SHOWERS OF FISHES.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXII, Issue 9146, 24 June 1880, Page 2

SHOWERS OF FISHES.

TO THE EDITOB. Sib, — Perhaps the following extract taken from a well-known work may account for the large quantities of dead • fish met with by the steamer Taupo on a recent voyage : — " Showers of fishes have occasionally fallen, in different parts of the world, excitiog great astonish* menfc. Instances of this kind have occurred in Great Britain. A. . few years since, a shower of small three-spined sticklebacks fell near Merthyr-Tydvil, in Wales, sprinkling the ground and housetops over an area of at least several square miles. .They were alive when \ they fell; yet if caught up by a whirlwind from any of the brackish ponds near the sea, in which this species' of ! fish abounds, they must hare beeu con- ■ veyed through the air a distance, of > almost thirty miles. Another similar 1 instance occurred at Torrens, in the Isle • of Mull, in which herrings were found • strewed 1 on a hill five hundred yards ■ from the sea, and one. , hundred feet ■ above it. Showers of fishes occur much ■ more frequently in those tropical coun- - tries where violent storms, sudden giuti - of wind, and whirlwinds are. most -' ' common. In India, a shower of fishes, i varying from a pound and a-half to three pounds in w eight, has been known I 10 fall. Sometimes the fishes are living, more frequently they are dead, and sometimes dry or putrifying. They are always of kind abundant in the sea or fresh waters in the neighbourhood ; and it cannot be doubted that they are carried up into the air by violent winds or whirlwinds, although they sometimes fall at a considerable distance' from any water which could supply them."— l am. <fefi.. ' ■ "!X".' .