peculiar circumstances have fortunately, I think, put into my hands,
will excite a curiosity as vivid as the incidents of the narratives are
themselves astonishing and unprecedented. To satisfy, as far as I can, a
few natural inquiries which must be elicited by its publication, I beg
to explain how this unusual posthumous paper came into my possession.

It was written by Bradford Torrey Dodd, who died at Christ Church, New
Zealand, January, 1895, after a lingering illness in which consumption
developed, which was attributed to the exposure he had experienced in
receiving some of the wireless messages his singular history details. I
was not acquainted with Mr. Dodd, but some information, acquired since
the reception of his manuscript, has completely satisfied me, that,
however interpreted, Mr. Dodd did not intend in it the perpetration of
a hoax. His scientific ability was undoubtedly remarkable, and the facts
that his father and himself worked in an astronomical station near
Christ Church; that his father died; that his acquaintance with the
Dodans was a reality; that he did receive messages at a wireless
telegraphic station; that he himself and his assistants fully accredited
these messages to extra-terrestrial sources, are, beyond a doubt, easily
verified.

A mutual friend brought me Mr. Dodd's papers, which I looked over with
increasing amazement, culminating in blank incredulity. On rereading
them and considering the usefulness of giving them to the public, I have
been influenced by two motives, the desire to satisfy the fervently
expressed wish of the writer himself and the reasonable belief that if
they are preposterously improbable their publication can only furnish a
new and temporary and quite harmless diversion, and that if Mr. Dodd's
experiment shall be in some future day successfully repeated his claims
to distinction as the first to open this marvelous field of