IO4 Human Physiology. 



mena. No one, that I am aware of, has explained how vast 

 quantities of water are sustained in clouds, often piled up on a 

 level flooring in the sky, as if resting upon a stratum of repul- 

 sive force, until some change probably electric or magnetic 

 allows it to fall in rain. No one knows by what force 

 thousands of tons of water are carried up in waterspouts, 

 spreading out in clouds, and sustained for days, contrary to 

 gravitation. Quantities of fishes are sometimes carried up into 

 the air, and come down in showers of rain far inland. Walking 

 in a smart thunder shower, I have seen small frogs falling quite 

 thick around me. They rebounded like india-rubber balls, and 

 then hopped away. In India fishes have fallen weighing from 

 one to three pounds. A shower of sticklebacks fell in Wales 

 some years ago, near Merthyr Tydvil, over several square 

 miles. Herrings rained down at Torrens, Isle of Mull. The 

 force that sustains vast quantities of water, banks of clouds, 

 immense masses of snow, could sustain any solid body. I have 

 seen the deep snow blown from the top of a mountain, pass 

 off as gorgeous clouds in the sunshine, at the same apparent 

 elevation as the mountain- top, and not differing in appearance 

 from other clouds, which, like it, were frozen were in fact 

 snow. 



It is probable that birds of passage, which fly night and day 

 hundreds of miles, and some of which almost live in the air, 

 and sleep upon the wing, find strata in the atmosphere in which 

 gravitation is counteracted by some force of repulsion, and in 

 which they sail along as easily as fishes swim. It is not impro- 

 bable that the discovery of such strata of repulsion, or balanced 

 forces, may solve the problem of aerial navigation. 



The roots of an oak growing near me, from the side of a 

 ledge of very hard rock of the Malvern Hills, have separated 

 and thrown out a mas,s of the rock like a heavy charge of gun- 

 powder. A crop of fungus has lifted up a heavy flag stone. 

 Consider the forces that have placed and sustain the weight 



