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The following paper was read: 
Note on Colored Rain. 
By Pror. A. M. EpWARDs. 
The subject of colored rain, or the falling, more com- 
monly, of colored matters without water, is one which pos- 
sesses both a popular and a scientific interest. As a matter 
of popular wonder we see, from time to time, in the public 
prints accounts of remarkable showers, sometimes of “ blood,” 
sometimes of “sulphur,” and similar substances, while at’ 
times the particles descending upon the earth, assume more 
noticeable dimensions, and assume the shape of “ frogs” or 
“fish.” Without considering these two last named phenom- 
ena, which are of too gigantic size to come within the scope of 
one who, like myself, uses the microscope largely as an assis- 
tant in unraveling difficult problems in Biology, I desire to 
put upon record a few facts connected with the scientific 
aspect of this subject. 
We find in a late number of Nature (Vol. IV. p. 68) a 
letter from a Mr. A. Ernst, who, writing from Caracas, 
Venezuela, states that “in December, 1870, after a heavy rain 
at Rosaria de Cucuta (New Grenada), a great many small 
round specks of a yellow clayish substance, were found on 
the leaves of plants that had been exposed to the rain.” On 
examination of this substance by means of a microscope, Mr. 
Ernst tells us that “it proved to be composed almost entirely 
of a species of Triceratium, and another of Cosmarium, which,” 
he goes on to say, ‘‘must have been carried away by a violent 
storm, from their lacustrine abodes.” Here is a possessor of a 
microscope who evidently is a mere microscopist and not an 
observer in the true sense of the term. For, if he had been 
so, he would not so readily have assumed that a Desmid 
(Cosmarium) and a Diatom (Triceratium) could be thus 
readily, even “ by a violent storm” carried “ from their la- 
custrine abodes,” and deposited, as a yellow clayish substance, 
on the leaves of plants. Nor would he have expected to 
