212 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



record of a race of aerial beings, perhaps with no substantial habitat, 

 seen by some one in India "locusts." 



This will be disregarded: 



If locusts fly high, they freeze and fall in thousands. 



Nature, 47-581: 



Locusts that were seen in the mountains of India, at a height 

 of 12,750 feet "in swarms and dying by tnousands." 



But no matter whether they fly high or fly low, no one ever 

 wonders what's in the air when locusts are passing overhead, because 

 of the failing of stragglers. I have especially looked this matter 

 up no mystery when locusts are flying overhead constant falling 

 of stragglers. 



Monthly Notices, 30-135: 



"An unusual phenomenon noticed by Lieut. Herschel, Oct. 17 

 and 1 8, 1870, while observing the sun, at Bangalore, India." 



Lieut. Herschel had noticed dark shadows crossing the sun but 

 away from the sun there were luminous, moving images. For two 

 days bodies passed in a continuous stream, varying in size and 

 velocity. 



The Lieutenant tries to explain, as we shall see, but he says: 



"As it was, the continuous flight, for two whole days, in such 

 numbers, in the upper regions of the air, of beasts that left no 

 stragglers, is a wonder of natural history, if not of astronomy." 



He tried different focussing he saw wings perhaps he saw 

 planes. He says that he saw upon the objects either wings or 

 phantom-like appendages. 



Then he saw something that was so bizarre that, in the fullness 

 of his nineteenth-centuriness, he writes: 



"There was no longer doubt: they were locusts or flies of some 

 sort." 



One of them had paused. 



It had hovered. 



Then it had whisked off. 



The Editor says that at that time "countless locusts had de- 

 scended upon certain parts of India." 



We now have an instance that is extraordinary in several re- 

 spects super- voyagers or super-ravagers ; angels, ragamuffins, cru- 

 saders, emigrants, aeronauts, or aerial elephants, or bison or dino- 

 saurs except that I think the thing had planes or wings one of 

 them has been photographed. It may be that in the history of 



