Samuel G. Goodrich

BLOODY RAIN.

There are on record several instances of a fall of red liquid exactly resembling blood in appearance, which has often been accompanied by a descent of aerolites. On the 15th of November 1755, there was a heavy shower of this kind at Ulm, and several parts of Russia and Sweden. There was another, March 5, 1803, in Apulia, where it seemed to fall from a reddish black cloud. A descent of large quantities of dry dust preceded the latter, and has on several occasions occurred by itself.

Before this phenomenon was understood, you will easily suppose that it was looked upon as something dreadfully portentous, and the more so from its occurring so unfrequently. It is now known to be closely related to the aerolites, as you shall hear.

Some of the liquid, looking just like congealed blood, which fell at Ulm, was examined. It was found to have a sour taste, owing, as it was thought, to the presence of sulphuric acid. When dried, the dust that remained, which constituted the colouring matter, was found to be subject to magnetic attraction, and in other respects to resemble the substance of the meteoric stones; so there can be no doubt that the dust is nothing more than what is caused by the fracture or the friction one against the other, of aerolites, and that the rain is made red by the dust falling on the clouds, from which it is precipitated.

RED SNOW.

Several travellers have witnessed the existence of snow of a bright red colour, in various parts of Baffin's Bay; and at Arezzo, in Italy, in March 1813, there was a fall of it, which lasted many hours.

There seems some reason to suppose that in the latter instance the redness was caused by aerolite dust; but a microscopic examination of some of that at Baffin's Bay, has proved that its colour is owing to a still more wonderful cause. The colouring particles are actually small plants or fungi, which take root and grow, and bear seed upon the snow itself!

What do you think of this Lilliputian vegetation? One full-sized plant is no more than 1-1600th of an inch in diameter; and to cover a single square inch of its cold bed of snow, 2,500,000 are necessary! It has been named by its discoverer, Mr. Bauer, Uredo Nivalis.

SHOWERS OF FROGS AND FISH.

I dare say you have heard, before now, of its raining frogs and fish. I like that you should have correct notions on these things, so I shall just tell you what seems to have given rise to these reports.

If you understood what I told you respecting the water-spout, you will see how likely it is that any small fish that may be on the spot, should be sucked upwards along with the water, even to the very top of the spout; now they might be kept up there as long as the whirlwind kept up a rotatory motion in the cloud, after it had ceased to sustain the column of water drawn up from the sea. When the whirlwind was exhausted, the little fish would naturally fall out of the cloud, perhaps after it had travelled far from where the water-spout occurred.

If the water-spout had passed over fresh-water lakes or rivers, frogs might be drawn up instead of fish, and let fall in the same manner.

But I will relate to you another circumstance, which may have been imputed to a descent of fish from the clouds. I told you in the first part of this book respecting the alluvions, or torrents of mud, which make their way after an eruption down the sides of Mount Vesuvius. In some of the great volcanoes of South America, these alluvions have not to be formed in the regular way, but mud of the consistence of pap is ejected from the craters themselves in amazing quantities. This mud is supplied by subterranean waters connected with the volcanic channel, and it often contains myriads of little fishes of the kind called Pimelodes Cyclopum: they are generally about four inches long, and they exist in such vast numbers, that their putrifying has before now bred a pestilence in the neighbourhood of the Volcano. There are plenty of the same fish in the contiguous streams. What renders the circumstance so wonderful, is their being raised up to the level of 8 or 9000 feet, and then thrown out from the crater with very little injury.

Plate XVIII. p. 285