Free New Lands by Charles Fort

data were “either roughly approximate or grossly incorrect, and so constantly recurring that it was impossible to explain that they were ordinary errors of observation.” Burnham lists thirty pages of errors.
    Following is a paper by E.B. Knobel, who published seventeen pages of instances in which, in his opinion, Mr. Burnham had been too severe. Knowing of no objection by Burnham to this reduction, we have left thirteen pages of errors in one standard astronomical work, which may fairly be considered as representative of astronomical work in general, inasmuch as it was, in the opinion of the Astronomer Royal, a book of “sterling merit.”
    I think that now we have accomplished something. After this we should all get along more familiarly and agreeably together.
    Thirteen pages of errors in one standard astronomical work are reassuring; there is a likable fallibility here that should make for better relations. If the astronomers were what they think they are, we might as well make squeaks of disapproval against Alpine summits. As to astronomers who calculate positions of planets—of whom he was one—Newcomb, in Reminiscences of an Astronomer, says—“The men who have done it are therefore, in intellect, the select few of the human race—an aristocracy above all others in the scale of being.” We could never get along comfortably with such awful selectness as that. We are grateful to Mr. Sadler, in the cause of more comfortable relations.

6
    English Mechanic, 56-184:
    That, upon April 25, 1892, Archdeacon Nouri climbed Mt. Ararat. It was his hope that he should find something of archaeologic compensation for his clamberings. He found Noah’s Ark.
    About the same time, Dr. Holden, Director of the Lick Observatory, was watching one of the polished and mysterious-looking instruments that, in the new ikonology, have replaced the images of saints. Dr. Holden was waiting for the appointed moment of the explosion of a large quantity of dynamite in San Francisco Bay. The moment came. The polished little “saint” revealed to the faithful scientist. He wrote an account of the record, and sent copies to the San Francisco newspapers. Then he learned that the dynamite had not been fired off. He sent a second messenger after the first messenger, and, because messengers sometimes have velocities proportional to urgencies—“the Observatory escaped ridicule by a narrow margin.” See the Observatory, 20-467. This revelation came from Prof. Colton, who, though probably faithful to all the “saints,” did not like Dr. Holden.
    The system that Archdeacon Nouri represented lost its power because its claims exceeded all conceivableness, and because, in other respects, of its inertness to the obvious. The system that Dr. Holden represented is not different: there is the same seeing of whatever may be desirable, and the same profound meditations upon the remote, with the same inattention to fairly acceptable starting points. The astronomers like to tell audiences of just what gases are burning in an unimaginably remote star, but have never reasonably made acceptable, for instance, that this earth is round, to start with. Of course I do not mean to say that this, or anything else, can be positively proved, but it is depressing to hear it said, so authoritatively, that the round shadow of this earth upon the moon proves that this earth is round, whereas records of angular shadows are common, and whereas, if this earth were a cube, its straight sides would cast a rounded shadow upon the convex moon. That the first part of a receding vessel to disappear should be the lower part may be only such an illusion of perspective as that by which railroad tracks seem to dip toward each other in the distance. Meteors sometimes appear over one part of the horizon and then seem to curve down behind the opposite part of the horizon, whereas they describe no such curve, because to a string of observers each observer is at the center of the seeming