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1
375
The Book of the Damned
·
Charles Fort
114
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
were
wingless."
(Scientific
American,
30-193.)
Enormous
fall
of
ants,
Nancy,
France,
July
21,
1887--"most
of
them
were
wingless."
(Nature,
36-349.)
Fall
of
enormous,
unknown
ants--size
of
wasps--Manitoba,
June,
1895.
(Sci.
Amer.,
72-385.)
However,
our
expression
will
be:
That
wingless,
larval
forms
of
life,
in
numbers
so
enormous
that
migration
from
some
place
external
to
this
earth
is
suggested,
have
fallen
from
the
sky.
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