o BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



f 



Little frogs found in London, after a heavy storm, July 30, 1838. 



(Notes and Queries, 8-7-437) ; 

 Little toads found in a desert, after a rainfall (Notes and Qtteries, 



8-8-493). 



To start with I do not deny positively the conventional ex- 

 planation of "up and down." I think that there may have been 

 such occurrences. I omit many notes that I have upon indistin- 

 guishables. In the London Times, July 4, 1883, there is an ac- 

 count of a shower of twigs and leaves and tiny toads in a storm 

 upon the slopes of the Apennines. These may have been the ejecta- 

 menta of a whirlwind. I add, however, that I have notes upon two 

 other falls of tiny toads, in 1883, one in France and one in Tahiti^ 

 also of fish in Scotland. But in the phenomenon of the Apennines, 

 the mixture seems to me to be typical of the products of a whirl- 

 wind. The other instances seem to me to be typical of some- 

 thing like migration? Their great numbers and their homogeneity. 

 Over and over in these annals of the damned occurs the datum of 

 segregation. But a whirlwind is thought of as a condition of 

 chaos quasi-chaos: not final negativeness, of course 



Monthly Weather Review, July, 1881: 



"A small pond in the track of the cloud was sucked dry, the water 

 being carried over the adjoining fields together with a large quantity 

 of soft mud, which was scattered over the ground for half a mile 

 around." 



It is so easy to say that small frogs that have fallen from the 

 sky had been scooped up by a whirlwind; but here are the circum- 

 stances of a scoop; in the exclusionist-imagiration there is no re- 

 gard for mud, debris from the bottom of a pond, floating vegeta- 

 tion, loose things from the shores but a precise picking out of 

 frogs only. Of all instances I have that attribute the fall of small 

 frogs or toads to whirlwinds, only one definitely identifies or places 

 the whirlwind. Also, as has been said before, a pond going up 

 would be quite as interesting as frogs coming down. Whirlwinds 

 we read of over and over but where and what whirlwind? It seems 

 to me that anybody who had lost a pond would be heard from. In 

 Symons' Meteorological Magazine, 32-106, a fall of small frogs, 

 near Birmingham, June 30, 1892, is attributed to a specific whirl- 

 wind but not a word as to any special pond that had contributed. 

 And something that strikes my attention here is that these frogs 

 are described as almost white. 



