In Monthly Notices, 12-38, Mr. Read answers that he had been a diligent observer, with instruments of a superior order, for about 28 years—"but I have never witnessed such an appearance before." As to illusion he says that two other members of his family had seen the objects.
The Editor withdraws his suggestion.
We know what to expect. Almost absolutely—in an existence that is essentially Hibernian—we can predict the past—that is, look over something of this kind, written in 1851, and know what to expect from the Exclusionists later. If Mr. Read saw a migration of dissatisfied angels, numbering millions, they must merge away, at least subjectively, with commonplace terrestrial phenomena—of course disregarding Mr. Read's probable familiarity, of 28 years' duration, with the commonplaces of terrestrial phenomena.
Monthly Notices, 12-183:
Letter from Rev. W.R. Dawes:
That he had seen similar objects—and in the month of September—that they were nothing but seeds floating in the air.
In the Report of the British Association, 1852-235, there is a communication from Mr. Read to Prof. Baden-Powell:
That the objects that had been seen by him and by Mr. Dawes were not similar. He denies that he had seen seeds floating in the air. There had been little wind, and that had come from the sea, where seeds would not be likely to have origin. The objects that he had seen were round and sharply defined, and with none of the feathery appearance of thistledown. He then quotes from a letter from C.B. Chalmers, F.R.A.S., who had seen a similar stream, a procession, or migration, except that some of the bodies were more elongated—or lean and hungry—than globular.
He might have argued for sixty-five years. He'd have impressed nobody—of importance. The super-motif, or dominant, of his era, was Exclusionism, and the notion of seeds in the air assimilates—with due disregards—with that dominant.
Or pageantries here upon our earth, and things looking down upon us—and the Crusades were only dust clouds, and glints of the sun on shining armor were only particles of mica in dust clouds. I think it was a Crusade that Read saw—but that it was right, relatively to the year 1851, to say that it was only seeds in the wind, whether the wind blew from the sea or not. I think of things that were luminous with religious zeal, mixed up, like everything else in Intermediateness, with black marauders and from gray to brown beings of little personal ambitions. There may have been a Richard Cœur de Lion, on his way to right wrongs in Jupiter. It was right, relatively to 1851, to say that he was a seed of a cabbage.