Page:The Book of the Damned (Fort, 1919).djvu/202

196 objects of July 29, 1878, stand out and proclaim themselves so that nothing but disregard of the intensity of mono-mania can account for their reception by the system:

Or the total eclipse of July 29, 1878, and the reports by Prof. Watson, from Rawlins, Wyoming, and by Prof. Swift, from Denver, Colorado: that they had seen two shining objects at a considerable distance from the sun.

It's quite in accord with our general expression: not that there is an Intra-Mercurial planet, but that there are different bodies, many vast things; near this earth sometimes, near the sun sometimes; orbitless worlds, which, because of scarcely any data of collisions, we think of as under navigable control—or dirigible super-constructions.

Prof. Watson and Prof. Swift published their observations.

Then the disregard that we can not think of in terms of ordinary, sane exclusions.

The text-book systematists begin by telling us that the trouble with these observations is that they disagree widely: there is considerable respectfulness, especially for Prof. Swift, but we are told that by coincidence these two astronomers, hundreds of miles apart, were illuded: their observations were so different

Prof. Swift (Nature, Sept. 19, 1878):

That his own observation was "in close approximation to that given by Prof. Watson."

In the Observatory, 2-161, Swift says that his observations and Watson's were "confirmatory of each other."

The faithful try again:

That Watson and Swift mistook stars for other bodies.

In the Observatory, 2-193, Prof. Watson says that he had previously committed to memory all stars near the sun, down to the seventh magnitude"

And he's damned anyway.

How such exclusions work out is shown by Lockyer (Nature, Aug. 20, 1878). He says: "There is little doubt that an Intra-Mercurial planet has been discovered by Prof. Watson."

That was before excommunication was pronounced.

He says:

"If it will fit one of Leverrier's orbits"

It didn't fit.

In Nature, 21-301, Prof. Swift says: