Blood-red Colour of Water. 129 



lected accounts of meteors from ancient times till the seventeenth 

 century. 



As has been already observed, Peiresc of Aix was very much 

 celebrated, in his time, for his various knowledge, he being the 

 first who, at tlie commencement of the seventeenth century, by 

 judicious investigation, removed a great portion of the supersti- 

 tion and error which existed regarding the appearances of blood. 

 When, in the year 1608, what was supposed to be a shower of 

 blood, gave great alarm to the inhabitants of Aix, in France, 

 and the clergy increased the alarm, Peiresc took the trouble of 

 searching out the real cause of the appearance, when he found 

 that butterflies, whicli at that time appeared in vL>^t numbers, after 

 their escape from their pupa tegument, let fall some drops of a 

 red liquid, which caused the bloody spots. As these spots were 

 observed in covered places, not accessible to rain, but accessible 

 to butterflies, there can be no doubt about the correct concep- 

 tion and explanation of the phenomenon, and a comparison of 

 similar and earlier accounts affords the satisfactory result, that 

 they also happened at a season of the year that countenances 

 this explanation. The observation of Peiresc has lately found 

 its way into all schools and compendiums ; and hence arose the 

 erroneous opinion of less observant philosophers, that every ap- 

 pearance of blood-rain was caused by the sloughing of insects. 



In the middle of the same century, Swammerdam (who died 

 in 1685), in a journey near Vincennes, in France, saw a kind of 

 bloody water, at the sight of which he was astonished. He was 

 naturally led lo examine it more minutely, when he found that 

 it was coloured by innumerable multitudes of small red water- 

 fleas (Daphnia pulex) ; and, on this occasion, related that an 

 appearance, which owed its origin to the same cause, and which 

 greatly alarmed the inhabitants of Leyden, had been observed 

 and known by the professor of medicine, M. Schuyl. Bibl. der 

 Natur. s. 40. 



In the eighteenth century, the knowledge of these appearances 

 has been extended by similar careful investigations. Romberg, 

 Dr Westphal of Delitzch, the missionary Gonsay, who was in 

 California in 1746, Linnseus, De Saussure, Girod Chantran, 

 and others, have partly become the inventors of new methods of 

 explanation, partly the influential corroborators and promoters 



OCTOBER — DECEMBER 1830. I 



