Page 289 of 376
[p. 236] This matter of sand falling seems to suggest conventional explanation 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 cannot 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 complicated and tremendous, and our own treatment can be but impressionistic, but a few of the rudiments of Advanced Seismology we shall now take up--or the four principal 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 sometimes--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 mistaken for clouds, because they were enveloped in clouds Or that around something coming from the intense cold of interplanetary 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 Customs, at Freemantle, Western Australia, sent to the Melbourne Observatory--a clear day--appearance of a small black cloud, moving not very swiftly--bursting into a ball of fire, of the apparent size of the moon Or that something with the velocity of an ordinary meteorite could not collect vapor around it, but that slower-moving objects--speed of a railway train, say--may.