AN OLD NOTION EXPLODED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 119, 23 May 1932, Page 11

AN OLD NOTION EXPLODED

It docs not rain .frogs and fish any more than it rains cats and dogs. George W. Stimpson, in his book. ‘‘Nuggets of Knowledge,” says: ‘‘No popular belief is more firmly fixed than that frogs, small fish, snakes, angleworms, turtles, insects, and other creatures arc drawn up into the clouds by the sun and, later, rained down upon the earth. Any thinking man knows that the sun can pick up small animals and hold them floating in tho atmosphere. The presence of such creatures on the ground immediately after a rain is probably duo to one or two causes. In the case of frogs, worms, turtles, and insects, they were probably there before the rain and the downpour stimulated them into activity. In the casj of fish and other inhabitants of the water, it is possible, according to naturalists, for a waterspout or tor-nado-like whirlwind to scoop up a pond a..d its contents, and deposit them at a distant point, just as it will carry pebbles or pieces of wood a long distance. This, at least, is the conventional theory.”