OF NATURAL HISTORY. SO? 



ginning of July, the walls of a church-yard adjacent to the, 

 city, and particularly the walls of the fmall villages in the "* 

 neighbourhood, were obferved to be fpotted with large drops 

 of a blood-coloured liquid. The people, as well as fome 

 theologians, confidered thofe drops as the operation of for- 

 cerers, or of the Devil himfelf. M. de Peirefc, about that 

 time, had picked up a large and beautiful chryfalis, which he 

 laid in a box. Immediately after its transformation into the 

 butterfly ftate, M. de Peirefc remarked, that it had left a 

 drop of blood*coloured liquor on the bottom of the box, and 

 that this drop, or ftain, was as large as a French fou. The 

 red drains on the walls, on flones near the highways, and in 

 the fields, were found to be perfectly llmilar to that on the 

 bottom of M. de Peirefc's box. lie now no longer hefltat- 

 ed to pronounce, that all thofe blood-coloured flains, where- 

 ever they appeared, proceeded from the fame caufe. The 

 prodigious number of butterflies which he, at the fame time, 

 faw flying in the air, confirmed his original idea. He like- 

 wife obferved, that the drops of the miraculous rain were 

 never found in the middle of the city ; that they appeared 

 only in places bordering upoR the country ; and that they 

 never fell upon the tops of houfes, or upon walls more elevat- 

 ed than the height to which butterflies generally rife. What 

 M. de Peirefc faw himfelf, he fliowed to many perfons of 

 knowledge, or of curiofity, and eflablillied it as an incontef- 

 tible fa£l:, that the pretended drops of blood were, in reality, 

 drops of a red liquor depofited by butterflies. 



To the fame caufe M. de Peirefc attributes fome other 

 ihowers of blood related by hifuorians j and it is worthy of 

 remark, that all of them are faid to have happened in the 

 w^arm feafons of the year, when butterflies arc moft nume- 

 rous. Among others, Gregory of Towers mentions a fhov/- 

 er of blood which fell, in the time of Childebert, in differ- 

 ent parts of Paris, and upon a certain houfe in the territory 



