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The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
281
However,
this
merger
between
possible
eclipses
by
unknown
dark
bodies
and
commonplace
terrestrial
phenomena
is
formidable.
As
to
darknesses
that
have
fallen
upon
vast
areas,
conventionality
is--smoke
from
forest
fires.
In
the
U.S.
Forest
Service
Bulletin,
No.
117,
F.G.
Plummer
gives
a
list
of
eighteen
darknesses
that
have
occurred
in
the
United
States
and
Canada.
He
is
one
of
the
primitives,
but
I
should
say
that
his
dogmatism
is
shaken
by
vibrations
from
the
new
Dominant.
His
difficulty,
which
he
acknowledges,
but
which
he
would
have
disregarded
had
he
written
a
decade
or
so
earlier,
is
the
profundity
of
some
of
these
obscurations.
He
says
that
mere
smokiness
cannot
account
for
such
"awe-inspiring
dark
days."
So
he
conceives
of
eddies
in
the
air,
concentrating
the
smoke
from
forest
fires.
Then,
in
the
inconsistency
or
discord
of
all
quasi-intellection
that
is
striving
for
consistency
or
harmony,
he
tells
of
the
vastness
of
some
of
these
darknesses.
Of
course
Mr.
Plummer
did
not
really
think
upon
this
subject,
but
one
does
feel
that
he
might
have
approximated
higher
to
real
thinking
than
by
speaking
of
concentration
and
then
listing
data
of
enormous
area,
or
the
opposite
of
circumstances
of
concentration--because,
of
his
nineteen
instances,
nine
are
set
down
as
covering
all
New
England.
In
quasi-existence,
everything
generates
or
is
part
of
its
own
opposite.
Every
attempt
at
peace
prepares
the
way
for
war;
all
attempts
at
justice
result
in
injustice
in
some
other
respect:
so
Mr.
Plummer's
attempt
to
bring
order
into
his
data,
with
the
explanation
of
darkness
caused
by
smoke
from
forest
fires,
results
in
such
confusion
that
he
ends
up
by
saying
that
these
daytime
darknesses
have
occurred
"often
with
little
or
no
turbidity
of
the
air
near
the
earth's
surface"--or
with
no
evidence
at
all
of
smoke--except
that
there
is
almost
always
a
forest
fire
somewhere.
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