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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account