226 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
be interesting to glance over the several examples 
of blood-prodigies which history furnishes. The 
almost unanimous judgment of modern times has 
stamped these examples as pure fables; but I 
think it is easy to account for the presence in 
them of so much that seems incredible, and to 
show how that into which the apparently fabulous 
enters in so large a proportion, can yet be received 
in the main as true history. Our present investi- 
gations will go far to evince that the great bulk of 
what ancient writers hand down to us as prodigies 
and miracles, is capable of explanation on grounds 
intelligible to any ordinary understanding ; and 
thus that history, so far as these things are con- 
cerned, may be true in its narrative of facts, though 
it be often in error in the view it takes of the 
nature of the facts narrated. That rivers have run 
blood, that skies have rained blood, that the very 
bread in men’s houses have been sprinkled with 
blood, and thus ministered death instead of nour- 
ishment to those who have eaten it, and that con- 
secrated wafers and priestly vestments have re- 
peatedly exhibited these horrible appearances,— 
that all these wonderful things have really hap- “~ 
pened, we have every reason to believe, from the 
circumstantial accounts of them given in records 
purporting to be authentic, received as such by 
the age that produced them, and preserved and 
