A SHOWER OF FROGS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 22, 26 January 1924, Page 16

A SHOWER OF FROGS

STRANGE HAPPENING IN THE

ARDENNES;

A telegram from Charieville (France) tc the "Dafly1 .Chronicle" says that a shower .of frogs has fallen on the village tf Osnes in the Ardennes. Following a .violent storm they are in every street, Bnd the inhabitants are collecting them. Commenting on the-incident a writer in' the same paper says the incident is an,; easily explicable phenomenon well known to meteorologists. It is due to theV-yioient -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 subseqnently fall with rain—sometimes at a great . distance from their origin—and cause the phenomena known as "black rain," "blood rain," or "milk rain."

Still" stronger up-enrrents occasionally raise! multitudes .of small fish, caterpillars,;' worinsj beetles, or frogs into the upper. Beaches of air, whence they des'Cehdras .soon, as the;force of gravity overcomes the vertical wind. As far hack as the days of Homer we And references to such phenomena. Several classical writers ..state that ..the odour arising from the de«comp6eitioh of the bodies of ftehj and frogs that had fallen from ■ the clouds . drove the inhabitants from Greek and Roman towns. is good evidence that, in July, 1833, a -waterspout produced, a shower \pi oranges near Naples.