Lo! (9 page)

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Nose in the mud, and the bend of a thing to the ground. There are postures from which life is acting to escape: one of them, the embryonic crouch; another, whether in the degradation of worship, or as a convenience in eating grass, the bend of a neck to the ground. The all-day gnaw of the fields. But the eater of meat is released from the munch. One way to broaden horizons is to climb a tree, but another way is to stand on one’s own hind legs, away from the grass. A Bernard Shaw dines on hay, and still looks behind for a world that’s far ahead.

These are the disgusts for vegetarians, felt by the planters of Ceylon, in July, 1910. Very likely, I am prejudiced, myself. Perhaps I think that it is gross and brutal to eat anything at all. Why stop at vegetarianism? Vegetarianism is only a semi-ideal. The only heavenly thing to do is to do nothing. It is gross and brutal and animal-like to breathe.

We contribute to the records of strange alarms. There was one in Ceylon. Gigantic vegetarians were eating trees.

Millions of foreigners, big African snails
(Achatena fulica),
had suddenly appeared, massed in the one small district of Kalutara, near Colombo. Shells of the largest were six inches long. One of them that weighed three quarters of a pound was exhibited at the Colombo Museum. They were crowded, or massed, in one area of four square miles. One of the most important of the data is that this was in one of the mostly thickly populated parts of Ceylon. But nothing had been seen of these “gigantic snails,” until suddenly trees turned knobby with the monsters. It was as surprising as it would be, in New York, going out one morning, finding everything covered with huge warts. In Colombo was shown a photograph of a tree trunk, upon the visible part of which 227 snails were counted. The ground was as thick with them as were the trees.

They were explained.

So were the periwinkles of Worcester: but we had reasons for omitting from our credulities the story of the mad fishmonger of Worcester and his frenzied assistants.

In the
Zoologist,
February, 1911, Mr. E. Ernest Green, the Government Entomologist, of Ceylon, explained. Ten years before, Mr. Oliver Collet, in a place about fifty miles from Kalutara, had received “some of these snails” from Africa, and had turned them loose in his garden. Then, because of the damage by the monsters, he had destroyed all, he thought: but he was mistaken, some of them having survived. In Kalutara lived a native, who was related to other natives, in this other place (Watawella). In a parcel of vegetables that he had brought from Watawella two of these snails had been found, and had been turned loose in Kalutara, and the millions had descended from them. No names: no date.

All the accounts, in the
Ceylon Observer,
in issues from July 27 to September 23, are of a sudden and monstrous appearance of huge snails, packed thick, and not an observation upon them until all at once appeared millions. It takes one of these snails two years to reach full size. All sizes were in this invasion. “Never known in Ceylon before.” “How they came here continues to be a mystery.” According to Mr. Green’s report, published in a supplement of the
Ceylon Observer,
September 2, stories of the multitudes were not exaggerations: he described “giant snails in enormous numbers,” “a horde in a comparatively small space,” “a foreign pest.” This was in a region of many plantations, and even if the hordes could have been hidden from sight in a jungle, the sounds of their gnawing and of the snapping of branches of trees under the weight of them would have been heard far.

Plantations—and the ceaseless sound of the munch. The vegetarian bend—the sagging of trees, with their tops to the ground, heavy with snails. Natives, too, and the vegetarian bend—they bowed before the invasion. They would destroy no snails: it would be a sin. A bubonic crawl—lumps fall off and leave skeletons. There would be a sight like this, if a plague could hypnotize a nation, and eat, to their bones, rigid crowds. Tumors that crawl and devour— clothing and flesh disappearing—congregations of bones.

There was a hope for infidels. When a lost soul was found, there was rejoicing in Kalutara, and double pay was handed out, satanically. The planters raked up infidels, who sinfully gathered snails into mounds and burned them.

One of our reasons for being persuaded into accepting what we wanted to accept, in the matter of the phenomenon at Worcester, was that not only periwinkles appeared: also appeared crabs, which could not fit in with the conventional explanation. Simultaneously with the invasion of snails, there was another mysterious appearance. It was of unusually large scale-insects, which, according to Mr. Green
(Ceylon Observer,
August 9), had never before been recorded in Ceylon.

