The Book of the Damned

Make what you will, yourself, of them.

In our Intermediatist revolt against h.o.m.ogeneous, or positive, explanations, or our acceptance that the all-sufficing cannot be less than universality, besides which, however, there would be nothing to suffice, our expression upon the Super-Sarga.s.so Sea, though it harmonizes with data of fishes that fall as if from a stationary source--and, of course, with other data, too--is inadequate to account for two peculiarities of the falls of frogs:

That never has a fall of tadpoles been reported;

That never has a fall of full-grown frogs been reported--

Always frogs a few months old.

It sounds positive, but if there be such reports they are somewhere out of my range of reading.

But tadpoles would be more likely to fall from the sky than would frogs, little or big, if such falls be attributed to whirlwinds; and more likely to fall from the Super-Sarga.s.so Sea if, though very tentatively and provisionally, we accept the Super-Sarga.s.so Sea.

Before we take up an especial expression upon the fall of immature and larval forms of life to this earth, and the necessity then of conceiving of some factor besides mere stationariness or suspension or stagnation, there are other data that are similar to data of falls of fishes.

_Science Gossip_, 1886-238:

That small snails, of a land species, had fallen near Redruth, Cornwall, July 8, 1886, "during a heavy thunderstorm": roads and fields strewn with them, so that they were gathered up by the hatful: none seen to fall by the writer of this account: snails said to be "quite different to any previously known in this district."

But, upon page 282, we have better orthodoxy. Another correspondent writes that he had heard of the supposed fall of snails: that he had supposed that all such stories had gone the way of witch stories; that, to his astonishment, he had read an account of this absurd story in a local newspaper of "great and deserved repute."

"I thought I should for once like to trace the origin of one of these fabulous tales."

Our own acceptance is that justice cannot be in an intermediate existence, in which there can be approximation only to justice or to injustice; that to be fair is to have no opinion at all; that to be honest is to be uninterested; that to investigate is to admit prejudice; that n.o.body has ever really investigated anything, but has always sought positively to prove or to disprove something that was conceived of, or suspected, in advance.

"As I suspected," says this correspondent, "I found that the snails were of a familiar land-species"--that they had been upon the ground "in the first place."

He found that the snails had appeared after the rain: that "astonished rustics had jumped to the conclusion that they had fallen."

He met one person who said that he had seen the snails fall.

"This was his error," says the investigator.

In the _Philosophical Magazine_, 58-310, there is an account of snails said to have fallen at Bristol in a field of three acres, in such quant.i.ties that they were shoveled up. It is said that the snails "may be considered as a local species." Upon page 457, another correspondent says that the numbers had been exaggerated, and that in his opinion they had been upon the ground in the first place. But that there had been some unusual condition aloft comes out in his observation upon "the curious azure-blue appearance of the sun, at the time."

_Nature_, 47-278:

That, according to _Das Wetter_, December, 1892, upon Aug. 9, 1892, a yellow cloud appeared over Paderborn, Germany. From this cloud, fell a torrential rain, in which were hundreds of mussels. There is no mention of whatever may have been upon the ground in the first place, nor of a whirlwind.

Lizards--said to have fallen on the sidewalks of Montreal, Canada, Dec.

28, 1857. (_Notes and Queries_, 8-6-104.)

In the _Scientific American_, 3-112, a correspondent writes, from South Granville, N.Y., that, during a heavy shower, July 3, 1860, he heard a peculiar sound at his feet, and looking down, saw a snake lying as if stunned by a fall. It then came to life. Gray snake, about a foot long.

These data have any meaning or lack of meaning or degree of d.a.m.nation you please: but, in the matter of the fall that occurred at Memphis, Tennessee, occur some strong significances. Our quasi-reasoning upon this subject applies to all segregations so far considered.

_Monthly Weather Review_, Jan. 15, 1877:

That, in Memphis, Tenn., Jan. 15, 1877, rather strictly localized, or "in a s.p.a.ce of two blocks," and after a violent storm in which the rain "fell in torrents," snakes were found. They were crawling on sidewalks, in yards, and in streets, and in ma.s.ses--but "none were found on roofs or any other elevation above ground" and "none were seen to fall."

