicate with them: so a frenzy of showering 

 of messages toward this earth, in the hope that some of them 

 would mark rocks near the lost explorers 



Or that somewhere upon this earth, there is an especial rocky 

 surface, or receptor, or polar construction, or a steep, conical hill, 

 upon which for ages have been received messages from some other 

 world; but that at times messages go astray and mark substances 

 perhaps thousands of miles from the receptor; 



That perhaps forces behind the history of this earth have left 

 upon the rocks of Palestine and England and India and China 

 records that may some day be deciphered, of their misdirected 

 instructions to certain esoteric ones Order of the Freemasons 

 the Jesuits 



I emphasize the row-formation of cup marks: 



Prof. Douglas (Saturday Review, Nov. 24, 1883): 



"Whatever may have been their motive, the cup-markers showed 

 a decided liking for arranging their sculpturings in regularly spaced 

 rows." 



That cup marks are an archaic form of inscription was first 

 suggested by Canon Greenwell many years ago. But more specifically 

 adumbratory to our own expression are the observations of Rivett- 

 Carnac (Jour. Roy. Asiatic Soc., 1903-515): 



That the Braille system of raised dots is an inverted arrange- 

 ment of cup marks: also that there are strong resemblances to 

 the Morse code. But no tame and systematized archaeologist can 

 do more than casually point out resemblances, and merely suggest 

 that strings of cup marks look like messages, because China, 



