BOOK II.] History of Nature. 95 



CHAPTER LVI. 



Of strange and prodigious Rain 1 , of Milk, Blood, Flesh, 

 Iron, Wool, Tiles, and Bricks. 



BESIDES these Things in this lower Region under Hea- 

 ven, we find recorded on Monuments that it rained Milk 

 and Blood when M. Acilius and C. Porcius were Consuls. 

 And many Times beside it rained Flesh ; as, namely, whilst 

 L. Volumnius and Serv. Sulpitius were Consuls : and what 

 of it the Fowls of the Air carried not away, never putrified. 

 In like Manner, it rained Iron in Lucania, the Year before 

 that in which M. Crassus was slain by the Parthians; and 



1 A coloured mist has been mentioned, in a note to chap, xxvii. Ruysch 

 mentions a flight of butterflies in 1543, which sprinkled the herbage, roofs 

 of houses, and human clothing, with drops of their dung, like blood. A 

 similar circumstance in England, recorded by Pennius, was supposed 

 to have presaged the plague. There are sufficient modern proofs that 

 living fishes, frogs, and other creatures or materials, have fallen in 

 showers : in the former instance, remote from the sea or any great river. 

 These things can only be explained by supposing them to have been first 

 taken up by some whirlwind, or sudden gust ; and it is not unlikely that 

 the ashes of a volcano were the materials of some of these showers. Ovid, 

 by poetic license, accumulates all the bad omens on record or in tradition, 

 hi the alarming prognostications of the death of Julius Caesar (" Meta- 

 morphoses," b. xv.) ; and it may be a principal reason why Pliny specifies 

 the times of these occurrences, to shew that Ovid's narrative is only a 

 poetic fiction. 



The following translation of a paragraph in the " Museum Wormi- 

 anum" (p. 17, De Terris Miracvlusis), is a specimen of the manner in 

 which such extraordinary events were regarded, even at a very modern 

 date : " In the year 1619, when the preposterous fashion of neck-bands, 

 kerchiefs, and other female ornaments of linen, dyed of cerulean blue, in- 

 vaded Denmark, and in spite of the remonstrances of the ministers of 

 God obstinately persisted, by adding pride to luxury, Almighty God, 

 that he might by all means declare how abhorrent this sin was to him, 

 and recall mortals to repentance by a miracle, in many places of Scania 

 rained down abundantly a kind of earth of a blue colour, very similar 

 to a sort sold by the dealers in spices. A small quantity of this was 

 given to me at the time by my good friend, Dr. Fincking, professor 

 of medicine at Copenhagen, &c." It probably proceeded from Hecla. 

 Wern. Club. 