Maybe, in September, 1929, somebody lost an alligator. According to some of our data upon the insecurities of human mentality, there isn’t anything that can’t be lost by somebody. A look at
Losts and Founds—but
especially at
Losts
—confirms this notion.
New York American,
Sept. 19, 1929—an alligator, thirty-one inches long, killed in the Hackensack Meadows, N.J., by Carl Weise, 14 Peerless Place, North Bergen, N.J. But my attention is attracted by another “mysterious appearance” of an alligator, about the same time.
New York Sun,
September 23—an alligator, twenty-eight inches long, found by Ralph Miles, in a small creek, near Wolcott, N.Y.

In the
Gentleman’s Magazine,
August, 1866, somebody tells of a young crocodile, which, about ten years before, had been killed on a farm, at Over-Norton, Oxfordshire, England. In the November issue of this magazine, C. Parr, a well-known writer upon antiquarian subjects, says that, thirty years before, near Over-Norton, another young crocodile had been killed. According to Mr. Parr, still another young crocodile had been seen, at Over-Norton. In the
Field,
Aug. 23, 1862, is an account of a fourth young crocodile that had been seen, near Over-Norton.

It looks as if, for about thirty years, there had been a translatory current, especially selective of young crocodiles, between somewhere, say in Egypt, and an appearing-point near Over-Norton. If, by design and functioning, in the distribution of life in an organism, or in one organic existence, we mean anything so misdirected as a teleportation of young crocodiles to a point in a land where they would be out of adaptation, we evidently mean not so very intelligent design and functioning. Possibly, or most likely. It seems to me that an existence that is capable of sending young butchers to medical schools, and young boilermakers to studios, would be capable of sending young crocodiles to Over-Norton, Oxfordshire, England. When I go on to think of what gets into the Houses of Congress, I expect to come upon data of mysterious distributions of cocoanuts in Greenland.

There have often been sudden, astonishing appearances of mice, in great numbers. In the autumn of 1927, millions of mice appeared in the fields of Kern County, California. Kern County, California, is continuous with all the rest of a continent: so a sudden appearance of mice there is not very mysterious.

In May, 1832, mice appeared in the fields of Inverness-shire, Scotland. They were in numbers so great that foxes turned from their ordinary ways of making a living and caught mice. It is my expression that these mice may have arrived in Scotland, by way of neither land nor sea. If they were little known in Great Britain, the occurrence of such multitudes is mysterious. If they were unknown in Great Britain, this datum becomes more interesting. They were brown; white rings around necks; tails tipped with white. In the
Magazine of Natural History,
7-182, a correspondent writes that he had examined specimens, and had not been able to find them mentioned in any book.

I have four records of snakes that were said to have fallen from the sky, in thunderstorms. Miss Margaret McDonald, of Hawthorne, Mass., has sent me an account of many speckled snakes that appeared in the streets of Hawthorne, one time, after a thunderstorm.

Because of our expressions upon teleportative currents, I am most interested in repetitions in one place. Upon May 26, 1920, began a series of tremendous thunderstorms, in England, culminating upon the 29th, in a flood that destroyed fifty houses, in Louth, Lincolnshire. Upon the 26th, in a central part of London—Gower Street—near the British Museum, a crowd gathered outside Dr. Michie’s house. Gower Street is in Bloomsbury. To the Bloomsbury boarding houses go the American schoolmarms who visit London, and beyond the standards of Bloomsbury—primly pronounced
Bloomsbry
—respectability does not exist. Dr. Michie went out and asked the crowd what it, or anything else, could mean by being conspicuous in
Bloomsbry.
He was told that in an enclosure behind his house had been seen a snake.

In a positive sense, he did not investigate. He simply went to a part of the enclosure that was pointed out to him. Though, in his general practice, Dr. Michie was probably as scientific as anybody else, I must insist that this was no scientific investigation. He caught the snake.

The creature was explained. It was said to be a
naja haja,
a venomous snake from Egypt. Many oriental students live in Gower Street, to be near the British Museum and University College: in all probability the oriental snake had escaped from an oriental student.

