 The concept of "crop circles" began with the original late-1970s hoaxes by Doug Bower and Dave Chorley (see Bower and Chorley, below).They said that they were inspired by the Tully "saucer nest" case in Australia, where a farmer claimed to first have seen a UFO, then found a flattened circle of swamp reeds.A 1678 news pamphlet "The Mowing-Devil