by Charles Fort
In November, 1852, a much talked about subject, in England, was reindeer’s ears. There were letters to the newspapers. Reindeer’s ears came up for discussion in Parliament. Persons who had never seen a reindeer were dogmatizing upon reindeer’s ears. It had been reported that among reindeer’s skins that had arrived at Tromso, Norway, from Spitzbergen were some with the ears clipped.
Many Englishmen believed that Sir John Franklin had sailed through the Northwest Passage, and that survivors of his expedition were trying to communicate with occasional hunters in Spitzbergen, by marking reindeer. Spitzbergen was uninhabited, and no other explanation could be thought of. Spitzbergen is about 450 miles north of North Cape, Norway, and possibly an exceptional reindeer could swim this distance, but this is a story of many reindeer. All data upon drifting ice are upon southward drifts.
Branded reindeer, presumably from Norway or Finland, continued to be reported in Spitzbergen, but by what means they made the journey never has been found out. Lamont, in Yachting in Arctic Seas, p. 110, says that he had heard of these marked animals, and that, in August, 1869, he had shot two stags, each having the left ear “back half-cropped.” “I showed them to Hans, a half-bred Lapp, accustomed to deal with reindeer since infancy, and he had no doubt whatever of these animals having been marked by the hands of men.” Upon page 357, Lamont tells of having shot two more reindeer, similarly marked. Nordenskjold (Voyage of the Vega, vol. 1, p. 135) tells of these marked reindeer, some of them marked also upon antlers, and traces reports back to the year 1785. Upon one of these antlers was tied a bird’s leg.
Wherever they are coming from, and however they are doing it, or however it is being done to them, the marked reindeer are still appearing in Spitzbergen. Some of them that were shot, in the summer of 1921, are told of in the Field, Dec. 24, 1921. It must be that hundreds, or thousands, of these animals have appeared in Spitzbergen. There is no findable record of one reindeer having ever been seen drifting on ice in that direction. As to the possibility of swimming, I note that Nova Zembla is much nearer the mainland than is Spitzbergen, but that Nordenskjold says that the marked reindeer do not appear in Nova Zembla.
8
There is no way of judging these stories. Every canon, or device, of inductive logic, conceived of by Francis Bacon and John Stuart Mill has been employed in investigating some of them, but logic is ruled by the fishmonger. Some of us will think as we’re told to think, and be smug and superior, in rejecting the yarns: others will like to flout the highest authority, and think that there may be something in them, feeling that they’re the ones who know better, and be just as smug and superior. Smug, we’re going to be, anyway, just so long as we’re engaged in any profession, art, or business, and have to make balance somewhere against a consciousness of daily stupidities. I should think that somebody in a dungeon, where it is difficult to make bad mistakes, would be of the least smug. Still, I don’t know: I have noted serene and self-satisfied looks of mummies. The look of an egg is of complacency. There is no way of judging our data. There are no ways, except arbitrary ways, of judging anything. Courts of appeals are of the busiest of human institutions. The pragmatist realizes all this, and says that there is no way of judging anything except upon the basis of the work-out. I am a pragmatist, myself, in practice, but I see no meaning in pragmatism, as a philosophy. Nobody wants a philosophy of description, but does want a philosophy of guidance. But pragmatists are about the same as guides on the top of a mountain, telling climbers, who have reached the top that they are on the summit. “Take me to my destination,” says a traveler. “Well, I can’t do that,” says a guide, “but I can tell you when you get there.”
My own acceptance is that ours is an organic existence, and that our thoughts are the phenomena of its eras, quite as its rocks and trees and forms of life are; and that I think as I think, mostly, though not absolutely, because of the era I am living in. This is very much the philosophy of the Zeitgeist, but that philosophy, as ordinarily outlined, is Absolutism, and I am trying to conceive of a schedule of predetermined—though not absolutely predetermined—developments in one comprehensibly-sized existence, which may be only one of hosts of other existences, in which the scheduled eras correspond to the series of stages in the growth, say, of an embryo. There is, in our expressions, considerable of the philosophy of Spinoza, but Spinoza conceived of no outlines within which to think.
