From C.Pike (K8J)
          
        WHODUNIT.
        First let me quote a brief summary of an article to be found
in our local paper, The Salisbury Journal, dated July 11th. 1996.

  'There has been another display of corn circles, this time in close
proximity of Stonehenge. It is claimed that on the afternoon of July
7th, the farmer upon whose land the circles had been seen flew over
the site in his light aircraft, and saw no sign of anything out of the
ordinary.
  Approximately fifteen minutes after landing, he received a phonecall
from a neighbouring farmer to alert him that people were trespassing
in the forty-three acre field. Inspection revealed that many circles
had been laid down; these were of varying sizes and extended over a
considerable distance.
  To offset the loss of crops due to the invasion of many visitors, the
farmer set up a scheme whereby a charge of two pounds was levied for 
close inspection of the manifestation.
  Our reporter was informed by devotees that the circles were in a
pattern which they described as a fractal, this being an extension of
the modern "chaos" theory. It is beyond the scope of this paper to
comment on these  claims.'

  An aerial photograph accompanied  the article.

 Personal investigation was not difficult, the site being no more than
four miles from my home. The ordnance survey readings are approximately
S.U.103422.  For those who know the A 3O3, it is on the opposite side
to Stonehenge, and quite close to the road. Of course at the time of
writing, harvesting has taken place, consequently all evidence has
gone. I have come across the term 'fractal',(which is more than my
dictionary has), and I did not link it to chaotic, just the reverse in
fact. A description of the pattern is not a simple matter as far as I
am concerned, one word keeps coming to mind, 'curlicue' and if that
evades you, get a pencil and draw an ever increasing spiral of about
one and a half turns; now starting at the centre of the spiral
superimpose a series  of circles, each one being smaller than the
previous one. In the original layout the spiral consisted solely of
the decreasing circles, without a base line it is difficult to
construct the 'fractal'!

  There have been many and varied suggestions as to the reason or
meaning of this 'whatever'. It is generally agreed that it is much
too complex to be a hoax; there are a hundred and fifty-one
individual circles, extending over a nine hundred foot longitudinal
spread; the time factor would  call for a large body of hoaxers
working in unison like the clappers! So if it was not the work of
humans how about the theory of atmospheric shenanigans; only after a
good few pints of the hard stuff could I contemplate that, I have
witnessed many a 'devil wind', occasionally two at the same time in a
large valley, but 151 all spinning away together in perfect harmony:
no way can I swallow that.  At the risk of having everyone after my
blood, let me suggest some extra-terrestrial agency. I hear you saying
let's have something more concrete, that's a tall order, but let us
assume that the said agency must be of a much higher intelligence than
we, otherwise how can they operate at distances far greater than our
astronauts. Accepting this fact it must follow that what to them is an
elementary message, to us could be an imponderable enigma. Imagine
being faced with the problem of trying to teach a chimpanzee algebra,
actually the chimp and I would be on the same footing!
 Perhaps it's not a message as such but more a pictogram, once  more
we are back to square one; if it is a representation of something we
have never seen, it's going to be awfully difficult to recognise it.
I have toyed with thoughts such as, how would our local galaxy appear
from  a different view point, could this represent a time-lapse
picture of earth, or how about this being a picture of E.T.'s home
base? That's my ideas, how about yours, there's plenty of scope.

    Oh dear! D.A.N. is here again, actually what happened was, that to
get him off my back I gave him pencil and paper with instructions to
get cracking on his report. Here is a copy of his attempt, exactly as
written with the exception of place names, which I have entered in
upper case, to facilitate topographical searching.
   
  'I went to see the curcles with Mr. Pike. i am only for feet tall so
had to see the pitcher in the Journal. I think it was maid by a E.T
wen  nobody was looking. we have been lernt about maps at school and
on salisbury plane there is for big hills. I think  it is a pitcher of
151 flying sauces doing a circut round the hills. Starting at WESTBURY
WHITE HORSE then on to CLEY HILL next OLD SARUM  then BEACON HILL
befor landing at BOSCOMBE DOWN air feeld.'
   
   C.P.again: Not bad for a ten year old, if you trace out the circuit
he has  chosen it gives a fairly good representation of the so-called
fractal. I had  thought to close this report at this point, but as
any parent will tell you, there is no repressing a six year old girl.
She had followed Dan into our house, and if he had something to tell
about the corn circles, Amy intended to 'put in her six eggs'. Now Amy
has an attractive lisp, and this is where she scores over me; I cannot
commit her speech to paper, so here in my own words is her idea.
   
 ' I went with Mummy to watch the aeroplanes near Larkhill, and there
were men jumping out with umbrellas and they looked just like the
picture of the rings in the corn field'.
  
  C.P. Who could disagree with the statement "out of the mouths of
babes and sucklings comes forth truth".
  Dan got back in again; if Amy could suggest parachutes, he reckoned
that using some new fangled laser radar the imprint could have
caused the circles, and that is from a nipper who has never heard of
short wave skip or the heavyside layer!.
       
        Cheers from Skywatcher.