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375
The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
273
Vast
poised
thing,
black
as
a
crow,
over
the
moon.
Mr.
H.C.
Russell,
who
was
usually
as
orthodox
as
anybody,
I
suppose--at
least,
he
wrote
"F.R.A.S."
after
his
name--tells
in
the
Observatory,
2-374,
one
of
the
wickedest,
or
most
preposterous,
stories
that
we
have
so
far
exhumed:
That
he
and
another
astronomer,
G.D.
Hirst,
were
in
the
Blue
fountains,
near
Sydney,
N.S.W.,
and
Mr.
Hirst
was
looking
at
the
moon--
He
saw
on
the
moon
what
Russell
calls
"one
of
those
remarkable
facts,
which
being
seen
should
be
recorded,
although
no
explanation
can
at
present
be
offered."
That
may
be
so.
It
is
very
rarely
done.
Our
own
expression
upon
evolution
by
successive
dominants
and
their
correlates
is
against
it.
On
the
other
hand,
we
express
that
every
era
records
a
few
observations
out
of
harmony
with
it,
but
adumbratory
or
preparatory
to
the
spirit
of
eras
still
to
come.
It's
very
rarely
done.
Lashed
by
the
phantom-scourge
of
a
now
passing
era,
the
world
of
astronomers
is
in
a
state
of
terrorism,
though
of
a
highly
attenuated,
modernized,
devitalized
kind.
Let
an
astronomer
see
something
that
is
not
of
the
conventional,
celestial
sights,
or
something
that
it
is
"improper"
to
see--his
very
dignity
is
in
danger.
Some
one
of
the
corralled
and
scourged
may
stick
a
smile
into
his
back.
He'll
be
thought
of
unkindly.
With
a
hardihood
that
is
unusual
in
his
world
of
ethereal
sensitivenesses,
Russell
says,
of
Hirst's
observation:
"He
found
a
large
part
of
it
covered
with
a
dark
shade,
quite
as
dark
as
the
shadow
of
the
earth
during
an
eclipse
of
the
moon."
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