Lo!

by Charles Fort

  There is some, unknown condition that ameliorates the climate of Great Britain, as if this center of colony-sporing were prepared for by an automatic purposefulness, and protected from the rigors of the same latitudes in the west. Once upon a time, one of the wiseman’s most definite concepts was the Gulf Stream. They wrote about its “absolute demarcation” from surrounding waters. They were as sure of the Gulf Stream as they are today that the stars are trillions of miles away. Lately so much has been written upon the inconceivability of the Gulf Stream having effect upon climate farther from its source than somewhere around Cape Hatteras that I shall not go into that subject. Something is especially warming Great Britain, and it cannot be thought to be the Gulf Stream. It may be an organically providential amelioration. It may play out, when the functioning period of Great Britain passes away. I am not much given to prophecy, but I’ll take this chance—that if England loses India, we may expect hard winters in England.

  Our acceptance is that nations work together, or operate against one another functionally, or as guided by the murderous supervisions of a whole Organism. Or, apologizing again, I call such organized slaughter, super-metabolism. So enormous is the subject of human history, as affected by its partness in a whole, that I shall reserve it for treatment some other time. Monastically—though some other time I shall pluralistically take another view, as well—the acceptance is that human beings have not existed as individuals any more than have cells in an animal organism existences of their own. Still, one must consider that there is something of individuality, or contrariness in every cell. This view of submergence is now so widespread that it is expressed by writers in many fields of thought. But they lack the concept of a whole, trying to think of a social organism as a whole, though clearly every social quasi-organism has relations with other social quasi-organisms, and is dependent enormously, or vitally, upon environment. Other thinkers, or more than doubtful thinkers, say that they think of the unthinkable Absolute as the whole.

  I have a notion that, for ages, as a factor in an automatic plan, the Australian part of our existence’s nucleus, this earth, was reserved. If this be not easy to think, it is equally hard to think why Australia, in its fertile parts, was not colonized by Asiatics. There was relative isolation. But it was not geographical isolation: the distance between Cape York, Australia, and New Guinea is only 100 miles. There was an approximation to isolation so extreme that one type of animal life grew up and prevailed. This gap was jumped by the marsupials of Australia. Then the question is—why, if not obediently to an inhibition, was it not jumped the other way? Of course we can have no absolute expressions, but just when the dingoes and the wild cattle of Queensland first arrived in Australia is still considered debatable.

  There were civilizations in the Americas, but they were civilizations that could not resist the relatively late-appearing Europeans. Long before, there had been other civilizations in Central America, but they had disappeared, or they had been removed. The extinction of them is, by archaeologists, considered as mysterious, as is the extinction of the dinosaurs, by the paleontologists—or as, by cells of a later period, might be considered the designed and scheduled, or purposeful, extinction of cartilage cells in an embryo.

  The expression is that Australia and the Americas were reserved, as relative blanks, in which human life upon this earth could shake off, after a fashion, many conventions and traditional hamperings, and start somewhat anew.

  Drones appear in a beehive. They are reserved. At first they contribute nothing to the welfare of the hive, but there is a providence that looks after them just so long as they will be of future use. This is automatic foresight and purpose, according to automatic plan, in a beehive, regarded as a whole. The God of the bees is the Hive. There is no necessity to think of an external control, nor of any being, presiding over the bees and directing their affairs.

  Reservations besides those in the affairs of bees and men are common. Some trees have buds that are not permitted to develop. These are known as dormants, and are held in reserve, against the possibility of a destruction of the tree’s developed leaves. In one way or another, there are reservations in every organism.

  We think of inter-mundane isolations that have been maintained, as once the Americas were kept separated from Europe, not by vast and untraversable distances, but by belief in vast and untraversable distances. I have no sense of loneliness in thinking that the inorganic sciences that are, by inertia, holding out for the isolation of this earth, have lost much power over minds. There are dissatisfactions and contempts everywhere.

