"We must accept, then, the theory that on two different occasions within the last few days a giant scoop of some sort has been lowered from outer space, dragged across the earth's surface for several miles with incredible speed, and then jerked upward again, taking with it the matter it has cut from the earth! Just as we men sail over the surface of our waters and let down trawls to drag along their beds far below, so someone, something or things, exist on the surface of the atmospheric ocean at the bottom of which we live, and is letting down trawls to drag its bottom, the surface of the earth. "This idea may seem fantastic to many. We human beings do not think of ourselves as living at the bottom of an ocean; but a little reflection will show that to be the case. The atmosphere is an ocean, fifty to sixty miles in depth, covering all the earth. Our knowledge of it indicates that, becoming more and more rarefied, it has a fairly definite surface or limit a few score miles above us, beyond which lies empty space. "So there is a great air-ocean, and at its bottom we live. The pressure at its bottom is tremendous, even as the ocean's pressure is tremendous near its bottom. But like the creatures that live far down in the sea's depths, we are so habituated to that pressure, and our bodies braced internally against it, that we do not feel it. If we were to be taken into empty space our bodies would explode as would fish taken from the sea's depths. And in the same way, were creatures accustomed to empty space to enter our atmospheric ocean they would undoubtedly be crushed to death by its pressure. "It is that which in my opinion, accounts for this trawling from above. It may be that for centuries, while we have pondered on the planets and stars, ships from those planets and stars have been coming and going far above us, filled with creatures who have evolved in space as we have evolved in air and fish have evolved in water. We would know no more, dream no more, of the existence of those space-ships than the creatures at the seas' bottoms know of the great liners going and coming far above them. "But suppose some of these beings, possessing space-ships, become curious as to what lies at the bottom of this air-ocean of ours. They could not venture down into it. What would they do? Would they not let their ships cruise to and fro on the surface of the air-ocean, and let down great trawls to drag the bottom far below, just as we men trawl an ocean into whose depths we dare not descend. "I believe that is what is now going on. Far above us, at the surface of our atmospheric ocean, there are cruising ships or a ship, which we cannot see, holding beings from some great planet of whose nature we dare not guess. They cannot descend into our atmosphere but they are letting down their great trawl from above to drag the bottom, which is earth's surface, to see what lies upon it!