"Finding shapes in clouds is an old endeavor. There's
even a word for it: nephelococcygia, literally cloud
cuckooland, from the Aristophanes play The Birds.
Thoreau practiced it, describing a sunset in which he
saw a "phantom city." About a hundred years later
cartoonist Charles Schulz created a Peanuts comic
strip in which Linus gazed at the clouds and spied
the outline of British Honduras, the profile of artist
Thomas Eakins, and a group of forms reminding him of
the biblical stoning of Stephen. "I was going to say
I saw a ducky and a horsie," Charlie Brown responded,
"but I changed my mind."
- Chris Dodge, Utne Reader Jan/Feb 2007