BOOK OF THE DAMNED 223 



upon an obscuration in London, Jan. 22, 1882, at 10.30 a. m., so 

 great that he could hear persons upon the opposite side of the 

 street, but could not see them "It was obvious that there was no 

 fog to speak of." 



Annual Register, 1857-132: 



An account by Charles A. Murray, British Envoy to Persia, of a 

 darkness of May 20, 1857, that came upon Bagdad "a darkness 

 more intense than ordinary midnight, when neither stars nor moon 

 are visible. . . ." "After a short time the black darkness was suc- 

 ceeded by a red, lurid gloom, such as I never saw in any part of 

 the world." 



"Panic seized the whole city." 



"A dense volume of red sand fell." 



This matter of sand falling seems to suggest conventional ex- 

 planation enough, or that a simoon, heavily charged with terrestrial 

 sand, had obscured the sun, but Mr. Murray, who says that he had 

 had experience with simoons, gives his opinion that "it can not have 

 been a simoon." 



It is our comprehensiveness now, or this matter of concomitants 

 of darknesses that we are going to capitalize. It is all very compli- 

 cated and tremendous, and our own treatment can be but impres- 

 sionistic, but a few of the rudiments of Advanced Seismology we 

 shall now take up or the four principle phenomena of another 

 world's close approach to this world. 



If a large substantial mass, or super-construction, should enter 

 this earth's atmosphere, it is our acceptance that it would some- 

 times depending upon velocity appear luminous or look like a 

 cloud, or like a cloud with a luminous nucleus. Later we shall have 

 an expression upon luminosity different from the luminosity of 

 incandescence that comes upon objects falling from the sky, or 

 entering this earth's atmosphere. Now our expression is that worlds 

 have often come close to this earth, and that smaller objects size 

 of a haystack or size of several dozen skyscrapers lumped, have 

 often hurtled through this earth's atmosphere, and have been mis- 

 taken for clouds, because they were enveloped in clouds 



Or that around something coming from the intense cold of inter- 

 planetary space that is of some regions: our own suspicion is that 

 other regions are tropical the moisture of this earth's atmosphere 

 would condense into a cloud-like appearance around it. In Nature, 

 20-121, there is an account by Mr. S. W. Clifton, Collector of Cus- 

 toms, at Freemantle, Western Australia, sent to the Melbourne 