  There may be civilizations in the lands of the stars, or it may be that, in the concavity of a starry shell, vast, habitable regions have been held in reserve for colonization from this earth. Though there is considerable opposition to wars, they are, as at any moving picture place, one can see, still popular: but other eliminations of human beings have waned, and it is likely that for a long time birth control will have no more than its present control upon births. The pestilences that used to remove millions are no longer so much heard of. It may be that an organic existence is, by lessening eliminations, preparing a pressure of populations upon this earth that can have relief only in enormous colonizing outlets somewhere else. It is as if concordantly, the United States has shut down, as a relief, to superabundances of people in Europe, and as if representing the same purpose or plan, Australia and Canada, as well as the United States, are shutting out Asiatics. It is as if cooperatively with the simultaneous variations of need, aviation is developing, as the means of migratory reliefs—

  If there be a nearby land that is a revolving shell of stars—

  And if, according to data that I have collected, there be not increasing coldness and attenuation of air, past a zone not far from this earth.

  Nineteen hundred and thirty something or another—may be nineteen hundred and forty or fifty—

  There’s a flash in the sky. It is said to be a meteor. There’s a glow. That is said to be an aurora borealis—

  The time has come.

  The slogan comes—

  Skyward ho!

  The treks to the stars. Flows of adventurers—and the movietone news—press agents and interviews—and somebody about to sail to Lyra reduces expenses by letting it be known what brand of cigarettes he’ll take along—

  Caravels with wings—and the covered planes of the sky—and writers of complaints to the newspapers: this dumping of milk bottles and worse from the expeditions is an outrage. New comets are watched from this earth—long trains of voyagers to the stars, when at night they turn on their lights. New constellations appear—the cities of the lands of the stars.

  And then the commonplaceness of it all.

  Personally conducted tours to Taurus and Orion. Summer vacations on the brink of Vega. “My father tells of times when people, before going to the moon, made their wills.” “Just the same there was something peaceful about those old skies. It’s getting on my nerves, looking up at all those lip stick and soap and bathing suit signs.”

  Or my own acceptance that there can be no understanding of our existence, if be overlooked the irony of it all—

  The aristocratic astronomers—their alleged rapport with infinitude—their reputed familiarity with the ultra-remote—the academic—the classical—

  One looks up and sees, instead, an illuminated representation of a can of spaghetti in tomato sauce, in the sky.

  The commonplaceness of it all. Of course the stars are near. Who, but a few old fossils, ever thought otherwise? Does the writer of this book think that he found out anything new? All these notions of his were matters of common knowledge, away back in the times of ancient Greece.

  22

  That, in the summer of 1880, some other world, or whatever we’ll call it, after a period of hard luck, cheered up—and cast off its despairs—which came to this earth, where there is always room for still more melancholy—in long, black, funereal processions.

  Aug. 18
, 1880—people, near the waterfront of Havre, France, saw the arrival of a gloom. Sails, in the harbor of Havre, suddenly turned black. But, like every other gloom, this one alternated with alleviations. The sails flapped white. There was a flutter of black and white. Then enormous numbers of the units of these emotions were falling into the streets of Havre. They were long, black flies.

  In an editorial, in the London Daily Telegraph, August 21st, it is said that this appearance of flies, at Havre, was a “puzzle of the most mysterious kind.” These flies had come down from a point over the English Channel. They had not come from England. I have searched widely in continental publications, and there is no findable record of any observation upon this vast swarm of flies, until it came down from the sky, over the English Channel. Pilot boats, returning to Havre, came in black with them. See the Journal des Debats (Paris) August 20—that they were exhausted flies, which fell, when touched, and could not move, when picked up. Or they may have been chilled into torpidity. Presumably there were survivors, but most of these helpless flies fell into the water, and the swarm, as a swarm, perished. If this is a puzzle of the “most mysterious kind,” I am going to be baffled for a description, as we go along. I don’t know what comes after the superlative.

