Empire unusual suggested

38 PASSPORT TO MAGONIA
seen dancing. The grass never gets high in the lines of the ring, for
it is only the shortest and finest kind that grows there. In the middle,
fairy-mushrooms grow in a circle, and the fairies use them to sit
on [!]. They are very little people, and are very fond of dancing
and singing. They wear green coats, and sometimes red caps and
red coats.
On November 12, 1968, the Argentine press reported that near
Necochea, 310 miles south of Buenos Aires, a civilian pilot had reported
a strange pattern on the ground and investigated it with
several military men. Walking to the spot T where a flying saucer
was earlier alleged to have landed, they found a circle six yards
in diameter where the earth was calcined. Inside this circle grew
eight giant white mushrooms, one of them nearly three feet in
diameter. In Santa Fe province, other extraordinary mushrooms
have been discovered under similar circumstances.
Another writer, reporting on Scandinavian legends, noted that
elves are depicted there as beings with oversized heads, tiny legs,
and long arms:
They are responsible for the bright-green circles, called elf dans,
that one sees on the lawns. Even nowadays, when a Danish farmer
comes across such a ring at dawn, he says that the elves have come
there during the night to dance. 11
It is amusing to note that attempts have been made, in the
early days of Rationalism, to explain fairy rings as electrical phenomena,
a consequence of atmospheric effects. P. Marranzino, 11
for example, quotes a little couplet by Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather
of the English naturalist, written in 1789:
So from the dark clouds the playful lightning springs,
Rives the firm oak or prints the fairy rings.
And according to Erasmus Darwin:
There is a phenomenon, supposed to be electric, which is not yet
accounted for; I mean the fairy rings, as they are called, so often
seen on the grass.
At times larger parts or prominences of clouds gradually sinking
as they move along are discharged on the moister parts of the
grassy plains. Now this knob or corner of a cloud in being attracted
to the Earth will become nearly cylindrical, as loose wool would do
when drawn out into a thread, and will strike the earth with a stream
THE GOOD PEOPLE 39
of electricity perhaps two to ten yards in diameter. Just the external
part of the cylinder burns the grass.
The formulation of this idea in terms of modern plasma physics
will no doubt soon be provided by eager scholars. They would do
well, however, to note the diameter of the cylinder mentioned by
the elder Darwin: "two to ten yards"—the diameter of the average
flying saucer.
ANGELS OR DEVILS?
We have already noted several instances connecting unknown
beings with the theft of agricultural products. Lavender plants,
grapes, or potatoes seem to have been taken away with equal dexterity
by the mysterious little men. In story after story, from North
and South America and from Europe, the creatures are seen
;ilighting from their shiny craft, picking up plants, and taking off
again before amazed witnesses. Such behavior is well designed to
make the investigators of such stories assume that the visitors are
gathering samples with all the care and precision of seasoned exobiologists.
Are we not, after all, designing robots that will accomplish
the preliminary analysis of the Martian flora when the first
rockets reach that planet? In a few cases, the visitors even take
the time to interview the witnesses at length concerning agricultural
techniques! Such was the case in a landing that, curiously
enough, took place in Tioga City, New York, on the very day of
the Socorro landing, about ten hours before Officer Zamora observed
the egg-shaped, shiny object so familiar to us now.
Gary T. Wilcox, a dairy farmer, was spreading fertilizer in his
field. Some time before 10:00 A.M., he stopped to check a field
surrounded by woods, about a mile away from his barn. He
wanted to see whether ground conditions would allow plowing.
As he approached the field, however, he saw a shiny object, which
lie first took to be a discarded refrigerator, then a wing tank or
sonic other aircraft part. When he drew closer, he realized that
the object was egg-shaped and about twenty by sixteen feet,
had the appearance of durable metal, and did not look like anything
he had ever seen before.