254 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



" unlike anything that I had ever seen before." 



"Although I have studied the skies for many years, I have never 

 seen anything like it." 



He saw two stationary dark patches upon clouds. 



The extraordinary part: 



They were stationary upon clouds that were rapidly moving. 



They were fan-shaped or triangular and varied in size, but 

 kept the same position upon different clouds as cloud after cloud 

 came along. For more than half an hour Mr. Smith watched these 

 dark patches 



His impression as to the one that appeared first: 



That it was "really a heavy shadow cast upon a thin veil of clouds 

 by some unseen object away in the west, which was intercepting the 

 sun's rays." 



Upon page 244, of this volume of Nature, is a letter from another 

 correspondent, to the effect that similar shadows are cast by moun- 

 tains upon clouds, and that no doubt Mr. Smith was right in at- 

 tributing the appearance to "some unseen object, which was inter- 

 cepting the sun's rays." But the Old Dominant that was a jealous 

 Dominant, and the wrath of the Old Dominant against such an 

 irreconcilability as large, opaque objects in the sky, casting down 

 shadows upon clouds. Still the Dominants are suave very often, 

 or are not absolute gods, and the way attention was led away from 

 this subject is an interesting study in quasi-divine bamboozlement. 

 Upon page 268, Charles J. P. Cave, the meteorologist, writes that, 

 upon April 5 and 8, at Ditcham Park, Petersfield, he had observed 

 a similar appearance, while watching some pilot balloons but he 

 describes something not in the least like a shadow on clouds, but a 

 stationary cloud the inference seems to be that the shadows at 

 Chisbury may have been shadows of pilot balloons. Upon page 322, 

 another correspondent writes upon shadows cast by mountains; 

 upon page 348 some one else carries on the divergence by discussing 

 this third letter: then some one takes up the third letter mathemati- 

 cally; and then there is a correction of error in this mathematic 

 demonstration I think it looks very much like what I think it 

 looks like. 



But the mystery here: 



That the dark patches at Chisbury could not have been cast by 

 stationary pilot balloons that were to the west, or that were between 

 clouds and the setting sun. If, to the west of Chisbury, a stationary 

 object were high in the air, intercepting the sun's rays, the shadow 



