r inhabitants of this earth.

My own impression is that some external force has marked, with symbols,
rocks of this earth, from far away.

I do not think that cup marks are inscribed communications among
different inhabitants of this earth, because it seems too unacceptable
that inhabitants of China, Scotland, and America should all have
conceived of the same system.

Cup marks are strings of cup-like impressions in rocks. Sometimes there
are rings around them, and sometimes they have only semi-circles. Great
Britain, America, France, Algeria, Circassia, Palestine: they're
virtually everywhere--except in the far north, I think. In China, cliffs
are dotted with them. Upon a cliff near Lake Como, there is a maze of
these markings. In Italy and Spain and India they occur in enormous
numbers.

Given that a force, say, like electric force, could, from a distance,
mark such a substance as rocks, as, from a distance of hundreds of
miles, selenium can be marked by telephotographers--but I am of two
minds--

The Lost Explorers from Somewhere, and an attempt, from Somewhere, to
communicate with them: so a frenzy of showering of messages toward this
earth, in the hope that some of them would mark rocks near the lost
explorers--

Or that somewhere upon this earth, there is an especial rocky surface,
or receptor, or polar construction, or a steep, conical hill, upon which
for ages have been received messages from some other world; but that at
times messages go astray and mark substances perhaps thousands of miles
from the receptor:

That perhaps forces behind the history of this earth have left upon the
rocks of Palestine and England and India and China records that may some
day be deciphered, of their misdirected instructions to certain esoteric
ones--Order of the Freemasons--the Jesuits--

I emphasize the row-formation of cup marks:

Prof. Douglas (_Saturday Review_, Nov. 24, 1883):

"Whatever may have been their motive, the cup-markers showed a decided
liking for arranging their sculpturings in regularly spaced rows."

That cup marks are an archaic form of inscription was first suggested by
Canon Greenwell many years ago. But more specifically adumbratory to our
own expression are the observations of Rivett-Carnac (_Jour. Roy.
Asiatic Soc._, 1903-515):

That the Braille system of raised dots is an inverted arrangement of cup
marks: also that there are strong resemblances to the Morse code. But no
tame and systemat