Page Content (OCR)
[p. 87] haystacks. Meerut, India, July, 1824 (Living Age, 52-186); Fifeshire, Scotland, summer of 1824 (Wernerian Nat. Hist. Soc. Trans., 5-575) Moradabad, India, July, 1826 (Living Age, 52-186); Ross-shire, Scotland, 1828 (Living Age, 52-186); Moradabad, India, July 20, 1829 (Lin. Soc. Trans., 16-764); Perthshire, Scotland (Living Age, 52-186); Argyleshire, Scotland, 1830, March 9, 1830 (Recreative Science, 3-339); Feridpoor, India, Feb. 19, 1830 (Jour. Asiatic Soc. of Bengal, 2-650). A psycho-tropism that arises here--disregarding serial significance--or mechanical, unintelligent, repulsive reflex--is that the fishes of India did not fall from the sky; that they were found upon the ground after torrential rains, because streams had overflowed and had then receded. In the region of Inertness that we think we can conceive of, or a zone that is to this earth's gravitation very much like the neutral zone of a magnet's attraction, we accept that there are bodies of water and also clear spaces--bottoms of ponds dropping out--very interesting ponds, having no earth at bottom--vast drops of water afloat in what is called space--fishes and deluges of water falling-- But also other areas, in which fishes--however they got there: a matter that we'll consider--remain and dry, or even putrefy, then sometimes falling by atmospheric dislodgment. After a "tremendous deluge of rain, one of the heaviest falls on record" (All the Year Round, 8-255) at Rajkote, India, July 25, 1850, "the ground was found literally covered with fishes." The word "found" is agreeable to the repulsions of the conventionalists and their concept of an overflowing stream--but, according to Dr. Buist, some of these fishes were "found" on the tops of