THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 347 



of Sciences, the wise and learned Dum^ril leaned to this 

 opinion. He supposed that the water-spouts, passing over 

 the fens, pumped up the water as well as all it contained, 

 and carried it off to be deposited at a distance. 



In support of this very rational hypothesis, Arago men- 

 tioned that whirlwinds often bear away from the sea 

 masses of water, which they let fall in the form of rain six 

 or seven leagues from the shore. Hailstones, much larger 

 than little toads, are completely suspended for a certain 

 time in the clouds. 



It is, however, maintained, that if this opinion were 

 correct, showers of fish ought also to fall. In reply to this 

 objection several instances of such a fact were cited. 

 Authors mention showers of sticklebacks, certainly among 

 the smallest of their kind, which live in the pools and 

 streams of our country districts. These fish, pumped up 

 along with the water of some fen by the suction of a water- 

 spout, have been seen to fall in heaps at great distances 

 from the place whence they w^ere lifted. 



Thus modern science has established the reality of a 

 phenomenon advanced by antiquity, and the strangeness 

 of which made men for a Ions; time to doubt it.^ 

 - Among the fish there are some the migrations of which 

 have acquired great celebrity, especially those of the 

 herring. It is thought that the northern seas ought to 



' Among the wi-iters of antiquity who mention sbowei's of frogs, we may men- 

 tion JEUan, on whose back one fell as he was travelling from Naples to Puzzuoli. 



The showers of fish which have been the subject of discussion were made up 

 of very small species, which, like frogs, sometimes swarni to an extraordinarj' 

 extent in the fens, so much so that cart-loads of them are taken away to ujanure 

 the ground and feed the cattle with. Those naturalists who, like Messrs. De- 

 france and H. Oloc^uet, maintained that showers of toads ought to be ranked 

 among popular errors, thought that these batrachiaus, wliich sometimes appear 

 in such multitudes after a heavy shower that it is impossible to set one's foot 

 down without crushing some of them, were made up of the young whicli had laid 

 hidden in the clefts of the dry ground, and Iiad been driven out by the rain. 



