SCIENCE JOTTINGS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3130, 14 August 1922, Page 2

SCIENCE JOTTINGS.

(W. P. Pycroft.) While we talk unconcernedly of raining ''cats and dogs,'' most of us ''jib" at stories of rains of fishes. Not even the proverbial "pinch of salt" will make them palatable. We are, like the old lady listening to the wonders narrated by her sailor son just home from abroad. He told her of rivers of rum and mountains of sugar, and fishes that fly. That he should have seen the two first seemed to her natural enough, but she protested that she was much too old a bird to believe in the existence of flying fishes! We are now assured, however, on high authority, that our scepticism was unjustified. Dr Gudger, of the American Museum of Natural History, has taken the trouble to collect and analyse a large series of records of such reported occurrences, and these, for the most part, lie regards as well authenticated. "Our oldest and first account," he remarks, "of a rain of fishes is found in the 'Deipnosophists,' or 'Banquet of the Learned,' of Athenanis of Naucratis, in Egypt, who flourished at the end of the secondhand the beginning of the third, centuruies Anno Domini." Rut this good man merely quotes another author—Pheeuias —who in the second book of his "Eresian Magistrates," says that in the Chersonesus it once rained fishes uninterruptedly for three days. And he in turn quotes yet another writer, who said that "the people" had often seen it raining fishes. The testimony of Athenseus of Naucratis not seem to be worth verv much in this regard! Afore convincing is the account of Robert Conny, published by the Royal Society of London in 1698. He cites a case, though at second-hand, Avhere just two-and-thirty years earlier a field of some tAvo acres in Cranstead, near Wrotham, in Kent, was strewn with small fishes after a storm. The fish are described as young whiting about the length of a. man's little finger; and they fell in "a place which is far from any part of the sea, and a place where are no fishponds, but a scarcity of water." About a. bushel of these small fishes were gathered up. i . , In a multitude of witnesses there is safetv. Let us, then, take the case of the army that,' in 1809, on the testimony of John Harriott, was "on the march, a short distance from Pondicherrv, when a quantity of small fish fell with the rain, to the astonishment of all. Many of them lodged on the men's hats; when General Smith, who commanded, desired them to be collected, and afterwards, when we came to our camping ground, they were dressed, making a small dish that was served up and eaten at the General's table." This is a case, surely, where the "proof of the pudding was in the eating!" Occurrences of this kind seem to be fairly frequent in India, judging from the numerous records that Dr Gudger has been able to collect. Two of these will suffice for further quotation, for they are all verv similar. There is the case where, in 1820, fishes fell at Mcerut, on the men of Her Majesty's 14th Regiment, then out at drill," and were caught in numbers. And that at the Sunderbunds, about 20 miles south of Calcutta, where, on September 20, 1839, there'fell, in a heavy squall, a number of small live fish about three inches long. These, it is to be noted, were not scattered over the country, but were found in a long, narrow, and fairly straight row. Sir J. E. Tennant, in his "Natural History of Ceylon," records a number of eases of fishes falling with rain. On one occasion, he tells us, he saw a violent shower fall at the spot found "a multitude of small, silvery fish, l£in to 2in long, leaping on the gravel of the high roads; numbers of them I collected and brought away." One could scarcely demand higher testimony. Just oven - sixty yeans ago a. very remarkable fall of fiehejs took place near Aberdare, in the month of February, during heavy rain and a high wind. A sawyer, whose evidence was taken at the time, says l that he was startled by something falling "all over me. . . . I was surprised to find they were little fish. . . . the whole ground was covered in a. lons strip of about 80 yairdls by 12 yards. My mates and I might have sratlwred' bucketfuls of them ... we did! gather about a bucketful and threw tbeiii into the rain pool." Some of these were later sent to the Aquarium of the Zoological Gardens. If we are to believe in the fall of fishes with rain—and tn© evidence seems to place these reports on a basis of fact—are we also to accept similar cases m regard to frogs"? Only a very few records of such occurrences seem to exist, and these are all of considerable antiquity. One of the last dates from 1549-, when, we are told, frogs fell from heaven near the town of Oolmar, Upper Alsace, in such abundance that they killed with clubs; and that their dead bodies so polluted the air that the authorities had to have they cleared away. While it would 1 seem wisest to suspend judgment in the case' of the frogs l , we must accept that as to the fishes; which seem, in all cases, to have been drawn .up from the surface of the sea, or lakes, in the form of "fry," by water-spouts, and thereafter dispersed over th'e land.