to them, in the streets of
Memphis, Jan. 15, 1877--why, that's sensible: that's the common sense
that has been against us from the first.

It is not said whether the snakes were of a known species or not, but
that "when first seen, they were of a dark brown, almost black."
Blacksnakes, I suppose.

If we accept that these snakes did fall, even though not seen to fall by
all the persons who were out sight-seeing in a violent storm, and had
not been in the streets crawling loose or in thick tangled masses, in
the first place:

If we try to accept that these snakes had been raised from some other
part of this earth's surface in a whirlwind:

If we try to accept that a whirlwind could segregate them--

We accept the segregation of other objects raised in that whirlwind.

Then, near the place of origin, there would have been a fall of heavier
objects that had been snatched up with the snakes--stones, fence rails,
limbs of trees. Say that the snakes occupied the next gradation, and
would be the next to fall. Still farther would there have been separate
falls of lightest objects: leaves, twigs, tufts of grass.

In the _Monthly Weather Review_ there is no mention of other falls said
to have occurred anywhere in January, 1877.

Again ours is the objection against such selectiveness by a whirlwind.
Conceivably a whirlwind could scoop out a den of hibernating snakes,
with stones and earth and an infinitude of other debris, snatching up
dozens of snakes--I don't know how many to a den--hundreds maybe--but,
according to the account of this occurrence in the _New York Times_,
there were thousands of them; alive; from one foot to eighteen inches in
length. The _Scientific American_, 36-86, records the fall, and says
that there were thousands of them. The usual whirlwind-explanation is
given--"but in what locality snakes exist in such abundance is yet a
mystery."

This matter of enormousness of numbers suggests to me something of a
migratory nature--but that snakes in the United States do not migrate in
the month of January, if ever.

As to falls or flutterings of winged insects from the sky, prevailing
notions of swarming would seem explanatory enough: nevertheless, in
instances of ants, there are some peculiar circumstances.

_L'Astronomie_, 1889-353:

Fall of fishes, June 13, 1889, in Holland; ants, Aug. 1, 1889,
Strasbourg; little toads, Aug. 2, 1889, Savoy.

Fall of ants, Cambridge, England, summer of 1874--"some w