'RAINING CATS AND DOGS'

Auckland Star, Volume LVI, Issue 244, 15 October 1925, Page 14

'RAINING CATS AND DOGS'

SOME STFUWGE FACTS. i A-BOTTT Z.TVTSG SHOWERS. TP.ITTH BEHEST) THE FICTTO^a. Ifogt of the =t.-,ries of showers of I living creacure.-'. auch as frogs an<i lakes, ; raa.la. and Toras, are J7is3 exacgeri- ) tinns, but ar% facts behind the i 3c":on3 'writes Prct. J. Arthur Tbotn'DSOTi jin ".John o' Lnndon'3 Weekly"'. Indeed. I "here ■ara3 a. livin? siow?r act Icnz sso j:n the Sonta of Scn r .laad. and the : irs-aniatna w=r* identrse«i. .J~at za the TMokj in the harveat-f.pid sometimes ' t gripped by a local wh-.r'.wind and made Ito dance in tie air, the centra of the ; ■ vortex tra-eiiias - . it may be, from Said to £eld. so aqii&tifi animals, mch. aa : insert lame, water -raaila, minnows, [and r.adpciea. a.r=s e.oinstnnea caught up, especially from. ponda aad qiies shallow . I reaiihes of streams, and. whirled 3.lcm ■ ; to places where they ara not nnreaaon.- ---• I ably rsgarifiri aa having fallen from the ■ i ?icy. In rnnsi; ca.wa they can be tra.%d : by ".lift iocal naturalist to acsie wacerI r.aaia ia tie near neigibcarhec^i. Aarial Tranaport. j r Jn one occasion, in E&sz Lothian, -we ; ip.7 a local cycione making piay with j '.ha aheavag of cera, and. wa have never j ?uu;a denhxed the poeatble aerial trana- ! port <5T α-maivah animals aUCiI 3.3 TTOffi and roarLj, and inaila. When onr friend tolri m that it -s-a.-? raiiung -a; 3 and doga -inring hia holiday in. Hlcye, jhe leemed rather h:irt when we iricri-ired 'if the fail inr.~<iftfi Hlcye terriera; buz ■ there :a no donhc that rr.a.-j different icinda of aajma^s— a/raauc ! animals—"an he Lifted and '.rinaportefi lin a little wh.r'wmd, wiinh : no. necesaarily rr.ea.n i tempest, 1 and showered down elsewhere. And how easy i*. is to chanepe into -ro^ - , and -, water -snail into periwinkle, and "blood-worm" into blood; and thus a coTTiTEO-npla-ca e-rent a myaterions miracle. Many alleged eaaeq were critically considered by P. H. Goeae in the second aeriea of hi 3 "Tlomsnce ot History" (\BPj~,. It is irrelevant- and woryien to insist that dew does not fall Eat when one :a carefully talking acien/K, it in jnst aa well to ne clear that de*v ia nanally water-Tapour that ia cangi.t on the herbage, or on Gideon's fleece, as it riaea from 'the ground. Bat, although true ' dew riaea, honey-dew falls, and we have seen and felt it dripping from lime- | trees. It ia an overflow of sugary fluid ffrora the food-".ana!a of Aphida or rreonfliea, or of nearly related insects. Some kin<i3 of manna, axe also exudationa irom in3ect3, or sometimes they iaaue directly from the plant 3 themaeJvea. An-other very different; kind of thing that aeema to fall from heaven ia goaaamer. Eut though these thousands of silk threads aink out of the air, they were mad« for the most part near the ground. They were spun out into the breeze from the spinnerets of amall spi/iera, and they have served as floata for the wingless travellers on their aerial journeys. Strictly speaking, the gossamer threa.d?. aink Jvsftanse they pre-vioiialy ■ rose; bnt it would hypercritical to object to applying the phrase "li-ring shower" to the sudden appearance of , numeroTi3 small spiders in a stretch of the link* where none were visible an hour before. Truly, there haa been a shower of gosaamer and of spidera, too. There ia something analogous in the floatbig fruits of thiatlea and dandelions and old-man's-beard. Sulphur Snowera. Theae are genuine enough except that there ia no sulphur. For big tracts the ground ia sometimes covered with yellowdust, and the herbage ia powdered thick. There ia a suggestion of peaae-meal. There hae been a great liberation of pollen from the pine trees and other conifers of the forest, and, as each grain hae two little bladder-like floats, the pollen may be carried, far on the winga of the wind. It sometimes rises like smoke from the trees, and when the cloud sinks to the earth, far away from the forest, who can wonder that it should be regarded euperatitio-ualy? Eut it ia not from heaven that the 9ulphur ia supposed to have come. When email solid bodies travelling in space get within the earth' 3 gravitational grip and approach at a hig velocity, the sudden compression of the atmospheric gasea produces so much heat that the dark intruder is lighted up for a brief rnoraent before it passe?, into the form of vapour and "goes out." Such are the "shooting stars," or, still worse, "falling star?," that everyone knows. But it sometimes haptpens that a meteoritic Btone, separated perhaps from a comet's tail, cornea solid to the earth, and many of them, both large and small, can be seen in the muaeuxna. If anyone wishes to call them thunderbolts there is no law againat it. But what one must protest against is giving thi3 name to the strange fossils called Eelemnities, which are common in some parts of the country. They are often the length and thickness of our middle finger, like Mar-tini-Henry rifle bullete in shape, and aa hard as rock. Persistently they are called thunderbolts, and they are certainly like projectiles; but they never fall from the sky, and they are simply the fossilised remains . of the internal shell of an extinct type of cuttlefish. It is to the depths, not to the heights, that these' pseudo-thunderbolts muet be referred. Showers of Blood. There is no doubt as to "red rain." but the redness is not due to blood. Perhaps this is putting it too strongly, for when the red rain is produced by hundreds of little red worms or red insect-larvae (harlequin flies), which have been -whirled up out of the water, the colour that is so conspicuous is in the animal's blood. In 'both the cases mentioned it is due to haemoglobin, the same blood-pigment as we have ourselves. But most "showers 'of blood" are due to very minute algae or fungi, or Infusorians. The names of Helmholtz, -Kelvin and Arrhenius are associated with the hypothesis that very simple forms of life may possibly have reached the cool earth from elsewhere. They might 'be well wrapped up in the chinks of a meteorite, for instance. The great names we have mentioned suffice to forbid a contemptuous smite, but the bold suggestion has always seemed to us rather far-fetched. It should be noted, however, that while simple germs of life can survive extraordinary extremes of temperature and other conditions, this becomes more and more difficult as complexity increases. We cannot suppose that even a complicated larva could survive a long journey through space.