270 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



existence, there is no convenience that will not sooner or later turn 

 awkward so, if there be denser regions aloft, these regions should 

 now be regarded as analogues of far-submerged oceanic regions, and 

 things coming to this earth would be like things rising to an attenu- 

 ated medium and exploding sometimes incandescently, some- 

 times with cold light sometimes non-luminously, like deep-sea 

 fishes brought to the surface altogether conditions of inhospitality. 

 I have a suspicion that, in their own depths, deep-sea fishes are not 

 luminous. If they are, Darwinism is mere Jesuitism, in attempting 

 to correlate them. Such advertising would so attract attention that 

 all advantages would be more than offset. Darwinism is largely a 

 doctrine of concealment: here we have brazen proclamation if ac- 

 cepted. Fishes in the Mammoth Cave need no light to see by. We 

 might have an expression that deep-sea fishes turn luminous upon 

 entering a less dense medium but models in the American Museum 

 of Natural History: specialized organs of luminosity upon these 

 models. Of course we do remember that awfully convincing "dodo," 

 and some of our sophistications we trace to him at any rate dis- 

 ruption is regarded as a phenomenon of coming from a dense to a 

 less dense medium. 



An account by M. Acharius, in the Transactions of the Swedish 

 Academy of Sciences, 1808-215, translated for the North American 

 Review, 3-319' 



That M. Acharius, having heard of "an extraordinary and prob- 

 ably hitherto unseen phenomenon," reported from near the town of 

 Skeninge, Sweden, investigated: 



That, upon the i6th of May, 1808, at about 4 p. m., the sun 

 suddenly turned dull brick-red. At the same time there appeared, 

 upon the western horizon, a great number of round bodies, dark 

 brown, and seemingly the size of a hat crown. They passed over- 

 head and disappeared in the eastern horizon. Tremendous proces- 

 sion. It lasted two hours. Occasionally one fell to the ground. 

 When the place of a fall was examined, there was found a film, 

 which soon dried and vanished. Often, when approaching the sun, 

 these bodies seemed to link together, or were then seen to be linked 

 together, in groups not exceeding eight, and, under the sun, they 

 were seen to have tails three or four fathoms long. Away from the 

 sun the tails were invisible. Whatever their substance may have 

 been, it is described as gelatinous "soapy and jellied." 



I place this datum here for several reasons. It would have been a 

 good climax to our expression upon hordes of small bodies that, in 



