404 Miscellanies. 



remarkable event. It appears from communications made to that gen- 

 tleman, that on Friday, August 17, between one and two o'clock, P. M., 

 the negroes of Mr. Chandler, near Lebanon, Wilson County, Tennes- 

 see, came in and reported that it had been raining blood in the tobacco 

 field where they had been at work ; that near noon there was a rattling 

 noise like rain or hail, and drops of blood, as they supposed, which fell 

 from a red cloud which was flying over. Intelligent men visited the 

 ground, and observed drops apparently of blood on the upper surface 

 of the tobacco leaves, and portions of flesh and fat — one piece one and 

 a half inches long, emitting a very offensive smell over the field. 



The drops evidently fell perpendicularly over a space from forty to 

 sixty yards broad, and six or eight hundred yards long. Some particles 

 appeared to have been clear blood uncombined with any thing else ; 

 others, blood united with muscular fibre and fat. Dr. Troost, afterjVis- 

 iting the place, is decidedly of the opinion that it was animal matter, but 

 he thinks not blood ; although he distinctly distinguished inuscular fibres, 

 on maceration of the matter in water, which separated longitudinally, 

 as in the case of dried beef ; they were of a reddish brown color. The 

 pieces supposed to be blood were brown and resembled glue. There 

 was a distinct smell of animal matter in a state of putrefaction. 



Both the muscular part and that which had been called blood, were 

 heated in a glass tube, and were similarly affected as beef would have 

 been in the same circumstances ; there was a movement in the mass, a 

 brown fluid rose, and a black animal charcoal remained. Dr. Troost 

 concluded, that without doubt this is animal matter, and belongs to our 

 globe. He cites many instances of red rain, red dust, red sand, red 

 snow, showers of blood, so called, &c. in various centuries from 472 of 

 our era to 1814, and gives the authorities. There is now no room to 

 relate or discuss these statements, and it remains only to give the con- 

 clusion of Dr. Troost. 



After alluding to the well known power of wind to raise materials 

 high into the atmosphere and to transport them to the distance of many 

 miles, (and even in some cases, as in volcanic eruptions, hundreds of 

 miles,) he observes : " Such a wind might have taken up part of an ani- 

 mal which was in a state of decomposition, and have brought it in con- 

 tact with an electric cloud, in which it was kept in a state of partial 

 fluidity or viscosity. In this case, the cloud which was seen by the ne- 

 groes, as well as the state in which the materials were, is accounted 

 for." 



Dr. Troost gives many cases of transported seeds, pollen, and simi- 

 lar things — which have been taken for showers of sulphur. When wc 

 remember that even fishes have fallen in showers, we caiuiot doubt that 

 whirlwinds may elevate and transport parts of animals and deposit them 

 in distant places. 



