er, the verdict did not obtain universal assent; and an excellent
and well-known naturalist, Mr Robert Drave, residing in the vicinity,
ventured modestly to indicate a dissent. "I think actual fact will
excuse the otherwise apparently unbecoming assumption in me, of opposing
such high authority by a contrary opinion, for from information
_obtained from many sources, and very careful and minute_ inquiry, I am
quite convinced that a great number of fish did actually descend with
rain _over a considerable tract of country_. The specimens I obtained
_from three individuals_, resident some distance from each other, were
of two species, the common minnow and the three-spined stickleback; the
former most abundant, and mostly very small, though some had attained
their full size."[76]

If now we look to other lands, we shall find that the descent of fishes
from the atmosphere, under conditions little understood, is a phenomenon
which rests on indubitable evidence. Humboldt has published interesting
details of the ejection of fish in large quantities from volcanoes in
South America. On the night between the 19th and 20th of June, 1698, the
summit of Carguairazo, a volcano more than 19,000 feet in height, fell
in, and all the surrounding country for nearly thirty-two square miles
was covered with mud and fishes. A similar eruption of fish from the
volcano of Imbaburu was supposed to have been the cause of a putrid
fever which raged in the town of Ibarra seven years before that period.

These facts are not inexplicable. Subterraneous lakes, communicating
with surface-waters, form in deep cavities in the declivities, or at the
base of a volcano. In certain active stages of ignition, these internal
cavities are burst open, and their contents discharged through the
crater. Humboldt ascertained that the fishes in question belonged to a
curious and ill-favoured species of the _Siluridae_,--the _Pimelodes
Cyclopum_.

Showers of fishes, however, do occur, which cannot be connected with
volcanic agency. Dr Buist, in an interesting paper published in the
_Bombay Times_ in 1856, has collected a number of authentic examples of
this phenomenon. The author, after enumerating the cases just cited, and
others of similar character, in which fishes were said to have been
thrown out from volcanoes in South America, and precipitated from clouds
in various parts of the world, adduces the following instances of
similar occurrences in India:--"In 1824