You know, I don’t see that oriental students haying oriental snakes is any more likely than that American students should have American snakes: but there is an association here that will impress some persons. According to my experience, and according to data to come, I think that somebody “identified” an English adder, as an oriental snake, to fit in with the oriental students, and then fitted in the oriental students with the oriental snake, arguing reasonably that if an oriental snake was found where there were oriental students, the oriental snake had probably escaped from the oriental students. As I have pointed out, often enough, I know of no reasoning process that is not parthenogenetic, and if this is the way the identification and the explanation came about, the author of them has companionship with Plato and Darwin and Einstein, and earthworms.

The next day, there was another crowd: this one in a part of London far from Gower Street (Sydenham). A snake had been seen in a garden. Then a postman killed it. Oriental students do not live in Sydenham. This snake was an adder (London
Daily Express,
May 28).

Upon the 29th, in Store Street, near Gower Street, a butcher, Mr. G.H. Hill, looked out from his shop, and saw a snake wriggling along the sidewalk. He caught the snake which was probably an adder—picture of it in the
Weekly Dispatch,
of the 30th.

So there were some excitements, but they were mild, compared with what occurred in a crowded part of London, June 2nd. See the
Daily Express,
June 3. Outside the Roman Catholic Cathedral (Westminster) an adder appeared. This one stopped traffic, and had a wide audience that approached and retreated, and reacted with a surge to every wriggle, in such a disproportion that there’s no seeing how action and reaction can always be equal. Three men jumped on it. This one is told of, in the
Westminster and Pimlico News,
June 4 and 11, and here it is said that another adder had appeared in Westminster, having been caught under a mat at Morpethmansions. About this time, far away in North London (Willesden), an adder was killed in a field
(Times,
June 21).

Common sense tells me that probably some especially vicious joker had been scattering venomous snakes around. But some more common sense tells me that I cannot depend upon common sense.

I have received letters upon strange appearances of living things in tanks of rain water that seemed inaccessible except to falls from the sky. Mr. Edward Foster, of Montego Bay, Jamaica, B.W.I., has told me of crayfishes that were found in a cistern of rain water at Port Antonio, Jamaica. Still, such occurrences may be explained, conventionally. But, in the London
Daily Mail,
Oct. 6, 1921, Major Harding Cox, of Newick, Sussex, tells of an appearance of fishes that is more mysterious. A pond near his house had been drained, and the mud had been scraped out. It was dry from July to November, when it was refilled. In the following May, this pond teemed with tench. One day, thirty-seven of them were caught. Almost anybody, interested, will try to explain in terms of spawn carried by winds, or in mud on the feet of water birds, but I am going right ahead with ideas different from Darwinian principles of biologic distributions. Major Cox, who is a well-known writer, probably reviewed all conventional explanations, but still he was mystified. There would not be so much of the interesting in this story, were it not for his statement that never before had a tench been caught in this pond.

Eels are mysterious beings. It may be that what are called their “breeding habits” are teleportations. According to what is supposed to be known of eels, appearances of eels anywhere cannot be attributed to transportations of spawn. In the
New York Times,
Nov. 30, 1930, a correspondent tells of mysterious appearances of eels in old moats and in mountain tarns, which had no connection with rivers. Eels can travel over land, but just how they rate as mountain climbers, I don’t know.

In the
Amer. Jour. Sci.,
16-41, a correspondent tells of a ditch that had been dug on his farm, near Cambridge, Maryland. It was in ground that was a mile from any body of water. The work was interrupted by rain, which fell for more than a week. Then, in the rain water that filled the ditch, were found hundreds of perch, of two species. The fishes could not have developed from spawn, in so short a time: they were from four to seven inches long. But there was, here, a marksmanship that strikes my attention. Nothing is said of dead fishes lying upon the ground, at sides of the ditch: hundreds of perch arrived from somewhere, exactly in this narrow streak of water. There could have been nothing so scattering as a “shower.” Accept this story, and it looks as if to a new body of water, vibrating perhaps with the needs of vacancy, there was response somewhere else, and that, with accuracy, hundreds of fishes were teleported. If somebody should have faith in us, and dig a ditch and wait for fish, and get no fish, and then say that we’re just like all other theorists, we explain that, with life now well-established upon this earth, we regard many teleportations as mere atavisms, of no functional value. This idea of need and response, or of the actively functional, is taking us into a more advanced stage of a conception of an organic existence. For a while, we shall make no progress with this expression, having much work to do, to make acceptable that there is teleportation, whether organic, or not.