176 JOURNAL OF THE [july, 



berland, England, it rained blood, which "covered the church 

 and churchyard." In May, 1646, it rained brimstone at Witten- 

 burg. And, finally, in June, 1653, "a black cloud was seen 

 over the town of Pool, in Dorsetshire, and soon after dissolved 

 into a shower of blood which fell warm upon men's hands, and 

 some green leaves with those drops upon them were sent to 

 London and seen by many." 



In the third chapter of the Rev. Dr. Hugh Macmillan's very 

 charming little book entitled " First Forms of Vegetation," you 

 will find accounts of many such prodigies as those to which I 

 have just called your attention, and some of them are much 

 more extraordinary than any which I have cited. His scientific 

 explanations, too, are no less interesting than his merely histor- 

 ical quotations, and you will oblige me if you will supplement 

 this paper with a perusal of his fascinating pages. I have not, I 

 think, mentioned a single case which is also to be found in his 

 book. 



As it is no part of my purpose to make a complete catalogue 

 of reputed prodigies, I shall not further enlarge my list. I have 

 already given items extending over nearly twenty-five hundred 

 years of history, which are sufficient to show that reports of 

 miraculous operations in nature were so frequent and so nearly 

 universal as to warrant our believing that they were, in general, 

 founded in facts to which merely false interpretations were 

 given. I do not mean to say that every single instance that has 

 been recorded will fall under this generalization, for many may 

 easily have been, and some probably were, pure inventions ; 

 and, as Livy says, " the more these were credited by simple and 

 superstitious people, the more such stories multiplied." But 

 each class of prodigies may be regarded as representing, or, 

 rather, misrepresenting, a class of actually observed phenom- 

 ena, and we may properly and profitably inquire what those 

 phenomena were. Let us do this as briefly as possible. 



1. The Sweatmg and Weeping of Images, Altars, etc., may be 

 disposed of without much delay, for it is almost impossible to 

 conceive of any cause for this appearance except the commonly 

 observed phenomenon of the condensation of watery moisture 

 upon any relatively cold surface. 



2. The Bleeding of Statues, Shields, etc., may, I think, be 

 explained, in some cases, by the sudden appearance of mere 



