Page Content (OCR)
[p. 96] 193.) | accept that there are "snow worms" upon this earth--whatever their origin may have been. In the Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. of Philadelphia, 1899-125, there is a description of yellow worms and black worms that have been found together on glaciers in Alaska. Almost positively were there no other forms of insect- life upon these glaciers, and there was no vegetation to support insect-life, except microscopic organisms. Nevertheless the description of this probably polymorphic species fits a description of larvae said to have fallen in Switzerland, and less definitely fits another description. There is no opposition here, if our data of falls are clear. Frogs of every-day ponds look like frogs said to have fallen from the sky--except the whitish frogs of Birmingham. However, all falls of larvae have not positively occurred in the last of January: London Times, April 14, 1837: That, in the parish of Bramford Speke, Devonshire, a large number of black worms, about three-quarters of an inch in length, had fallen in a snowstorm. In Timb's Year Book, 1877-26, it is said that, in the winter of 1876, at Christiania, Norway, worms were found crawling upon the ground. The occurrence is considered a great mystery, because the worms could not have come up from the ground, inasmuch as the ground was frozen at the time, and because they were reported from other places, also, in Norway. Immense number of black insects in a snowstorm, in 1827, at Pakroff, Russia. (Scientific American, 30- Fall, with snow, at Orenburg, Russia, Dec. 14, 1830, of a multitude of small, black insects, said to have been gnats, but also said to have had flea-like motions. (Amer. Jour. Sci., |-22-375.) Large number of worms found in a snowstorm, upon the surface of snow about four inches thick, near Sangerfield, N. Y., Nov. 18, 1850 (Scientific American, 6-96). The writer thinks that the worms had been brought to the surface of the ground by rain, which had fallen previously.