84 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



seemingly uninjured. Something else apart from our three main 

 interests is a phenomenon that looks like what one might call an 

 alternating series of falls of fishes, whatever the significance may be: 



Meerut, India, July, 1824 (Living Age, 52-186); Fifeshire, 

 Scotland, summer of 1824 (Werneriam Nat. Hist. Soc. Trans., 

 5-575); Moradabad, India, July, 1826 (Living Age, 52-186); 

 Ross-shire, Scotland, 1828 (Living Age, 52-186); Moradabad, In- 

 dia, July 20, 1829 (Lin. S&c. Trans., 16-764); Perthshire, Scotland, 

 (Living Age, 52-186); Argyleshire, Scotland, 1830, March 9, 1830 

 (Recreative Science, 3-339); Feridpoor, India, Feb. 19, 1830 

 (Jour. Asiatic Soc. of Bengal, 2-650). 



A psycho-tropism that arises here disregarding serial significance 

 or mechanical, unintelligent, repulsive reflex is that the fishes 

 of India did not fall from the sky; that they were found upon the 

 ground after torrential rains, because streams had overflowed and 

 had then receded. 



In the region of Inertness that we think we can conceive of, or a 

 zone that is to this earth's gravitation very much like the neutral 

 zone of a magnet's attraction, we accept that there are bodies of 

 water and also clear spaces bottoms of ponds dropping out very 

 interesting ponds, having no earth at bottom vast drops of water 

 afloat in what is called space fishes and deluges of water fall- 

 ing 



But also other areas, in which fishes however they got there: a 

 matter that we'll consider remain and dry, or even putrefy, then 

 sometimes falling by atmospheric dislodgment. 



After a "tremendous deluge of rain, one of the heaviest falls on 

 record" (All the Year Round, 8-255) at Rajkote, India, July 25, 

 1850, "the ground was found literally covered with f rhes." 



The word 'found" is agreeable to the repulsio... of the conven- 

 tionalists and their concept of an overflowing str<%n~but, accord- 

 ing to Dr. Buist, some of these fishes were "found" the tops of 

 haystacks. 



Ferrel (A Popular Treatise, p. 414) tells of a fall of . -ing fishes 

 some of them having been placed in a tank, where thej survived 

 that occurred in India, about 20 miles south of Calcutta, Sept. 20, 

 1839. A witness of this fall says: 



"The most strange thing which ever struck me was that the fish 

 did not fall helter-skelter, or here and there, but they fell in a 

 straight line, not more than a cubit in breadth." See Living Age, 

 52-186. 



