BOOK OF THE DAMNED 213 



photography no more extraordinary picture than this has ever been 

 taken. 



L'Astrcnomie, 1885-347: 



That, at the Observatory of Zacatecas, Mexico, Aug. 12, 1883, 

 about 2,500 meters above sea level, were seen a large number of 

 small luminous bodies, entering upon the disk of the sun. M. 

 Bonilla telegraphed to the Observatories of the City of Mexico and 

 of Puebla. Word came back that the bodies were not visible there. 

 Because of this parallax, M. Bonilla placed the bodies "relatively 

 near the earth." But when we find out what he called "relatively 

 near the earth" birds or bugs or hosts of a Super-Tamerlane or 

 army of a celestial Richard Coeur de Lion our heresies rejoice 

 anyway. His estimate is "less distance than the moon." 



One of them was photographed. See L 'Astronomic, 1885-349. 

 The photograph shows a long body surrounded by indefinite struc- 

 tures, or by the haze of wings or planes in motion. 



L' Astronomic, 1887-66: 



Signer Ricco, of the Observatory of Palermo, writes that, Nov. 

 30, 1880, at 8.30 o'clock in the morning, he was watching the sun, 

 when he saw, slowly traversing its disk, bodies in two long, par- 

 allel lines, and a shorter, parallel line. The bodies looked winged 

 to him. But so large were they that he had to think of large 

 birds. He thought of cranes. 



He consulted ornithologists, and learned that the configuration 

 of parallel lines agrees with the flight-formation of cranes. This 

 was in 1880: anybody now living in New York City, for instance, 

 would tell him that also it is a familiar formation of aeroplanes. 

 But, because of data of focus and subtended angles, these beings 

 or objects must have been high. 



Sig. Ricco argues that condors have been known to fly 3 or 4 

 miles high, and that heights reached by other birds have been 

 estimated at 2 or 3 miles. He says that cranes have been known 

 to fly so high that they have been lost to view. 



Our own acceptance, in conventional terms, is that there is not 

 a bird of this earth that would not freeze to death at a height of 

 more than four miles: that if condors fly three or four miles high, 

 they are birds that are especially adapted to such altitudes. 



Sig. Ricco's estimate is that these objects or beings or cranes 

 must have been at least five and a half miles high. 



