Fune 29, 1871 | 
NATURE 
161 

mination of the nature of that phenomenon, if true, serves to 
confirm the statements of others who have observed similar oc- 
currences. The confirmation, however, only extends so far, as 
proving that, a yellowish substance has been seen on bodies after 
a fall of rain. I can mention instances where sudden appearances 
have taken place, and would be called ye//ow rain, without the 
aid of ordinary rain. 
The earliest case I am acquainted with occurs in Pliny,* who 
says :— 
Xe In like manner it rained iron in Lucania, the year before that 
in which M. Crassus was slain by the Parthians ; and together 
with him all the Lucani, his soldiers, of whom there were many 
in his army. That which came down in the rain resembled in 
some sort sponges ; and the aruspices gave warning to take heed 
of wounds from above.” 
This records two kinds of showers, viz., iron and sponges, but 
they were, I believe, one shower, although I have never seen any 
explanation of this curious passage. An account of a few 
“* preternatural showers,” I have lately come across, seems to con- 
tain exactly the information J have been seeking to clear up 
this difficulty. As it is novel, and was written in apparent ig- 
norance of Pliny’s record, it has at the present time some value. 
It says, in attempting to explain the cause of ‘‘red snow” :— 
“* This singular phenomenon, which has been observed in the 
Arctic regions, seems to be owing to the presence of oxide of 
iron ina state of minute division, and also of a resinous vege- 
table principle of an orange-red colour, belonging apparently to 
some lichen, of which too, perhaps, the iron may form one of the 
immediate principles. + 
This explains Pliny toa certain extent ; in the common igno- 
rance of both ascribing the redness of the snow to iron rust, or 
oxide of iron, and the matter that remained after the dissolution 
appearing ofa sponge-like texture, and called a sponge or sponges 
by Pliny, and a resinous vegetable principle of an orange-red 
colour by Phillips. 
This I think is the most probable meaning, and is, perhaps, 
the earliest “yellow ” shower on record. The colour, as stated 
by the latter, is nearly correct, as shown by the investigation of 
MM. De Candolle and Prevost, who discovered, microscopically, 
that the red snow was due to the presence of small globules of a 
bright red colour, which were surrounded by a gelatinous mem- 
brane, transparent and slightly yellow, and were mixed with 
fragments of moss and dust. ‘‘ An examination of the crimson snow 
found by Captain Ross in the Arctic regions by M.De Candolle 
proved it to be identical with the Alpine red snow ; the globular 
bodies are of a vegetable na'ure, and were once thought to belong 
to the Uredo, but M. Bauer disproved this, and named the plant 
Protococcus nivalis. There are cases, however, in which the pre- 
sence of animalcules gives a reddish tinge to snow.” ¢ 
Honeydew is mentioned by Pliny (Bk. xvitt. c. 28), who 
states that a great many of the ancients affirmed that dew burnt 
up by the scorching sun is the cause of honeydew on corn. 
In the Chronicum Scotorum is the earliest direct record of a 
‘« shower of honey ” I know of.§ It says; ‘‘A.D. 714... « it 
rained a shower of honey upon Othan Bec. . .. .” 
When it is known that any sudden appearance, giving a colour 
to the ground, or prominent places, or on trees, &c., is generally 
thought to have descended from above, this passage is quite 
intelligible. The ‘‘ shower of honey” was nothing more than a 
“secretion of apfides,” who-e excrement has the privilege of 
emulating the sugar and honey in sweetness and purity.” || Some 
contend that it is due solely to the exudation of the saccharine 
juices of trees ; but, feasible as this may seem, it is not sufficient 
to account for this phenomenon, which often extends over very 
large tracts of land. If the exudation is promoted by the aphides, 
and the dew increased by their own excrement, then this ex- 
planation is, I believe, the true one. The former view is not to 
_be discarded without some consideration ; for one observer states 
that, in the course of thirty years he had attended to this subject, 
he had never met with any honeydew which did not seem 
to him to be clearly referable to aphides as its origin.{{ This 
view does not go counter to what I[ conceive to be the correct 
one ; for exudations do take place, and the quantity of ‘‘dew”’ 
can be increased by the aphides. 
* Bk, 1. c. lvi. 
+ Lectures on Natural Philosophy, rst series, by Montagu Lyon Phillips. 