In anything like a satisfactory sense there is no way of judging our data, nor of judging anything else: but of course we have ways of forming opinions that are often somewhat serviceable. By means of litmus, a chemist can decide whether a substance is an acid, or an alkali. So nearly is this a standard to judge by that he can do business upon this basis. Nevertheless there are some substances that illustrate continuity, or represent the merging-point between acids and alkalis; and there are some substances that under some conditions are acids, and under other conditions are alkalis. If there is any mind of any scientist that can absolutely pronounce either for or against our data, it must be more intelligent than litmus paper.
A barrier to rational thinking, in anything like a final sense, is continuity, because of which only fictitiously can anything be picked out of a nexus of all things phenomenal, to think about. So it is not mysterious that philosophy, with its false, or fictitious, differences, and therefore false, or fictitious, problems, is as much baffled as it was several thousand years ago.
But if, for instance, no two leaves of any tree are exactly alike, so that all appearances are set apart from all other appearances, though at the same time all interrelated, there is discontinuity, as well as continuity. So then the frustrations of thought are double. Discontinuity is a barrier to anything like a finally sane understanding, because the process of understanding is a process of alleged assimilation of something with something else: but the discontinuous, or the individualized, or the unique, is the unassimilable.
One explanation of our survival is that there is underlying guidance, or control, or organic government, which to high degree regularizes the movements of the planets, but is less efficient in its newer phenomena. Another explanation is that we survive, because everybody with whom we are in competition, is equally badly off, mentally.
Also, in other ways, how there can be survivals of persons and prestiges, or highest and noblest of reputations, was illustrated recently. About April Fool’s Day, 1930, the astronomers announced that, years before, the astronomer Lowell, by mathematical calculations of the utmost complexity, or bewilderingly beyond the comprehension of anybody except an astronomer, had calculated the position of a ninth major planet in this solar system: and that it had been discovered almost exactly in the assigned position. Then columns, and pages of special articles, upon this triumph of astronomical science. But then a doubt appeared—there were a few stray paragraphs telling that, after all, the body might not be the planet of Lowell’s calculations—the subject was dropped for a while. But, in the public mind, the impressions worked up by spreadheads enormously outweighed whatever impressions came from obscure paragraphs, and the general idea was that, whatever it was, there had been another big, astronomical triumph. It is probable that the prestige of the astronomers, instead of suffering, was boomed by this overwhelming of obscure paragraphs by spreadheads.
I do not think that it is vanity, in itself, that is so necessary to human beings: it is compensatory vanity that one must have. Ordinarily, one pays little if any attention to astronomers, but now and then come consoling reflections upon their supposed powers. Somewhere in everything that one does there is error. Somebody is not an astronomer, but he classes himself with astronomers, as differentiated from other and “lower” forms of life and mind. Consciousness of the irrationality, or stupidity, pervading his own daily affairs, is relieved by a pride in himself and astronomers, as contrasted with dogs and cats.
According to the Lowell calculations, the new planet was at a mean distance of about forty-five astronomical units from the sun. B
ut, several weeks after April Fool’s Day, the object was calculated to be at a mean, or very mean, distance of 217 units. I do not say that an educated cat or dog could do as well, if not better: I do say that there is a great deal of delusion in the gratification that one feels when thinking of himself and astronomers, and then looking at a cat or a dog.
The next time anybody thinks of astronomers, and looks at a cat, and feels superior, and would like to keep on feeling superior, let him not think of a cat and a mouse. The cat lies down and watches a mouse. The mouse moves away. The cat knows it. The mouse wobbles nearer. The cat knows whether it’s coming or going.
In April, 1930, the astronomers told that Lowell’s planet was receding so fast from the sun that soon it would become dimmer and dimmer.
New York Times, June 1, 1930—Lowell’s planet approaching the sun—for fifty years it would become brighter and brighter.