If you prefer to believe that the snakes had always been there, or had been upon the ground in the first place, and that it was only that something occurred to call special attention to them, in the streets of Memphis, Jan. 15, 1877--why, that's sensible: that's the common sense that has been against us from the first.

It is not said whether the snakes were of a known species or not, but that "when first seen, they were of a dark brown, almost black."

Blacksnakes, I suppose.

If we accept that these snakes did fall, even though not seen to fall by all the persons who were out sight-seeing in a violent storm, and had not been in the streets crawling loose or in thick tangled ma.s.ses, in the first place:

If we try to accept that these snakes had been raised from some other part of this earth's surface in a whirlwind:

If we try to accept that a whirlwind could segregate them--

We accept the segregation of other objects raised in that whirlwind.

Then, near the place of origin, there would have been a fall of heavier objects that had been s.n.a.t.c.hed up with the snakes--stones, fence rails, limbs of trees. Say that the snakes occupied the next gradation, and would be the next to fall. Still farther would there have been separate falls of lightest objects: leaves, twigs, tufts of gra.s.s.

In the _Monthly Weather Review_ there is no mention of other falls said to have occurred anywhere in January, 1877.

Again ours is the objection against such selectiveness by a whirlwind.

Conceivably a whirlwind could scoop out a den of hibernating snakes, with stones and earth and an infinitude of other debris, s.n.a.t.c.hing up dozens of snakes--I don't know how many to a den--hundreds maybe--but, according to the account of this occurrence in the _New York Times_, there were thousands of them; alive; from one foot to eighteen inches in length. The _Scientific American_, 36-86, records the fall, and says that there were thousands of them. The usual whirlwind-explanation is given--"but in what locality snakes exist in such abundance is yet a mystery."

This matter of enormousness of numbers suggests to me something of a migratory nature--but that snakes in the United States do not migrate in the month of January, if ever.

As to falls or flutterings of winged insects from the sky, prevailing notions of swarming would seem explanatory enough: nevertheless, in instances of ants, there are some peculiar circ.u.mstances.

_L'Astronomie_, 1889-353:

Fall of fishes, June 13, 1889, in Holland; ants, Aug. 1, 1889, Strasbourg; little toads, Aug. 2, 1889, Savoy.

Fall of ants, Cambridge, England, summer of 1874--"some were wingless."

(_Scientific American_, 30-193.) Enormous fall of ants, Nancy, France, July 21, 1887--"most of them were wingless." (_Nature_, 36-349.) Fall of enormous, unknown ants--size of wasps--Manitoba, June, 1895. (_Sci.

Amer._, 72-385.)

However, our expression will be:

That wingless, larval forms of life, in numbers so enormous that migration from some place external to this earth is suggested, have fallen from the sky.

That these "migrations"--if such can be our acceptance--have occurred at a time of hibernation and burial far in the ground of larvae in the northern lat.i.tudes of this earth; that there is significance in recurrence of these falls in the last of January--or that we have the square of an incredibility in such a notion as that of selection of larvae by whirlwinds, compounded with selection of the last of January.

I accept that there are "snow worms" upon this earth--whatever their origin may have been. In the _Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. of Philadelphia_, 1899-125, there is a description of yellow worms and black worms that have been found together on glaciers in Alaska. Almost positively were there no other forms of insect-life upon these glaciers, and there was no vegetation to support insect-life, except microscopic organisms.

Nevertheless the description of this probably polymorphic species fits a description of larvae said to have fallen in Switzerland, and less definitely fits another description. There is no opposition here, if our data of falls are clear. Frogs of every-day ponds look like frogs said to have fallen from the sky--except the whitish frogs of Birmingham.

However, all falls of larvae have not positively occurred in the last of January:

London _Times_, April 14, 1837:

That, in the parish of Bramford Speke, Devonshire, a large number of black worms, about three-quarters of an inch in length, had fallen in a snowstorm.

In Timb's _Year Book_, 1877-26, it is said that, in the winter of 1876, at Christiania, Norway, worms were found crawling upon the ground. The occurrence is considered a great mystery, because the worms could not have come up from the ground, inasmuch as the ground was frozen at the time, and because they were reported from other places, also, in Norway.

Immense number of black insects in a snowstorm, in 1827, at Pakroff, Russia. (_Scientific American_, 30-193.)