BOOK OF THE DAMNED 91 



If we try to accept that these snakes had been raised from some 

 other part of this earth's surface in a whirlwind ; 



If we try to accept that a whirlwind could segregate them 



We accept the segregation of other objects raised in that whirl- 

 wind. 



Then, near the place of origin, there would have been a fall of 

 heavier objects that had been snatched up with the snakes stones, 

 fence rails, limbs of trees. Say that the snakes occupied the next 

 gradation, and would be the next to fall. Still farther would there 

 have been separate falls of lightest objects: leaves, twigs, tufts of 

 grass. 



In the Monthly Weather Review there is no mention of other 

 falls said to have occurred anywhere in January, 1877. 



Again ours is the objection against such selectiveness by a whirl- 

 wind. Conceivably a whirlwind could scoop out a den of hibernat- 

 ing snakes, with stones and earth and an infinitude of other debris, 

 snatching up dozens of snakes, I don't know how many to a den 

 hundreds may be but, according to the account of this occurrence 

 in the New York Times, there were thousands of them; alive; from 

 one foot to eighteen inches in length. The Scientific American, 

 36-86, records the fall, and says that there were thousands of them. 

 The usual whirlwind-explanation is given "but in what locality 

 snakes exist in such abundance is yet a mystery." 



This matter of enormousness of numbers suggests to me something 

 of a migratory nature but that snakes in the United States do not 

 migrate in the month of January, if ever. 



As to falls or flutterings of winged insects from the sky, pre- 

 vailing notions of swarming would seem explanatory enough: never- 

 theless, in instances of ants, there are some peculiar circum- 

 stances. 



L'A stronomie, 1 889-3 53 : 



Fall of fishes, June 13, 1889, in Holland; ants, Aug. i, 1889, 

 Strasbourg; little toads, Aug. 2, 1889, Savoy. 



Fall of ants, Cambridge, England, summer of 1874 "some were 

 wingless." (Scientific American, 30-193.) Enormous fall of ants, 

 Nancy, France, July 21, 1887 "most of them were wingless." 

 (Nature, 36-349.) Fall of enormous, unknown ants size of wasps 

 Manitoba, June, 1895. (Sci. Amer., 72-385.) 



However, our expression will be: 



That wingless, larval forms of life, in numbers so enormous that 



