364 Scientific hitelligence. 



was produced by demons, or witches, shedding the blood of innocent babes. 

 This he thought was a mere conjecture, scarcely reconcileable with the 

 goodness and providence of God. In the meantime an accident happened, 

 which discovered to him, as he thought, the true cause of the phenome- 

 non. He had found some months before a chrysalis of a remarkable size 

 and form, which he enclosed in a box. He thought no more of it, until, 

 hearing a buzz within the box, he opened it, and perceived that the chry- 

 salis had been changed into a most beautiful butterfly, which immediate- 

 ly flew away, leaving at the bottom of the box a red drop of the size of a 

 shilling. As this happened about the time when the shower was supposed 

 to have fallen, and when a vast multitude of those insects was observed 

 fluttering through the air in every direction, he concluded that the drops 

 in. question were some kind of excrementitious matter emitted by them, 

 when they alighted upon the walls. He therefore examined the drops 

 again, and remarked, that they were not upon the upper surfaces of stones 

 and buildings, as they would have been, if a shower of blood had fallen 

 from the sky, but rather in cavities and holes, where insects might nestle. 

 Besides this, he took notice that they were to be seen upon the walls of 

 those houses only, which were near the fields, and not upon the more ele- 

 vated parts of them, but only up to the same moderate height at which 

 the butterflies were accustomed to flutter. In this way he explained the 

 story, told by Gregory of Tours, of a bloody shower seen at Paris in the 

 time of Childebert, at different places, and upon a house in the vicinity of 

 Senlis ; and another said to have fallen in the time of King Robert about 

 the end of June, the drops of which could not be washed out by means of 

 water, when they had fallen upon flesh, garments, or stones, but might 

 be washed out from wood ; for the time here stated was the season for 

 the butterflies ; and he showed that no water could wash out these red 

 marks from stones. After discussing these and similar arguments in the 

 presence of much company at the house of his friend Varius, they deter- 

 mined to inspect the appearance together, and, as they wandered through 

 the fields, they saw many drops upon stones and rocks, but only in hollows 

 or upon sloping surfaces, and not upon those which were presented to the 

 sky." The butterfly observed by Peiresc was probably the Papilio C. al- 

 bum, or common butterfly. It has been observed to deposit the same red 

 fluid in England. 



. 10. Waterspout seen on the Lake of Geneva, lith August 1827. — This 

 meteor was seen by Professor Mercanton at 6^ 52'. A portion of a dark 

 cloud suspended below the summit of the Savoy mountains, suddenly took 

 a vertical direction, and being gilded with the deep orange tint of the set- 

 ting sun, it attracted universal att'cntion, and enabled the spectators to 

 trace all its movements. Its form was that of an inverted cone, the sum- 

 mit of which was about 200 feet from the surface of the lake, to which it 

 precipitated itself in less than two minutes. This elongation of the cone 

 took place by an oscillatory motion. This part of the spout appeared 

 cylindrical, and its diameter was about ten or twelve feet. The moment 

 it reached the lake a great mass of the water was briskly agitated as if it 

 had been boiling, the boiling foam rising to a height of more than fifty feet. 



