Lab
Library
Journal
Shop
Sign in
to keep
Share image
1
375
The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
242
It
is
recorded
that
another
observer,
at
Paris,
watching
the
sun,
at
this
time,
had
not
seen
this
object:
But
that
M.
Croste,
at
Sole,
about
forty-five
German
leagues
northward
from
Lausanne,
had
seen
it,
describing
the
same
spindle-form,
but
disagreeing
a
little
as
to
breadth.
Then
comes
the
important
point:
that
he
and
M.
de
Rostan
did
not
see
it
upon
the
same
part
of
the
sun.
This,
then,
is
parallax,
and,
compounded
with
invisibility
at
Paris,
is
great
parallax--or
that,
in
the
course
of
a
month,
in
the
summer
of
1762,
a
large,
opaque,
spindle-shaped
body
traversed
the
disk
of
the
sun,
but
at
a
great
distance
from
the
sun.
The
writer
in
the
Register
says:
"In
a
word,
we
know
of
nothing
to
have
recourse
to,
in
the
heavens,
by
which
to
explain
this
phenomenon."
I
suppose
he
was
not
a
hopeless
addict
to
explaining.
Extraordinary--we
fear
he
must
have
been
a
man
of
loose
habits
in
some
other
respects.
As
to
us--
Monstrator.
In
the
Monthly
Notices
of
the
R.A.S.,
February,
1877,
Leverrier,
who
never
lost
faith,
up
to
the
last
day,
gives
the
six
observations
upon
an
unknown
body
of
planetary
size,
that
he
had
formulated:
Fritsche,
Oct.
10,
1802;
Stark,
Oct.
9,
1819;
De
Cuppis,
Oct.
30,
1839;
Sidebotham,
Nov.
12,
1849;
Lescarbault,
March
26,
1859;
Lummis,
March
20,
1862.
If
we
weren't
so
accustomed
to
Science
in
its
essential
aspect
of
Disregard,
we'd
be
mystified
and
impressed,
like
the
Editor
of
Nature,
with
the
formulation
of
these
data:
agreement
of
so
many
instances
would
seem
incredible
as
a
coincidence:
but
our
acceptance
is
that,
with
just
enough
disregard,
astronomers
and
fortune-tellers
can
formulate
anything--or
we'd
engage,
ourselves,
to
formulate
periodicities
in
the
crowds
in
Broadway--say
that
every
Wednesday
morning,
a
tall
man,
with
one
leg
and
a
black
eye,
carrying
a
rubber
plant,
passes
the
Singer
Building,
at
quarter
past
ten
o'clock.
Of
course
it
couldn't
really
be
done,
unless
such
a
man
did
have
such
periodicity,
but
if
some
Wednesday
mornings
it
should
be
a
small
child
lugging
a
barrel,
or
a
fat
negress
with
a
week's
wash,
by
ordinary
disregard
that
would
be
prediction
good
enough
for
the
kind
of
quasi-existence
we're
in.
Marker
Marker
Fine marker
White-out
Fine white-out
Circle
Paint
Unmarker
Hand
Scalpel
Dice
Sieve
Purify
Undo
Redo
Start over
