BOOK OF THE DAMNED 83 



in any other part of the neighborhood, save in the particular spot 

 mentioned." 



In the London Times, March 10, 1859, Vicar Griffith writes an 

 account: 



"The roofs of some houses were covered with them." 



In this letter it is said that the largest fishes were five inches long, 

 and that these did not survive the fall. 



Report of the British Association, 1859-158: 



"The evidence of the fall of fish on this occasion was very con- 

 clusive. A specimen of the fish was exhibited and was found to be 

 the Gasterosteus leirus. 



Gasterosteus is the stickleback. 



Altogether I think we have not a sense of total perdition, whea 

 we're damned with the explanation that some one soused some one 

 else with a pailful of water, in which were thousands of fishes four 

 or five inches long, some of which covered roofs of houses, and some 

 of which remained ten minutes in the air. By way of contrast we 

 offer our own acceptance: 



That the bottom of a super-geographical pond had dropped out. 



I have a great many notes upon the fall of fishes, despite the dif- 

 ficulty these records have in getting themselves published, but I 

 pick out the instances that especially relate to our super-geographical 

 acceptances, or to the Principles of Super-Geography: or data of 

 things that have been in the air longer than acceptably could a 

 whirlwind carry them ; that have fallen with a distribution narrower 

 than is attributable to a whirlwind; that have fallen for a consid- 

 erable length of time upon the same narrow area of land. 



These three factors indicate, somewhere not far aloft, a region of 

 inertness to this earth's gravitation, of course, however, a region that, 

 by the flux and variation of all things, must at times be susceptible 

 but, afterward, our heresy will bifurcate 



In amiable accommodation to the crucifixion it'll get, I think 



But so impressed are we with the datum that, though there have 

 been many reports of small frogs that have fallen from the sky, not 

 one report upon a fall of tadpoles is findable, that to these circum- 

 stances another adjustment must be made. 



Apart from our three factors cf indication, an extraordinary ob- 

 servation is the fall of living things without injury to them. The 

 devotees of St. Isaac explain that they fall upon thick grass and 

 so survive: but Sir James Emerson Teinant, in his "History of 

 Ceylon," tells of a fall of fishes upon gravel, by which they were 



