Part 31

Amer. Jour. Sci., 1-32-199:

That, according to testimony taken before a magistrate, a fall occurred, Feb. 19, 1830, near Feridpoor, India, of many fishes, of various sizes--some whole and fresh and others "mutilated and putrefying." Our reflex to those who would say that, in the climate of India, it would not take long for fishes to putrefy, is--that high in the air, the climate of India is not torrid. Another peculiarity of this fall is that some of the fishes were much larger than others. Or to those who hold out for segregation in a whirlwind, or that objects, say, twice as heavy as others would be separated from the lighter, we point out that some of these fishes were twice as heavy as others.

In the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 2-650, depositions of witnesses are given:

"Some of the fish were fresh, but others were rotten and without heads."

"Among the number which I got, five were fresh and the rest stinking and headless."

They remind us of His Grace's observation of some pages back.

According to Dr. Buist, some of these fishes weighed one and a half pounds each and others three pounds.

A fall of fishes at Futtepoor, India, May 16, 1833:

"They were all dead and dry." (Dr. Buist, Living Age, 52-186.)

India is far away: about 1830 was long ago.

Nature, Sept. 19, 1918-46:

A correspondent writes, from the Dove Marine Laboratory, Cuttercoats, England, that, at Hindon, a suburb of Sunderland, Aug. 24, 1918, hundreds of small fishes, identified as sand eels, had fallen--

Again the small area: about 60 by 30 yards.

The fall occurred during a heavy rain that was accompanied by thunder--or indications of disturbance aloft--but by no visible lightning. The sea is close to Hindon, but if you try to think of these fishes having described a trajectory in a whirlwind from the ocean, consider this remarkable datum:

That, according to witnesses, the fall upon this small area occupied ten minutes.

I cannot think of a clearer indication of a direct fall from a stationary source.

And:

"The fish were all dead, and indeed stiff and hard, when picked up, immediately after the occurrence."

By all of which I mean that we have only begun to pile up our data of things that fall from a stationary source overhead: we'll have to take up the subject from many approaches before our acceptance, which seems quite as rigorously arrived at as ever has been a belief, can emerge from the accursed.

I don't know how much the horse and the barn will help us to emerge: but, if ever anything did go up from this earth's surface and stay up--those damned things may have:

Monthly Weather Review, May, 1878:

In a tornado, in Wisconsin, May 23, 1878, "a barn and a horse were carried completely away, and neither horse nor barn, nor any portion of either have since been found."

After that, which would be a little strong were it not for a steady improvement in our digestions that I note as we go along, there is little of the bizarre or the unassimilable in the turtle that hovered six months or so over a small town in Mississippi:

Monthly Weather Review, May, 1894:

That, May 11, 1894, at Vicksburg, Miss., fell a small piece of alabaster; that, at Bovina, eight miles from Vicksburg, fell a gopher turtle.

They fell in a hailstorm.

This item was widely copied at the time: for instance, Nature, one of the volumes of 1894, page 430, and Jour. Roy. Met. Soc., 20-273. As to discussion--not a word. Or Science and its continuity with Presbyterianism--data like this are damned at birth. The Weather Review does sprinkle, or baptize, or attempt to save, this infant--but in all the meteorological literature that I have gone through, after that date--not a word, except mention once or twice. The Editor of the Review says:

"An examination of the weather map shows that these hailstorms occur on the south side of a region of cold northerly winds, and were but a small part of a series of similar storms; apparently some special local whirls or gusts carried heavy objects from this earth's surface up to the cloud regions."