From: Peregrine Mendoza <101653.2205@CompuServe.COM>
Date: 06 Jan 97 01:07:27 EST
Fwd Date: Mon, 06 Jan 1997 17:23:19 -0500
Subject: Re: Old UFO case


Duke presents compliments &c. (Bit rushed)

I've just seen the query about the "Wiltshire Shadows" of 1912.

A couple of reviewers of the "Catalogue" complained about the lack of
references, and this is but the latest of several occasions on which I have rued
not footnoting sources for that book.

My first guess was that it came from Charles Fort, but a squint at the flagged
pages of the "Complete Books" hasn't turned it up. However, that doesn't mean it
isn't there, the squint being but brief; so I'll keep on looking as time
permits. Maybe by now Bob "For Tea *n* Times" Rickard has enough of Fort's works
on disk to do a search, however, between wild dashes to the samovar of Lapsang
Suchong?? At least if it is from Fort the reference to "Nature" will be
reliable.

Incidentally, it smacks to me of a letter to same, not an article, in which case
one would really have to trawl through the copies of "Nature", and not
necessarily just from 1912 if some other item triggered the correspondence
(groan).

Next guess was Harold Wilkins's "Flying Saucers On The Attack", less reliable as
a source (anyway, patchy) - no luck. Nor in "Passport to Magonia" (Vallee) -
scraping the barrel here. I'll keep looking in Wilkins, too, though. Another
possibility is it's buried in one of Paul Devereux's books: I will ask him.

Yes, well, sorry about that. I said much the same thing once on allowing an
excessively fat cat, named Sir Joseph Stopes (I wonder why?), to leap from my
shoulder and almost into one of my grandmothers-in-law's Ming vases; of course
the cat survived, while the Ming transmogrified into instant landfill, and
several of the younger persons present fainted. I have never felt so threatened
in the life department by anyone in a wheelchair, before or since, and that was
just with the withering look, before she got the terrifying vehicle in gear. So
I know, sort of, how you may feel. I'll keep looking, honest, and not just in
the above.

skulking embarrassed behind several horses

Peter B[rookesmith]

PS: I have thought of a few fixes a propos investigating alien writing too but
am presently caught between dengue fever and global warming (you'll read about
it). Hold breath for about 10 days at worst.