  Three days later, another vast swarm of long, black flies appeared somewhere else. Just how much we’re going to be puzzled by more than the most mysterious depends upon how far this other place was from Havre. See the New York Times, September 8—that, upon August 21st, a cloud of long, black flies, occupying twenty minutes in passing, had appeared at East Pictou, Nova Scotia. Halifax Citizen, August 21—that they had passed Lismore, flying low, some of them appearing to fall into the water.

  Upon the 2nd of September, another swarm came down from the sky. It appeared suddenly, at one place, and there is no findable record that it was seen anywhere else, over land or water of this earth. It is told of, in the Entomologists’ Monthly Magazine, November, 1880—off the coast of Norfolk, England—an avalanche that overwhelmed a schooner—“millions and millions of flies.” The sailors were forced to take shelter, and it was five hours before they could return to the decks. “The air became clear, about 4 p.m., when the flies were thrown overboard by shovelfuls, and the remainder were washed off the decks by buckets of water and brooms.” It was another appearance of exhausted, or torpid, flies.

  Scientific American, 43-193—“On the afternoon of Saturday, September 4th, the steamboat Martin encountered, on the Hudson River, between New Hamburg and Newburgh, a vast cloud of flies. It reached southward, from shore to shore, as far as the eye could reach, and resembled a drift of black snow. The insects were flying northward, as thick as snowflakes driven by a strong wind.” They were long, black flies. Halifax Citizen, September 7—that, upon the 5th of September, a compact cloud of flies, occupying half an hour in passing, had appeared at Guysboro, Nova Scotia, hosts of them falling into the water.

  I think that this crowd of flies was not the same as the Hudson River crowd, even though that was flying northward. So I think, because the flies of Guysboro, like the flies of Havre, came as if from a point over the ocean. “They came from the east” (Brooklyn Eagle, September 7).

  The look of the data is that, with an ocean between appearing-points, a bulk of flies, of the size of a minor planet, dividing into swarms, somewhere in outer space, came to this earth from somewhere else. It is simply a matter of thinking of one origin, and then thinking that that origin could not have been in either North America or Europe.

  If we can think that these flies came to this earth from the moon, or Mars, or from a fertile region in the concave land of the stars, that is interesting; but by this time we have passed out of the kindergarten of our notions, and are ready to take up not merely mysterious appearances, but mysterious appearances that will be data for our organic expressions. In data upon insect swarms of the summer of 1921, there is suggestion not only of conventionally unaccountable appearances of insect swarms, but of appearances in response to need. If one has no very active awareness for any need for insects that is because one is not thinking far enough back into interrelations of bugs and all other things.

  In the summer of 1921, England was bereft of insects. The destruction of insects, in England, by the drought of 1921, was, very likely, unequaled at any other time, anyway for a century or more. The story of dwindling and disappearing is told, in Garden Life, for instance—aphides becoming fewer and fewer—absence of mosquitoes, because of the drying of the ponds—not one dragon fly all summer—scarcity of ants—midges almost entirely absent—stricken fields in which not a butterfly was seen—ordinary flies uncommon, and bluebottles exterminated. See the Field and the Entomologists’ Record for similar accounts.

  Then came clouds of insects and plagues of insects: foreign insects, and unknown insects. Anybody can find the data in various English publications. I note here that one of the swarms of exotic insects was of large fireflies that appeared in Wales (Cardiff Western Mail, July 12). Locusts appeared (London Weekly Dispatch, July 6). I suppose that almost any conventional entomologist will question my statement that vast swarms of unknown insects appeared at this time, in England: nevertheless, in the London Daily Express, September 24, Prof. Le Froy is quoted as saying, of a species of stinging insects, that it was unknown to him.

  Destructions that were approaching extermination—and then multitudinous replenishments. I have searched without finding one datum for thinking that one of these replenishments was seen crossing the Channel. Three of them were of foreign insects.

