_Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist._, 1-3-185:
After one of the greatest hurricanes in the history of Ireland, some
fish were found "as far as 15 yards from the edge of a lake."
Have another: this is a good one for the exclusionists:
Fall of fish in Paris: said that a neighboring pond had been blown dry.
(_Living Age_, 52-186.) Date not given, but I have seen it recorded
somewhere else.
The best-known fall of fishes from the sky is that which occurred at
Mountain Ash, in the Valley of Abedare, Glamorganshire, Feb. 11, 1859.
The Editor of the _Zoologist_, 2-677, having published a report of a
fall of fishes, writes: "I am continually receiving similar accounts of
frogs and fishes." But, in all the volumes of the _Zoologist_, I can
find only two reports of such falls. There is nothing to conclude other
than that hosts of data have been lost because orthodoxy does not look
favorably upon such reports. The _Monthly Weather Review_ records
several falls of fishes in the United States; but accounts of these
reported occurrences are not findable in other American publications.
Nevertheless, the treatment by the _Zoologist_ of the fall reported from
Mountain Ash is fair. First appears, in the issue of 1859-6493, a letter
from the Rev. John Griffith, Vicar of Abedare, asserting that the fall
had occurred, chiefly upon the property of Mr. Nixon, of Mountain Ash.
Upon page 6540, Dr. Gray, of the British Museum, bristling with
exclusionism, writes that some of these fishes, which had been sent to
him alive, were "very young minnows." He says: "On reading the evidence,
it seems to me most probably only a practical joke: that one of Mr.
Nixon's employees had thrown a pailful of water upon another, who had
thought fish in it had fallen from the sky"--had dipped up a pailful
from a brook.
Those fishes--still alive--were exhibited at the Zoological Gardens,
Regent's Park. The Editor says that one was a minnow and that the rest
were sticklebacks.
He says that Dr. Gray's explanation is no doubt right.
But, upon page 6564, he publishes a letter from another correspondent,
who apologizes for opposing "so high an authority as Dr. Gray," but says
that he had obtained some of these fishes from persons who lived at a
considerable distance apart, or considerably out of range of the playful
pail of water.
According to the _Annual Register_, 1859-14, the fishes themselves had
fallen by pailfuls.
If these fishes were not upon the ground in the first place, we base our
objections to the whirlwind explanation upon two data:
That they fell in no such distribution as one could attribute to the
discharge of a whirlwind, but upon a narrow strip of land: about 80
yards long and 12 yards wide--
The other datum is again the suggestion that at first seemed so
incredible, but for which support is piling up, a suggestion of a
stationary source overhead--
That ten minutes later another fall of fishes occurred upon this same
narrow strip of land.
Even arguing that a whirlwind may stand still axially, it discharges
tangentially. Wherever the fishes came from it does not seem thinkable
that some could have fallen and that others could have whirled even a
tenth of a minute, then falling directly after the first to fall.
Because of these evil circumstances the best adaptation was to laugh the
whole thing off and say that someone had soused someone else with a
pailful of water in which a few "very young" minnows had been caught up.
In the London _Times_, March 2, 1859, is a letter from Mr. Aaron
Roberts, curate of St. Peter's, Carmathon. In this letter the fishes are
said to have been about four inches long, but there is some question of
species. I think, myself, that they were minnows and sticklebacks. Some
persons, thinking them to be sea fishes, placed them in salt water,
according to Mr. Roberts. "The effect is stated to have been almost
instantaneous death." "Some were placed in fresh water. These seemed to
thrive well." As to narrow distribution, we are told that the fishes
fell "in and about the premises of Mr. Nixon." "It was not observed at
the time that any fish fell in any other part of the neighborhood, save
in the particular spot mentioned."
In the London _Times_, March 10, 1859, Vicar Griffith writes an account:
"The roofs of some houses were covered with them."
In this letter it is said that the largest fishes were five inches long,
and that these did not survive the fall.
_Report of the British Association_, 1859-158:
"The evidence of the fall of fish on this occasion was very conclusive.
A specimen of the fish was exhibited and was found to be the
_Gasterosteus leirus_."
_Gasterosteus_ is the stickleback.
Altogether I think we have not a sense of total perdition, when we're
damned with the explanation that someone soused someone else with a
pailful of water in which were thousands of fishes four or five inches
long, some of which covered roofs of houses, and some of which remained
ten minutes in the air. By way of contrast we offer our own acceptance:
That the bottom of a super-geographical pond had dropped out.
I have a great many notes upon the fall of fishes, despite the
difficulty these records have in getting themselves published, but I
pick out the instances that especially relate to our super-geographical
acceptances, or to the Principles of Super-Geography: or data of things
that have been in the air longer than acceptably could a whirlwind carry
them; that have fallen with a distribution narrower than is attributable
to a whirlwind; that have fallen for a considerable length of time upon
the same narrow area of land.
These three factors indicate, somewhere not far aloft, a region of
inertness to this earth's gravitation, of course, however, a region
that, by the flux and variation of all things, must at times be
susceptible--but, afterward, our heresy will bifurcate--