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this earth Here are the data: [p. 245] The most notable appearance of fishes during an earthquake is that of Riobamba. Humboldt sketched one of them, and it's an uncanny-looking thing. Thousands of them appeared upon the ground during this tremendous earthquake. Humboldt says that they were cast up from subterranean sources. | think not myself, and have data for thinking not, but there'd be such a row arguing back and forth that it's simpler to consider a clearer instance of the fall of living fishes from the sky, during an earthquake. | can't quite accept, myself, whether a large lake, and all the fishes in it, was torn down from some other world, or a lake in the Super-Sargasso Sea, distracted between two pulling worlds, was dragged down to La Science Pour Tous, 6-191: Feb. 16, 1861. An earthquake at Singapore. Then came an extraordinary downpour of rain--or as much water as any good-sized lake would consist of. For three days this rain or this fall of water came down in torrents. In pools on the ground, formed by this deluge, great numbers of fishes were found. The writer says that he had, himself, seen nothing but water fall from the sky. Whether I'm emphasizing what a deluge it was or not, he says that so terrific had been the downpour that he had not been able to see three steps away from him. The natives said that the fishes had fallen from the sky. Three days later the pools dried up and many dead fishes were found, but, in the first place--though that's an expression for which we have an instinctive dislike--the fishes had been active and uninjured. Then follows material for another of our little studies in the phenomena of disregard. A psycho-tropism here is mechanically to take pen in hand and mechanically write that fishes found on the ground after a heavy rainfall came from overflowing streams. [paragraph continues] The writer of the account says that some of the fishes had been found in his courtyard, which was surrounded by high walls--paying no attention to this, a correspondent (La Science Pour Tous, 6-317) explains that in the heavy rain a body of water had probably overflowed, carrying fishes with it. We are told by the first writer that these fishes of Singapore were of a species that was very abundant near Singapore. So | think, myself, that a whole lakeful of them had been shaken down from the Super-Sargasso Sea, under the circumstances we have thought of. However, if appearance of