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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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