ing-suits along. So then that some clouds
come from inter-planetary oceans--of the Super-Sargasso Sea--if we still
accept the Super-Sargasso Sea--and shine, upon entering this earth's
atmosphere. In _Himmel und Erde_, February, 1889--a phenomenon of
transition of thirty years ago--Herr O. Jesse, in his observations upon
luminous night-clouds, notes the great height of them, and drolly or
sensibly suggests that some of them may have come from regions external
to this earth. I suppose he means only from other planets. But it's a
very droll and sensible idea either way.

In general I am accounting for a great deal of this earth's isolation:
that it is relatively isolated by circumstances that are similar to the
circumstances that make for relative isolation of the bottom of the
ocean--except that there is a clumsiness of analogy now. To call
ourselves deep-sea fishes has been convenient, but, in a
quasi-existence, there is no convenience that will not sooner or later
turn awkward--so, if there be denser regions aloft, these regions should
now be regarded as analogues of far-submerged oceanic regions, and
things coming to this earth would be like things rising to an attenuated
medium--and exploding--sometimes incandescently, sometimes with cold
light--sometimes non-luminously, like deep-sea fishes brought to the
surface--altogether conditions of inhospitality. I have a suspicion
that, in their own depths, deep-sea fishes are not luminous. If they
are, Darwinism is mere jesuitism, in attempting to correlate them. Such
advertising would so attract attention that all advantages would be more
than offset. Darwinism is largely a doctrine of concealment: here we
have brazen proclamation--if accepted. Fishes in the Mammoth Cave need
no light to see by. We might have an expression that deep-sea fishes
turn luminous upon entering a less dense medium--but models in the
American Museum of Natural History: specialized organs of luminosity
upon these models. Of course we do remember that awfully convincing
"dodo," and some of our sophistications we trace to him--at any rate
disruption is regarded as a phenomenon of coming from a dense to a less
dense medium.

An account by M. Acharius, in the _Transactions of the Swedish Academy
of Sciences_, 1808-215, translated for the _North American Review_,
3-319:

That M. Acharius, having heard of "an extraordinary and probably
hitherto unseen phenomenon," reported from near the town of Skening