e sun, Sept. 21, 1903, as the
almanac said, but we should, none of us, have liked to swear to the
fact."

This eclipse had been set down at nine-tenths of totality. The sky was
overcast at the time.

So it is not only that many eclipses unrecognized by astronomers as
eclipses have occurred, but that intermediatism, or impositivism, breaks
into their own seemingly regularized eclipses.

Our data of unregularized eclipses, as profound as those that are
conventionally--or officially?--recognized, that have occurred
relatively to this earth:

In _Notes and Queries_ there are several allusions to intense darknesses
that have occurred upon this earth, quite as eclipses occur, but that
are not referable to any known eclipsing body. Of course there is no
suggestion here that these darknesses may have been eclipses. My own
acceptance is that if in the nineteenth century anyone had uttered such
a thought as that, he'd have felt the blight of a Dominant; that
Materialistic Science was a jealous god, excluding, as works of the
devil, all utterances against the seemingly uniform, regular, periodic;
that to defy him would have brought on--withering by ridicule--shrinking
away by publishers--contempt of friends and family--justifiable grounds
for divorce--that one who would so defy would feel what unbelievers in
relics of saints felt in an earlier age; what befell virgins who forgot
to keep fires burning, in a still earlier age--but that, if he'd almost
absolutely hold out, just the same--new fixed star reported in _Monthly
Notices_. Altogether, the point in Positivism here is that by Dominants
and their correlates, quasi-existence strives for the positive state,
aggregating, around a nucleus, or dominant, systematized members of a
religion, a science, a society--but that "individuals" who do not
surrender and submerge may of themselves highly approximate to
positiveness--the fixed, the real, the absolute.

In _Notes and Queries_, 2-4-139, there is an account of a darkness in
Holland, in the midst of a bright day, so intense and terrifying that
many panic-stricken persons lost their lives stumbling into the canals.

_Gentleman's Magazine_, 33-414:

A darkness that came upon London, Aug. 19, 1763, "greater than at the
great eclipse of 1748."

However, our preference is not to go so far back for data. For a list of
historic "dark days," see Humboldt, _Cosmos_, 1-120.

_Monthly Weather Review_, March, 1886-79:

That, accordi