A planet is rapidly approaching the sun. The astronomers publish highly technical “determinations” upon its rate of recession. Nobody that I know of wrote one letter to any newspaper. One reason is that one fears to bring upon oneself the bullies of science. In July, 1930, the artist, Walter Russell, sent some views that were hostile to conventional science to the New York Times. Times, August 3rd—a letter from Dr. Thomas Jackson—a quotation from it, by which we have something of an idea of the self-apotheosis of these pundits, who do not know, of a thing in the sky, whether it is coming or going:
“For nearly three hundred years no one, not even a scientist, has had the temerity to question Newton’s laws of gravitation. Such an act on the part of a scientist would be akin to blasphemy, and for an artist to commit such an absurdity is, to treat it kindly, an evidence of either misguidance or crass ignorance of the enormity of his act.”
If we’re going to be kind about this, I simply wonder, without commenting, what such a statement as that for nearly three hundred years nobody had ever questioned Newton’s laws of gravitation, is evidence of.
But in the matter of Lowell’s planet, I neglected to point out how the astronomers corrected their errors, and that is a consideration of importance to us. Everything that was determined by their mathematics turned out wrong—planet coming instead of going—period of revolution 265 years, instead of 3,000 years—eccentricity of orbit three tenths instead of nine tenths. They corrected, according to photographs.
It is mathematical astronomy that is opposing our own notions.
Photographic astronomy can be construed any way one pleases—say that the stars are in a revolving shell, about a week’s journey away from this earth.
Everything mathematical cited by me, in this Lowell-planet-controversy, was authoritatively said by somebody one time, and equally authoritatively denied by somebody else, some other time. Anybody who dreams of a mathematician’s heaven had better reconsider, if of its angels there be more than one mathematician.
9
I have come upon a story of somebody, in Philadelphia, who, having heard that a strange wild animal was prowling in New Jersey, announced that he had caught it. He exhibited something, as the “Jersey Devil.” I have to accept that this person was the press agent of a dime museum, and that the creature that he exhibited was a kangaroo, to which he had attached tin wings and green whiskers. But, if better-established branches of biology are subject to Nature-fakery, what can be expected in our newer biology, with all the insecurities of newness?
“Jersey Devils” have been reported other times, but, though I should not like to be so dogmatic as to say that there are no “Jersey Devils,” I have had no encouragement investigating them. One of the stories, according to a clipping that was sent to me by Miss F.G. Talman, of Woodbury, N.J., appeared in the Woodbury Daily Times, Dec. 15, 1925. William Hyman, upon his farm, near Woodbury, had been aroused by a disturbance in his chicken coop. He shot and killed a never-before-heard-of-animal. I have written to Mr. Hyman, and have no reason to think that there is a Mr. Hyman. I have had an extensive, though one-sided, correspondence, with people who may not be, about things that probably aren’t. For the latest account of the “Jersey Devil,” see the New York Times, Aug. 6, 1930.
Remains of a strange animal, teleported to this earth from Mars or the moon—very likely, or not so likely—found on a bank of a stream in Australia. See the Adelaide Observer, Sept. 15, 1883—that Mr. Hoad, of Adelaide, had found on a bank of Brungle Creek, a headless trunk of a pig-like animal, with an appendage that curved inward, like the tail of a lobster. New Zealand Times, May 9, 1883—excitement near Masterton—unknown creature at large—curly hair, short legs, and broad muzzle. Dogs sent after it—one of the dogs flayed by it—rest of the dogs running away—probably “with their tails between their legs,” but the reporter overlooking this convention.
There have been stories of strange animals that have appeared at times of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. See Sea Serpent stories, about the time of the Charleston earthquake. About the same time, following a volcanic eruption in New Zealand, there were stories in New Zealand.
