Page 258 of 376
Melanicus. Sun spot, maybe. [p. 210] irresistible to think that they all relate to one phenomenon. It is an expression of cosmic inclination. Most of the observations are so irreconcilable with any acceptance other than of orbitless, dirigible worlds that he shuts his eyes to more than two-thirds of them; he picks out six that can give him the illusion of completeness, or of all relating to one planet. Or let it be that we have data of many dark bodies--still do we incline almost irresistibly to think of one of them as the dark-body-in-chief. Dark bodies, floating, or navigating, in inter-planetary space--and | conceive of one that's the Prince of Dark Bodies: Vast dark thing with the wings of a super-bat, or jet-black super-construction; most likely one of the spores of the Evil One. The extraordinary year, 1883: London Times, Dec. 17, 1883: Extract from a letter by Hicks Pashaw: that, in Egypt, Sept. 24, 1883, he had seen, through glasses, "an immense black spot upon the lower part of the sun." One night an astronomer was looking up at the sky, when something obscured a star, for three and a half seconds. A meteor had been seen nearby, but its train had been only momentarily visible. Wolf was the astronomer (Nature, 86-528). The next datum is one of the most sensational we have, except at there is very little to it. A dark object that was seen by Prof.