"There was no longer doubt: they were locusts or flies of some sort."
One of them had paused.
It had hovered.
Then it had whisked off.
The Editor says that at that time "countless locusts had descended upon certain parts of India."
We now have an instance that is extraordinary in several respects—super-voyagers or super-ravagers; angels, ragamuffins, crusaders, emigrants, aeronauts, or aerial elephants, or bison or dinosaurs—except that I think the thing had planes or wings—one of them has been photographed. It may be that in the history of photography no more extraordinary picture than this has ever been taken.
L'Astronomie, 1885-347:
That, at the Observatory of Zacatecas, Mexico, Aug. 12, 1883, about 2,500 meters above sea level, were seen a large number of small luminous bodies, entering upon the disk of the sun. M. Bonilla telegraphed to the Observatories of the City of Mexico and of Puebla. Word came back that the bodies were not visible there. Because of this parallax, M. Bonilla placed the bodies "relatively near the earth." But when we find out what he called "relatively near the earth"—birds or bugs or hosts of a Super-Tamerlane or army of a celestial Richard Cœur de Lion—our heresies rejoice anyway. His estimate is "less distance than the moon."
One of them was photographed. See L'Astronomie, 1885-349. The photograph shows a long body surrounded by indefinite structures, or by the haze of wings or planes in motion.
L'Astronomie, 1887-66;