RAINING FROGS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 164, 13 July 1929, Page 7 (Supplement)

RAINING FROGS.

AND SHOWERS OF FISH. SPAWN POSSIBLY HATCHED ALOFT. BAFFLING PHENOMENA. (By RICHARD HOADLEY TINGLEY, in the "New York-Herald Tribune.") Nearly every well regulated person has a hobby for collecting something stamps, coins, old china or autographs. It is a healthful diversion, a change from the everlasting grind of trying to earn a living, trying to collect money. My hobby is a strange one. I will wager you never met a person whose chief object in' life when not engaged in the aforesaid imperative occupations was the collection of facts about rains of animate things from somewhere up above. Strange sort of hobby? Stranger ' still when one knows, as I know, that ! the majority of people do not believe that animate things do rain down from the skies at all., Many Persons Are Sceptical. When they read news items, as they may during the summer months of any year, that somewhere in the world live fishes, frogs, toads, snails, turtles, jellyfish, earthworms and the like have fallen to earth they shrug their shoulders with a "show me" gesture and are wont to utter a word which sounds something like "bunk." I used to shrug my shoulders in much the same fashion. I do not do it any more—have not done it for twenty-seven years, when I happened to see one of these rains myself, and it was then that I mounted that hobbyhorse, and I have stuck to him ever since.

I have a keen interest in thunder storms, for it is always during these disturbances that the animals descend. I am always on the lookout for another exhibition, but luck is not with me. They are always somewhere else. Ascension Never Seen. In the course of my excursion on my hobby-horse I disclosed at least fifty rains of animate things which, in one way or another, could be authenticated and probably as many as 150 more resting, not on doubtful authority, but on information which had never been fully verified. The surprising thing about the whole matter is this: Nearly all of these instances, verified and unverified, disclose the fact that animals do "come down." I have yet to learn of a definite statement from any one who has seen them "go up."

The rain I once witnessed that started mo off on my journey occurred on the outskirts of Providence, R. 1., on May 15, 1900. During a heavy thunder storm and furious gale living, squirming perch and bullpouts, from two to four and a-half inches long, such as are found in almost any pond, descended on streets and yards over an area, of about a quarter ot «n acre. Braving th® tternu

I was pelted with fish ass well aa with raindrops. Great was the excitement. Many people regarded the rain as most supernatural and could not be induced to touch the fishes. Small Boys Reap Harvest. Not so the small boys, who picked them up in buckets full and sold them. Not so the enterprising reporter of "The Providence Journal," who gathered in a pailfull and took them to town, where they were exhibited in the show windows of enterprising merchants on Westminster Street. The next day, May 16, 1900, "The Providence Journal" printed a.long article about the-storm, not forgetting to give full measure of interesting reading to the fish phenomenon, which, no doubt, , many persons classed as an ordinary "fish" story originating in the imagination of the reporter. Chronologically speaking —passing by brief reference in "Recreative Science" to certain passages from Aristotle regarding these rains—the first account I shall quote from "The Diepnosophists, or Banquet of the Learned," by Athenaeus of Naucratis in Egypt, who lived at the end of the second and the beginning of the third centuries. Accompanied Miami Storm. The last accounts are right up to the minute, all of the appearance of frogs in 1926 during, or immediately after, severe storms. One was in Danville, Va., in June; one in Western Pennsylvania in July; one in the deserts of Arizona, 100 miles away from any water, and the last at Miami, Fla., during the disastrous hurricane of September. All apparently rained down from somewhere "up above."

The first account, because of its antiquity, deserves attention, and I abstract portions of it from an article by Dr. E. W Gudger, ichthyologist of the American Museum of Natural History, Vo. XXI., No. 6, November-December, 1927, page 607. "The Diephosophists" was first published in 1524, and is a compilation of extracts from more than 800 classical authors, most of whose works are no longer extant and would be lost forever but for Athenaeus. In a chapter entitled "De Pluvia Piscum" is found the following:

"I also know that it has rained fishes. At all events, Phoenias, in the second book of his 'Bresian Magistrates,' says that in the Cherosonesus it once rained fishes uninterruptedly for three days, and Phylarchus, in his fourth book, says the people have often seen it raining fishes." This is the only account of a downfall of animals of so long a duration, nearly all recitals of subsequent rains naming a period of but a few minutes. Alsatian Fish Shower Verified. The second account, also notable because of its antiquity, is found recorded in "Prodigiorum ac Ostenorum Chronicon," by Conradus Lycosthenus Rubeaquebsis. This book, published in 1557, contains accounts of a tremendous meteorological disturbance in the yeai 689 A.D., culminating in a downpour of "little fishes of Saxony." The same medieval author also tens of a shower of toads and frogs neai Colmar, in Upper Alsace, which occurred in 1649, of "met atmnian« that people-

killed them with clubs," and that "the authorities had to collect them and carry them away." This tome contains illustrations of both fish-and frog rains, in each case the creatures being apparently full grown.

The popular theory is that the fishes, frogs, toads, etc., are sucked up by a whirlwind —a "twister" —carried in the air often a great distance, and deposited on earth as soon as the force of gravitation becomes stronger than the force of the wind which carries them. Opinions differ, however, as to whether the animals themselves or their spawn is so sucked up to be hatched out somewhere up above and sent down as living things. Conflicting Opinions. Colour is given to the latter surmise because the showers have been so generally of very small animals, though it is difficult to believe that the law of gravitation could be suspended long enough for the perch and bull-pouts I saw fall to have developed from spawn to four and a-lialf inches in length. Professor Raymond L. Ditmars, late of the New York Zoological Park, and an authority on reptiles, while admitting the shower theory rather, halfheartedly, doubts that the spawn is lifted up to be hatched out while floating about in the air.

On the other hand, Professor Roberts, one time of Cornell University, says: "It is generally accepted now by scientists that frog spawn can be carried up in the atmosphere, hatched out in the clouds, and a shower of frogs result." Dr. Gudger is a firm believer in the whirlwind theory with respect to fish, claiming that they are sucked up' alive and grown, to be deposited elsewhere by the force of the wind. Being an ichthyologist only, and not a batrachiologist, he does not venture an opinion with respect to frogs and toads. My research has led me to believe that no theory has yet been advanced which satisfactorily explains all phases of the up-going process of these animals, and the reason is that trained naturalists have never given the matter a thorough scientific investigation. It remains for this to be done. It is an interesting field to which I hardly expect to add anything new.