44 REPORT—1840. 
account of the testimony by which they are established, been received 
not only in France and Switzerland, but in Germany and England, J 
conceive that they are undoubtedly entitled to stand part of the history 
of meteorology. I proceed to add a notice of a few other remarkable 
falls of rain, though there is nothing on record comparable to the two 
preceding ones. Flaugergues, the eminent meteorologist of Viviers, 
obtained, on the 6th of September, 1801, 13 inches 2:3 lines (143 
English inches) of rain in eighteen hours. On the 20th of May, 18927, 
there fell at Geneva 6 inches of rain in three hours. At Perth, on the 
3rd of August, 1829, there fell 4-5ths of an inch in half an hour. On 
the 22nd of November, 1826, I observed at Naples a fall of 9-10ths of 
an inch of rain and hail in thirty-seven minutes. Were the equatorial 
records of the fall of rain as minute in respect of distribution as of total 
amount, we should doubtless have records of enormous falls within 
twenty-four hours; none so recorded, that I am aware of, approaches 
the results at Genoa and Joyeuse. From the total quantities measured, 
it is evident that the result for particular days must be enormous. Don 
Antonio Lago observed at San Luis, Maranham (3° S. latitude), a 
fall of 23 feet 4 inches 9:7 lines in a year. Roussin states (his account 
is confirmed) that at Cayenne (5° N. lat.), in February, 1820, there 
fell, in ten hours, 1°25 inch of rain; and between the Ist and 24th of 
February, twelve feet 7 inches. From observations in the Ghauts, it 
appears that, in the eastern hemisphere, in lat. 18° N., 302:21 inches 
of rain have been measured ; a quantity exceeding that stated on the 
authority of Roussin, and which was once considered almost incredible ; 
and of this quantity (25:2 English feet), nearly 10 feet fell in the month 
of July alone.” 
Col. Sykes communicated the contents of a letter from India, from 
Capt. Aston, one of the diplomatic agents of the government of Bom- 
bay, in Kattywar, on the subject of a recent singular shower of grain. 
He stated that full sixty or seventy years ago, a fall of fish, during a 
storm in the Madras Presidency, had occurred. The fact is recorded 
by Major Harriot, in his “ Struggles through Life,” as having taken 
place while the troops were on the line of march, and some of the fish 
falling upon the hats of the European troops, they were collected and 
made into a curry for the general. This fact for probably fifty years 
was looked upon as a traveller’s tale, but within the last ten years so 
many other instances have been witnessed and publicly attested, that 
the singular anomaly is no longer doubted. The matter to which he 
had to call the attention of the Section was not to a fall of fish, but to 
an equally remarkable circumstance, a shower of grain. This took 
place on the 24th of March, 1840, at Rajket, in Kattywar, during one of 
those thunder storms, to which that month is subject; and it was found 
that the grain had not only fallen upon the town, but upon a consider- 
able extent of country and round the town. Captain Aston collected 
a quantity of the seed and transmitted it to Col. Sykes. The natives 
