n our acceptance, had no more to recommend
it than had once equally well-thought-of methods of witch-finding, he
should not have taken such chances: that if he was right as to Neptune,
but should be wrong as to "Vulcan," his average would be away below that
of most fortune-tellers, who could scarcely hope to do business upon a
fifty per cent. basis--all that the reasoning of a tyro in hypnoses.

The date:

March 22, 1877.

The scientific world was up on its hind legs nosing the sky. The thing
had been done so authoritatively. Never a pope had said a thing with
more of the seeming of finality. If six observations correlated, what
more could be asked? The Editor of _Nature_, a week before the predicted
event, though cautious, said that it is difficult to explain how six
observers, unknown to one another, could have data that could be
formulated, if they were not related phenomena.

In a way, at this point occurs the crisis of our whole book.

Formulas are against us.

But can astronomic formulas, backed up by observations in agreement,
taken many years apart, calculated by a Leverrier, be as meaningless, in
a positive sense, as all other quasi-things that we have encountered so
far?

The preparations they made, before March 22, 1877. In England, the
Astronomer Royal made it the expectation of his life: notified observers
at Madras, Melbourne, Sydney, and New Zealand, and arranged with
observers in Chili and the United States. M. Struve had prepared for
observations in Siberia and Japan--

March 22, 1877--

Not absolutely, hypocritically, I think it's pathetic, myself. If anyone
should doubt the sincerity of Leverrier, in this matter, we note,
whether it has meaning or not, that a few months later he died.

I think we'll take up Monstrator, though there's so much to this subject
that we'll have to come back.

According to the _Annual Register_, 9-120, upon the 9th of August, 1762,
M. de Rostan, of Basle, France, was taking altitudes of the sun, at
Lausanne. He saw a vast, spindle-shaped body, about three of the sun's
digits in breadth and nine in length, advancing slowly across the disk
of the sun, or "at no more than half the velocity with which the
ordinary solar spots move." It did not disappear until the 7th of
September, when it reached the sun's limb. Because of the spindle-like
form, I incline to think of a super-Zeppelin, but another observation,
which seems to indicate that it was a world, is that, t