n the wind, whether the wind blew
from the sea or not. I think of things that were luminous with religious
zeal, mixed up, like everything else in Intermediateness, with black
marauders and from gray to brown beings of little personal ambitions.
There may have been a Richard Coeur de Lion, on his way to right
wrongs in Jupiter. It was right, relatively to 1851, to say that he was
a seed of a cabbage.

Prof. Coffin, U.S.N. (_Jour. Frank. Inst._, 88-151):

That, during the eclipse of August, 1869, he had noted the passage,
across his telescope, of several bright flakes resembling thistleblows,
floating in the sunlight. But the telescope was so focused that, if
these things were distinct, they must have been so far away from this
earth that the difficulties of orthodoxy remain as great, one way or
another, no matter what we think they were--

They were "well-defined," says Prof. Coffin.

Henry Waldner (_Nature_, 5-304):

That, April 27, 1863, he had seen great numbers of small, shining bodies
passing from west to east. He had notified Dr. Wolf, of the Observatory
of Zurich, who "had convinced himself of this strange phenomenon." Dr.
Wolf had told him that similar bodies had been seen by Sig. Capocci, of
the Capodimonte Observatory, at Naples, May 11, 1845.

The shapes were of great diversity--or different aspects of similar
shapes?

Appendages were seen upon some of them.

We are told that some were star-shaped, with transparent appendages.

I think, myself, it was a Mohammed and his Hegira. May have been only
his harem. Astonishing sensation: afloat in space with ten million wives
around one. Anyway, it would seem that we have considerable advantage
here, inasmuch as seeds are not in season in April--but the pulling back
to earth, the bedraggling by those sincere but dull ones of some time
ago. We have the same stupidity--necessary, functioning stupidity--of
attribution of something that was so rare that an astronomer notes only
one instance between 1845 and 1863, to an every-day occurrence--

Or Mr. Waldner's assimilative opinion that he had seen only ice
crystals.

Whether they were not very exclusive veils of a super-harem, or planes
of a very light material, we have an impression of star-shaped things
with transparent appendages that have been seen in the sky.

Hosts of small bodies--black, this time--that were seen by the
astronomers Herrick, Buys-Ballot, and De Cuppis (_L'Annee Scientifique_,
1860-25)