o’clock, p.m., of the 20th inst., (Sept. 1839,) we had a very smart shower of rain, and with it descended a quantity of live fish, about three inches in length, and all of one kind only. They fell in a straight line on the road from my house to the tank which is about forty or fifty yards distant. Those which fell on the hard ground were, as a matter of course, killed from the fall, but those which fell where there was grass sustained no injury; and I picked up a large quantity of them, ‘alive and kicking,’ and let them go into my tank. The most strange thing that ever struck me in connexion with this event, was, that the fish did not fall helter skelter, everywhere, or ‘here and there;’ but they fell in a straight line, not more than a cubit in breadth.” Another shower is said to have taken place at a village near Allahabad, in the month of May. About noon, the wind being in the west, and a few distant clouds visible, a blast of high wind came on, accompanied with so much dust as to change the tint of the atmosphere to a reddish hue. The blast appeared to extend in breadth four hundred yards, and was so violent that many large trees were blown down. When the storm had passed
over, the ground, south of the village, was found to be covered with fish, not less than three or four thousand in number. They all belonged to a species well known in India, and were about a span in length. They were all dead and dry.
It would be easy to multiply these examples to almost any extent, although they are not so frequent in Great Britain. It is related in Hasted’s History of Kent, that about Easter, 1666, in the parish of Stanstead, which is a considerable distance from the sea, and a place where there are no fishponds, and rather a scarcity of water, a pasture field was scattered all over with small fish, supposed to have been rained down during a thunder-storm. Several of these fish were sold publicly at Maidstone and Dartford. In the year 1830, the inhabitants of the island of Ula, in Argyleshire, after a day of very hard rain, which occurred on the 9th March, were surprised to find numbers of small herrings strewed over the fields, perfectly fresh and some of them alive. Some years ago, during a strong gale, herrings and other fish were carried from the Frith of Forth so far as Loch-Leven.
In some countries rats migrate in vast numbers from the high to the low countries; and it is
recorded in the history of Norway, that a shower of these, transported by the wind, fell in an adjacent valley.
Several notices have, from time to time, been brought before the French Academy, of showers of frogs having fallen in different parts of France. Professor Pontus, of Cahors, states, that in August, 1804, while distant three leagues from Toulouse, the sky being clear, suddenly a very thick cloud covered the horizon, and thunder and lightning came on. The cloud burst over the road about sixty toises (383 feet) from the place where M. Pontus was. Two gentlemen, returning from Toulouse, were surprised by being exposed not only to a storm, but to a shower of frogs. Pontus states that he saw the young frogs on their cloaks. When the diligence in which he was travelling, arrived at the place where the storm burst, the road, and the fields alongside of it, were observed full of frogs, in three or four layers placed one above the other. The feet of the horses and the wheels of the carriage killed thousands. The diligence travelled for a quarter of an hour, at least, along this living road, the horses being at a trot.
In the “Journal de St. Petersburg,” is given an account of the fall of a shower of insects during a snow-storm in Russia. “On the 17th October, 1827, there fell in the district of Rjev, in the government of Tver, a heavy shower of snow, in the space of about ten versts (nearly seven English miles), which contained the village of Pakroff and its environs. It was accompanied in its fall by a prodigious quantity of worms of a black colour, ringed, and in length about an inch and a quarter. The head of these insects was flat and shining, furnished with antennæ, and the hair in the form of whiskers; while the body, from the head to about one-third of their length, resembled a band of black velvet. They had on each side three feet, by means of which they appeared to crawl very fast upon the snow, and assembled in groups about the plants and the holes in trees and buildings. Several having been exposed to the air in a vessel filled with snow, lived there till the 26th October; although, in that interval, the thermometer had fallen to eight degrees below zero. Some others which had been frozen continued alive equally long; for they were not found exactly encrusted with the ice, but they had formed
round their bodies a space similar to the hollow of a tree. When they were plunged into water they swam about as if they had received no injury; but those which were carried into a warm place perished in a few minutes.”
All these remarkable showers may be accounted for, when we consider the mighty power of the wind; especially that form of it which is popularly called the whirlwind. It is now pretty well ascertained, that in all, or most of the great storms which agitate the atmosphere, the wind has a circular or rotatory movement; and the same is probably the case in many of the lesser storms, in which the air is whirled upwards in a spiral curve with great velocity, carrying up any small bodies which may come within the circuit. When such a storm happens at sea, the water-spout is produced. In the deserts of Arabia, pillars of sand are formed; and, in other places various light bodies are caught up; fishponds have been entirely emptied in an instant, and the moving column, whether of water, sand, or air, travels with the wind with great swiftness. When, however, the storm has subsided, the various substances thus caught up and sustained
in the air, are deposited at great distances from the place where they were first found, and thus produce these remarkable showers. In some cases, however, the direct force of the wind has actually blown small fish out of the water, and conveyed them several miles inland.