A SHOWER OF FROGS.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 17983, 29 January 1924, Page 10

A SHOWER OF FROGS.

STRANGE HAPPENING IN THE ARDENNES.

A telegram from Charloville (France) to the "Daily Chronicle" saya that a shower of frogs has fallen on the village of Osnes in the Ardennes. Folio-wing a violent storm they are in every street, and the inhabitants ajre collecting them.

Commenting on the incident a writer ia the' same paper says the incident is an easily explicable phenomenon well known to meteorologists. , It is due to the violent vertical winds which blow commonly during the prevalence of extremely unsettled weather. These' winds, in their attempt to adjust the atmospheric equilibruim, are generally accompanied by thunder and lightning, and very often lift soot, pollen, sand, or minute reddish, insects to a great height in the atmosphere. These objects subsequen-yy fall with rain — sometimes at a great distance 'from their origin—and cause the phenomena nlcnown as 'black rain," "blood rain," or "milk rain."

Still stronger up-currents occasionally, raise multitudes of small fish, caterpillars, -worms, beetles, or frogs into the upper reaches of the air, whence they descend as soon as the : force of gravity overcomes the vertical wind. As far back as the days of Homer we find references to such phenomena. Several classical writers state that the odour arising from the .decomposition of the bodies of fish and frogs that had fallen from the clouds drove the inhabitants from Greek and Roman towns. There is good evidence that in July, 1833, a waterspout .produced a shower of oranges near Naples.