BOOK OF THE DAMNED 211 



seen thousands and thousands of brilliant white objects, like snow- 

 flakes in a cloudless sky. Though this display lasted about twenty- 

 five minutes, not one of these seeming snowflakes was seen to fall. 

 Inglis says that his servant "fancied" that he had seen something 

 like wings on these whatever they were. Upon page 18, of the 

 Report, Sir John Herschel says that, in 1845 or 1846, his atten- 

 tion had been attracted by objects of considerable size, in the air, 

 seemingly not far away. He had looked at them through a tele- 

 scope. He says that they were masses of hay, not less than a 

 yard or two in diameter. Still there are some circumstances that 

 interest me. He says that, though no less than a whirlwind could 

 have sustained these masses, the air about him was calm. "No 

 doubt wind prevailed at the spot, but there was no roaring noise." 

 None of these masses fell within his observation or knowledge. To 

 walk a few fields away and find out more would seem not much 

 to expect from a man of science, but it is one of our superstitions, 

 that such a seeming trifle is just what by the Spirit of an Era, 

 we'll call it one is not permitted to do. If those things were not 

 masses of hay, and if Herschel had walked a little and found out, 

 and had reported that he had seen strange objects in the air that 

 report, in 1846, would have been as misplaced as the appearance of 

 a tail upon an embryo still in its gastrula era. I have noticed this 

 inhibition in my own case many times. Looking back why didn't 

 I do this or that little thing that would have cost so little and have 

 meant so much? Didn't belong to that era of my own develop- 

 ment. 



Nature, 22-64: 



That, at Kattenau, Germany, about half an hour before sunrise, 

 March 22, 1880, "an enormous number of luminous bodies rose 

 from the horizon, and passed in a horizontal direction from east to 

 west." They are described as having appeared in a zone or belt. 

 "They shone with a remarkably brilliant light." 



So they've thrown lassos over our data to bring them back to 

 earth. But they're lassos that cannot tighten. We can't pull out 

 of them: we may step out of them, or lift them off. Some of us used 

 to have an impression of Science sitting in calm, just judgment: 

 some of us now feel that a good many of our data have been 

 lynched. If a Crusade, perhaps from Mars to Jupiter, occur in the 

 autumn "seeds." If a Crusade or outpouring of celestial vandals 

 is seen from this earth in the spring "ice crystals." If we have 



