A very singular belief, shared likewise, according to Sir Emerson Tennent, by the people of Ceylon, exists in the Apure respecting fish falling from the clouds. Alluding to this phenomenon, that ingenious writer observes: “Both at Galle and Colombo in the southwest monsoon, fish are popularly believed to have fallen from the clouds during violent showers; but those found on the occasions that give rise to this belief, consist of smallest fry, such as could be caught up by water-spouts and vortices analogous to them, or otherwise blown on shore from the surf; whereas those which suddenly appear in the replenished tanks and in the hollows which they overflow, are mature and well-grown fish. Besides, the latter are found under the circumstances I have described, in all parts of the interior, whilst the prodigy of a supposed fall of fish from the sky has been noticed, I apprehend, only in the vicinity of the sea or of some inland water.”
Although the author further explains the phenomenon on the supposition that some fish are endowed with the power of locomotion over land, while others in a torpid state remain buried in the mud until the return of the rainy season; yet, I have been assured by reliable persons that live fish have been picked up in places where no such possible contingencies could occur; for instance, upon the roofs of houses or amidst wide plains far from running water. Most of those thus found are small, from three to seven inches long; but none of them capable of living more than twenty minutes out of water; and the father of the writer once even witnessed a fall of bocachicos, a fish which seldom lives over five minutes out of its own element.
In support of these views, which were embodied in my Wild Scenes in South America, I now have the pleasure of adding the testimony of no less an authority than Gosse, who has collected a number of authentic examples of this phenomenon in his Romance of Natural History. According to his statements, fish-showers have occurred in all parts of the world, not even excepting his own country—England,—where, early in 1859, the newspapers of South Wales recorded a shower of fish in the Valley of Aberdare. The repeated statements attracted more notice than usual, and the Rev. John Griffith, the vicar of the parish, communicated the results of his inquiries to the Evening Mail.
“If now we look to other lands,” continues the author, “we shall find that the descent of fishes from the atmosphere, under conditions little understood, is a phenomenon which rests on indubitable evidence. Humboldt has published interesting details of the ejection of fish in large quantities from volcanoes in South America. On the night between the 19th and 20th of June, 1698, the summit of Carguairazo, a volcano more than 19,000 feet in height, fell in, and the surrounding country for nearly thirty-two square miles was covered with mud and fishes. A similar eruption of fish from the volcano of Imbabura was supposed to have been the cause of a putrid fever which raged in the town of Ibarra seven years before that period.”
This is accounted for on the supposition that subterraneous lakes, communicating with surface-waters, form in cavities in the declivities, or at the base of a volcano. In the course of time these internal cavities are burst open by the force of the volcanic explosions, and their contents discharged through the water.
But the most extraordinary account recorded by Gosse is that of Dr. Buist, of Bombay, who, after enumerating the cases above cited, and others of similar character, goes on to say:—“In 1824 fishes fell at Meerut on the men of her Majesty’s 14th Regiment, then out at drill, and were caught in numbers. In July, 1826, live fish were seen to fall on the grass at Moradabad during a storm. They were the common Cyprinus, so prevalent in our Indian waters. On the 19th of February, 1830, at noon, a heavy fall of fish occurred at the Nokulhatty factory, in the Daccah Zillah; depositions on the subject were obtained from nine different parties. The fish were all dead; most of them were large; some were fresh; others were rotten and mutilated. They were seen at first in the sky, like a flock of birds, descending rapidly to the ground; there was rain drizzling, but no storm. On the 16th and 17th of May, 1833, a fall of fish occurred in the Zillah of Foottehpoor, about three miles north of Jumna, after a violent storm of wind and rain. The fish were from a pound and a half to three pounds in weight, and the same species as those found in the tanks in the neighborhood. They were all dead and dry. A fall of fish occurred at Allahabad during a storm in May, 1835; they were of the chowla species, and were found dead and dry after the storm had passed over the district. On the 20th of September, 1839, after a smart shower of rain, a