rg, and found to contain multitudes of
infusoria, by the presence of which this remarkable appearance was
accounted for. Thus it appears that both animals and vegetables are
concerned in giving a peculiar tint to water. It has also been
ascertained that red snow is chiefly occasioned by the presence of red
animalculae.

Showers of fish and frogs are by no means uncommon, especially in India.
One of these showers, which fell about twenty miles south of Calcutta, is
thus noticed by an observer:--"About two o'clock, P.M., of the 20th
inst., (Sept. 1839,) we had a very smart shower of rain, and with it
descended a quantity of live fish, about three inches in length, and all
of one kind only. They fell in a straight line on the road from my house
to the tank which is about forty or fifty yards distant. Those which
fell on the hard ground were, as a matter of course, killed from the
fall, but those which fell where there was grass sustained no injury; and
I picked up a large quantity of them, 'alive and kicking,' and let them
go into my tank. The most strange thing that ever struck me in connexion
with this event, was, that the fish did not fall helter skelter,
everywhere, or 'here and there;' but they fell in a straight line, not
more than a cubit in breadth." Another shower is said to have taken
place at a village near Allahabad, in the month of May. About noon, the
wind being in the west, and a few distant clouds visible, a blast of high
wind came on, accompanied with so much dust as to change the tint of the
atmosphere to a reddish hue. The blast appeared to extend in breadth
four hundred yards, and was so violent that many large trees were blown
down. When the storm had passed over, the ground, south of the village,
was found to be covered with fish, not less than three or four thousand
in number. They all belonged to a species well known in India, and were
about a span in length. They were all dead and dry.

It would be easy to multiply these examples to almost any extent,
although they are not so frequent in Great Britain. It is related in
Hasted's History of Kent, that about Easter, 1666, in the parish of
Stanstead, which is a considerable distance from the sea, and a place
where there are no fishponds, and rather a scarcity of water, a pasture
field was scattered all over with small fish, supposed to have been
rained down during a thunder-storm. Several of these fish were sold
publicly at Maidstone and