London, 1839, pp 47-48. 
t Vegetable Physiology, by Dr. W. B. Carpenter, 1858, p. 580. 
§ This I take to be equivalent to ‘* honeydew.” 
{| Kirby and Spence’s *‘ Entomology,” 1867, p. 119. 
- Kirby and Spence, foot-note, p. 119. 

There is a very curious account given in a now little known 
work of what was considered the real cause of ‘‘ honeydew,” but 
I will not trespass further upon the valuable space of this journal 
in quoting it. I give the title at foot. * 
More can be said upon this interesting subject ; and on another 
occasion I hope to resume the investigation, by attempting to 
explain the ‘‘ yellow rains” of a different kind to those treated 
of in this letter. JouN JEREMIAH 
43, Red Lion Street 
Black Rain 
THE following notice of a shower of black rain, which has 
been sent to me by my friend Mr. G. J. A Walker, of Norton 
Villa, near Worcester, though not so exact in its description as I 
could have wished, may call attention to the subject, and elicit a 
more detailed account, if in this ungenial season rain of a similar 
nature has fallen elsewhere. Mr. Walker's residence is about three 
miles south-east of Worcester, and he says, that after three or 
four hours of common rain on Tuesday June 6, it became sud- 
denly dark about seven o’clock, P.M., and shortly after a rain like 
ink poured down for a quarter of an hour, after which light re- 
turned upon the scene. The following morning the sheep at 
Woodhall (an adjacent farm) appeared as if their fleeces had been 
dyed black ; also the dog and a grey pony that Mr. Walker had 
out ina field close by appeared as if they had been rolling in 
soot orin acoal hole. The black matter brought down with 
the rain was of an adhesive nature, and at Littleworth, within a 
mile of Norton, where this rain fell into some tubs, it was ob- 
served to be as black asink. This black rain was particularly 
remarked, as clear ordinary rain had been falling for some hours 
on the day mentioned, but had ceased an hour previously to the 
commencement of this black downfall. The actual rain of that 
evening did not extend to Worcester, but I have a note taken at 
my residence here at the time, that ‘‘the gloom was 
singular and overpowering all the evening.” I regret that, going 
into Herefordshire the next day, I was not aware of this oc- 
currence till some days after, and none of the black rain or 
the adhesive matter it brought down had been preserved for 
microscopical examination. EpwIn LEEs 
A New View of Darwinism 
I HAVE noticed that NATURE is very catholic in its sympathies, 
and allows all views which are not palpably absurd to be dis- 
cussed in its pages, and I therefore venture to ask for some space 
in which to present a few of the difficulties which have been 
suggested by Mr. Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection, and which 
have not, so far as I know, been as yet discussed. I have not 
the taste for the language nor the arguments which were used by 
a Times reviewer, and I have much too great a reverence for one 
of the most fearless, original, and accurate investigators of 
modern times, to speak of Mr. Darwin and his theory in the 
terms used by that very ignorant person. Approaching the sub- 
ject in this spirit, and knowing how very small a section of 
biologists are now opposed to Mr. Darwin, I may be very rash, 
but hardly impertinent, in stating my difficulties. 
I cannot dispute the validity and completeness of many of 
Mr. Darwin’s proofs to account for individual cases of variation 
and isolated changes of form. Within the limits of these proofs 
it is impossible to deny his position, But when he leaves these 
individual and often highly artificial cases, and deduces a 
general law from them, it is quite competent for me to quote 
examples of a much wider and more general occurrence that tell 
the other way. In this communication I shall confine myself to 
Mr. Darwin’s theory, and shall not trepass upon the doctrine of 
evolution, with which it is not to be confounded. 
The theory of Natural Selection has been expressively epitomised 
as ‘“‘the Persistence of the Stronger,” ‘‘the Survival of the 
Stronger.” Sexual selection, which Mr. Darwin adduces in his 
last work as the cause of many ornamental and other appendages 
whose use in the struggle for existence is not very obvious, is only 
a by-path of the main conclusion. Unless by the theory of the 
struggie for existence is meant the purely identical expression 
that those forms of life survive which are best adapted to survive, 
I take it that it means in five words the Persistence of the Stronger. 
Among the questions which stand at the very threshold of the 
* Rohault’s “‘ System of Nat. Phil.,” by John C'arke, D.D., Vol. ii, p. 217. 
London, 1723. 