  Once upon a time, according to ancient history, Somebody so loved this world that he gave to it his only begotten son. In this year 1921, according to more recent records, Something gave to the streets of London its many forgotten women. To starving humans it gave a dole. But, when its insects dwindled away, it bestowed profusions of bugs.

  All our expressions are in terms of relative importance.

  In the summer of 1869, in many parts of England, there was a scarcity of insects that was in some ways more remarkable than that of 1921. This scarcity was discussed in all entomological magazines of the time, and was mentioned in newspapers and other publications. For one of the discussions, see the Field, July 31 and Aug. 14, 1869. Most widely noticed was the absence of one of the commonest of insects, the small, white butterfly, Pieris rapae. Some of the other ordinarily plentiful species were scarcely findable.

  In the London Times, July 17, a correspondent, in Ashford, Kent, writes that a tropical, or subtropical insect, a firefly (Lampyris Italia) had been caught in his garden. In the Times, of the 20th, the presence of this insect in England is seemingly explained. Someone else writes that, upon June 29th, at Dover, only fifteen miles from Ashford, he had released twelve fireflies, which he had brought in a bottle from Coblenz. But in the same issue of this newspaper, a third correspondent writes that, at Catherham, Surrey, had appeared many fireflies. Weekly Dispatch (London)—“They were so numerous that people called them a nuisance.” Even a firefly can’t fly its fire, without a man with a bottle appearing and saying that he had let it go. There will be accounts of other swarms. Only Titans, who had uncorked Mammoth Caves, in mountains of glass, could put in claims for letting them go from bottles.

  The coast of Lincolnshire—and a riddance long and wide. The coast of Norfolk—several miles of tragedy. In the Zoologist, 1869-1839, someone reports belts of water, some a few yards wide, and some hundreds of yards wide, “of a thick, pea-soup appearance,” so colored by drowned aphides, off the coast of Lincolnshire; and, off the coast of Norfolk, a band of drowned ladybirds, about ten feet wide, and two or three miles long. Wherever this little dead comet came from, there is no findable record that it had been seen alive anywhere in Europe.

  Upon the 26th of July, columns of aphides came down from the sky, at Bury St. Edmunds, about sixty miles south of the coast of Lincolnshire massed so that they gave off a rank odor, and so dense that, for anybody surrounded by them, it was dif
ficult to breathe. Upon the same day, at Chelmsford, about forty miles south of Bury St. Edmunds, appeared masses of these insects equally vast. See Gardeners’ Chronicle, July 31, August 7.

  Aphides had streaked the ocean. Columns of others had come down, like vast, green stems, from their fern-like clouds. Less decoratively, others darkened the sky. A new enormity appeared upon the coast of Essex, about the first of August. According to correspondence, in the Maidstone Journal, August 23, fogs of aphides had shut off sunlight. They appeared in other parts of southeastern England. “They swarmed to such an extent as to darken the air for days together, and to render it almost dangerous to the sight of men and animals to be out of doors.”

  The 9th of August—the first of the ladybirds that reached England alive were reported at Ramsgate. Three days later, between Margate and Nore Light, near the mouth of the Thames, thousands of ladybirds speckled a vessel. This diseased appearance took on a more serious look, with blotches of small, yellow, black-marked flies. Then spread a cosmetic of butterflies.

  These were van-swarms. Upon the 13th, an invasion was on. I quote chiefly from the London Times.

  A cloud was seen over the Channel, not far from land, moving as if from Calais, reaching Ramsgate, discharging ladybirds upon the town. They drifted into piles in the streets. The town turned yellow. These were not red ladybirds. There would be less mystery, if they were. People in the town were alarmed by the drifting piles in the streets, and a new job, worth the attention of anybody who collects notes upon odd employments, appeared. Ladybird shovelers were hired to throw the drifts into sewers.