The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort-pages

Page 249 of 376

Page 249 of 376
The Book of the Damned - Charles Fort-pages

Page Content (OCR)

[p. 203] March 22, 1876-- intensity." Amer. Jour. Sci., 2-28-446: Report by Pastorff that he had seen twice in 1836, and once in 1837, two round spots of unequal size moving across the sun, changing position relatively to each other, and taking a different course, if not orbit, each time: that, in 1834, he had seen similar bodies pass six times across the disk of the sun, looking very much like Mercury in his transits. But to point out Leverrier's poverty-stricken average--or discovering planets upon a fifty per cent. basis-- would be to point out the low percentage of realness in the quasi-myth-stuff of which the whole system is composed. We do not accuse the text-books of omitting this fiasco, but we do note that theirs is the conventional adaptation here of all beguilers who are in difficulties The diverting of attention. It wouldn't be possible in a real existence, with real mentality, to deal with, but | suppose it's good enough for the quasi-intellects that stupefy themselves with text-books. The trick here is to gloss over Leverrier's mistake, and blame Lescarbault--he was only an amateur--had delusions. The reader's attention is led against Lescarbault by a report from M. Lias, director of the Brazilian Coast Survey, who, at the time of Lescarbault's "supposed" observation had been watching the sun in Brazil, and, instead of seeing even ordinary sun spots, had noted that the region of the "supposed transit" was of "uniform But the meaninglessness of all utterances in quasi-existence--