quantity of fish, about three inches in length, and all of the same kind, fell at the Sunderbunds, about twenty miles south of Calcutta. On this occasion it was remarked that the fish did not fall here and there irregularly over the ground, but in a continuous straight line, not more than a span in breadth. The vast multitudes of fish with which the low grounds around Bombay are covered, about a week or ten days after the first burst of the monsoon, appear to be derived from the adjoining pools or rivulets, and not to descend from the sky. They are not, as far as I know, found in the higher parts of the island. I have never seen them, though I have watched carefully, in casks collecting water from the roofs of buildings, or heard of them on the decks or awnings of vessels in the harbor, where they must have appeared had they descended from the sky. One of the most remarkable phenomena of this kind occurred during a tremendous deluge of rain at Kattywar, on the 25th of July, 1850, where the ground around Rajkote was found literally covered with fish; some of them were found on the top of haystacks, where probably they had been drifted by the storm. In the course of twenty-four successive hours twenty-seven inches of rain fell; thirty-five fell in twenty-six hours, seven inches in one hour and a half, being the heaviest fall on record. At Poonah, on the 3d of August, 1852, after a very heavy fall of rain, multitudes of fish were caught on the ground in the cantonments, full half a mile from the nearest stream. If showers of fish are to be explained on the assumption that they are carried up by squalls or violent winds from rivers or spaces of water not far away from where they fall, it would be nothing wonderful were they seen to descend from the air during the furious squalls which occasionally occur in July.”
Sir E. Tennent, before cited, also witnessed in Ceylon another of those fish-showers:—“I had an opportunity, on one occasion only, of witnessing the phenomenon which gives rise to this popular belief. I was driving in the cinnamon gardens near the fort of Colombo, and saw a violent but partial shower descend at no great distance before me. On coming to the spot, I found a multitude of small silvery fish, from one and a half to two inches in length, leaping on the gravel of the high road, numbers of which I collected and brought away in my palanquin. The spot was about half a mile from the sea, and entirely unconnected with any water-course or pool.”[47]
The same curious fact respecting the habits of certain kinds of fish in the Llanos, which bury themselves in the mud at the close of the rainy season, also appears to take place in India and Ceylon; for, according to Gosse, “the pools, reservoirs, and tanks are well provided with fish of various species, though the water twice every year becomes perfectly evaporated, and the mud of the bottom is entirely converted into dust, or takes the condition of baked clay, gaping with wide and deep clefts, in which not the slightest sign of moisture can be detected. This is the case with temporary hollows in the soil, which have no connection with running streams or permanent waters, from which they might be supposed to receive a fresh stock of fish.”
After proving conclusively that these fishes could not proceed from either the clouds, as the generality of people believe, nor from impregnated ova, as Mr. Farrell suggests, the author observes:—“Neither of these hypotheses, then, will account for the fact; and we must admit that the fishes of these regions, have the instinct to burrow down in the solid mud of the bottom, at the approach of the dry season, and the power of retaining life, doubtless in a torpid condition, until the return of the periodic rains, as Theophrastus long ago observed.”
But, who ever heard of showers of toads and frogs? Yet, such is the fact, astonished reader; and were you to visit with me some of the lagoons and ponds of South America at night, you would not fail to notice that the air, as well as the earth and waters, seems filled with the piercing, deafening noise proceeding from them. “According to travellers in tropical America, the inhabitants of Porto Bello assert that every drop of rain is changed into a toad; the most instructed, however, believe that the spawn of these animals is raised with the vapor from the adjoining swamps, and, being driven in the clouds over the city, the ova are hatched as they descend in rain. ’Tis certain that the streets after a night of heavy rain are almost covered with the ill-favored reptiles; and it is impossible to walk without crushing them. But heretic philosophers point to the mature growth of the vermin, many of them being six inches in length, and maintain that the hypothesis just mentioned will scarcely account for the appearance of these.”[48]