ded on the earth in November, 1940. It was
discovered by a farmer in his field near Brookline, Massachusetts, shortly
after daybreak on the morning of the 11th. Astronomically, the event was
recorded by the observatory at Harvard as the sudden appearance of what
apparently was a new star, increasing in the short space of a few hours
from invisibility to a power beyond that of the first magnitude, and then
as rapidly fading again to invisibility. This star was recorded by two of
the other great North American observatories, and by one in the Argentine
Republic. That it was comparatively small in mass and exceedingly close to
the earth, even when first discovered, was obvious. All observers agreed
that it was a heavenly body of an entirely new order.

The observatory at Harvard supplemented its account by recording the
falling, just before dawn of the 11th, of an extraordinarily brilliant
meteor that flamed with a curious red and green light as it entered the
earth's atmosphere. This meteor did not burn itself out, but fell, still
retaining its luminosity, from a point near the zenith, to the horizon.

What the farmer saw was a huge fire burning near the center of his field.
It was circular in form and about thirty feet in diameter. He was
astonished to see it there, but what surprised him more was its peculiar
aspect.

It was still the twilight of dawn when he reached the field. He beheld the
fire first from a point several hundred yards away. As he explained it,
the light--for it was more aptly described as a light than a
fire--extended in parallel rays from the ground directly upward into the
sky. He could see no line of demarkation where it ended at the top. It
seemed to extend into the sky an infinite distance. It was, in fact, as
though an enormous searchlight were buried in his field, casting its beam
of light directly upward.

But more than all this, the farmer was struck by the extraordinary color
of the light. At the base it was a deep, solid green. This green color
extended upward for perhaps fifty feet, then it shaded into red. The
farmer noticed, too, that the fire did not leap and dance with flames, but
seemed rather to glow--a steady light like the burning of colored powder.
In the morning half-light it threw a weird, unearthly reddish-green glow
over the field.

The farmer approached to within twenty feet of the light. He looked to see
what was burning, but could not determine, for the greenish base ex