The volcano Rotomahana was a harsh, black cup that had spilled scenery. Or the somber thing was a Puritan in finery. It had belied its dourness with two broad decorations of siliceous deposits, shelving down to its base, one of them the White Terrace and the other the Pink Terrace. These gay formations sloped from the bare, black crater to another inconsistency, which was a grove of acacias. All around, the famous flowering bushes of this district made more sinful contrast with a gaunt, towering thing. Upon the 10th of June, 1886, this Black Fanatic slung a constitutional amendment. It was reformation, in the sense that virtue is uniformity that smothers variation. It drabbedtits gay terraces: the grove of acacias was a mound of mud: it covered over the flowering bushes with smooth, clean mud. It was a virtuously dismal scene, but, as in all other reformations, a hankering survived in it. A left-over living thing made tracks in the smoothness of mud. In the New Zealand Herald, Oct. 13, 1886, a correspondent writes of having traversed this dull, dead expanse, having seen it marked with the footprints of a living creature. He thought that the marks were a horse’s. But there was another story that was attracting attention at this time, and his letter was in allusion to it. Maoris were telling of a wandering animal, unknown to them, that had appeared in this desert of mud. It was a creature with antlers, or a stag, according to descriptions, an animal that had never been seen, or had never before been seen, by Maoris.
Just what relation I think I can think of, between volcanic eruptions and mysterious appearances of living things may seem obscure. But I have been impressed with several accounts of astonishing revivifications in regions that were volcanically desolated. Quick growths of plants have been attributed to the fertilizing properties of volcanic dust: nevertheless writers have expressed astonishment. If we can have an organic view of our existence, we can think of restorative teleportations to a place of desolation, quite as we think of restorations occurring in places of injury in an animal-organism.
There are phenomena upon the borderline between the organic and the inorganic that we can think of: such as restorations of the forms of broken crystals in a solution. It is by automatic purpose, or design or providence, or guidance by which lost parts of a starfish are regenerated. In higher animal-organisms, distinct structures, if lost, mostly are not restored, but injured tissues are. Still even in the higher organisms there are some restorations of mutilated parts, such as renewals of forms” of a bird’s clipped wing-feathers. The tails of some lizards, if broken off, renew.
For a conventional explanation of reviving plants in a fern forest that had been destroyed by flows of liquid lava, from the volcano Kilauea, Hawaii, see an account, by Dr. G.R. Wieland, in Science, April 11, 1930. Dr. Wieland considers his own explanation “amazing.” I’d not say that ours is more than that.
Strange animals have appeared and they may have been teleported to this earth from other parts of an existence, but the easiest way of accounting for strange animals is to say t
hat they are hybrids. Of course I could handle, or manhandle, this subject any way to suit me, and be about as reasonable one way as another. I could quote many authorities against the occurrence of bizarre hybrids, leaving hard to explain, in terms of terrestrial origin, strange creatures that have appeared upon this earth. There are biologists who will not admit fertility between creatures as much alike as hares and rabbits. Nevertheless, I think that there have been strange hybrids.
The cow that gave birth to two lambs and a calf.
I don’t know how that will strike all minds, but to the mind of a standardized biologist, I’d not be much more preposterous, if I should tell of an elephant that had produced two bicycles and a baby elephant.
The story is told in the Toronto Globe, May 25, 1889. It is said that a member of the staff of the Globe had been sent to investigate this outrage upon conventional obstetrics. The reporter went to the farm of Mr. John H. Carter, at South Simcoe, and then wrote that he had seen the two lambs, which were larger and coarser than ordinary, or less romantically derived, lambs, having upon their breasts tufts of hair like calves’ hair. Other newspapers—Quebec Daily Mercury, for instance—published other details, such as statements by well-known stockbreeders that they had examined the lambs, and were compelled to accept the story of their origin.
So I am harming our idea that creatures, unlike anything known upon this earth, but that have appeared upon this earth, may have been teleported from Mars or the moon: but I am supporting our general principle that, whether in biology, astronomy, obstetrics, or any other field of research, everything that is, also isn’t; and that everywhere there are data, partly sense and partly nonsense, that oppose established nonsense that has partly some sense to it.
