Page:Cyclopaedia, Chambers - Supplement, Volume 2.djvu/349

 R A I

R A I

fometimes only one on the tail. 4. The ray with the mid- dle of the back fmooth, and with only one row of fpines on the tail. This is the Jkate fife or flair. It is of a greyifh colour, variegated with blackifh fpots, and grows very large. ■ 5. The wholly fmooth ray. This is the famous torpedo, or cramp filth. See the article Torpedo, Cyd. Rays are generally divided by authors into the fmooth and the prickly. The fmooth are what we call the Jkates and flairs : the prickly we call thornbacks, and the young ones of both kinds maids. But Willughby thinks they are more regularly divided into two orders, the one containing thofe which have teeth, the other thofe which have none. Wtl- lugbbfs Hift. Fife p. 68.

RATANIA, in botany, a name given by Linnaeus to a genus of plants. The different fpecies of which are made to com- pofe two genera in Plumier, under the names of Jan-rota and bryonies fpecies. The characters of the genus are thefe. It produces feparate male and female flowers ; in the male flower the perianthium is divided into fix fegments, whicV are oblong, and pointed, and ftand clofe in the bafis, fo a to forma fort, of bell, and expand more at their points. There are no petals, and the ftamina are fix briftly fila- ments fhorter than the cup, and terminated by fimple apices. In the female flower the perianthium is one leaved, campa- jiulated, and fbnds upon the germen, but afterwards wi- thers away. This alfo is divided into fix fegments at the edge. There are no petals, and the germen of the pift.il is compreffed, and edged, with a membrane on one fide. The ftyles are three in number, and are of the length of the cup. The ftigmata are fimple and obtufe. The fruit is roundifh, and has a membrane growing on one fide, which, in fine, fpreads almoft round it ; in this is contained afingle feed of a roundifh colour. Linnai Gen. PL p. 479. Plum. 29 and 98.

RAIL (Cyd.)— Rail, or water Rail, in zoology, the name of the rollus aqnatkus of authors, a bird of the moorhen kind, but fmaller than the common moorhen. See Rollus.

Fife Rails, in a fhip. See Fife.

RAIN (Cyd.) — Vehement rains in many countries are found to be attended with barrennefs and poornefs of the lands, and mifcarriage of the crops in the fucceeding year : and the reafon is plain; for thefe exceflive dorms wafh away the fine mould into the rivers, which carry it into the fea, and it is a long time before the land recovers itfelf again. The remedy to the famine, which fome countries are fubjecl: to from this fort of mifchief, is the planting large orchards and groves of fuch trees, as bear efculent fruit ; for it is an old obfervation, that in years, when grain fucceeds worn 1, thefe trees produce moft fruit of all. It may partly be owing to the thorough moiftening of the earth, as deep as their roots go, by thefe rains, and partly to their trunks flopping part of the light mould carried down by the rains, and by this means furnifhing themfelves with a coat of new earth. Phil, Tranf. N a 90.

Preternatural Rains. We have numerous accounts in the hiftorians of our own, as well as other countries of preter- natural rains, fuch as the raining of ftones, of duft, of blood, nay, and of living animals, as young frogs, and the like. We are not to doubt the truth of what thofe who are au- thors of veracity and credit relate to us of this kind, fo far as to fuppofe that the falling of ftones and duff never hap- pened ; the whole miftake is, the fuppofing them to have fallen from the clouds ; but as to the blood and frogs, it is very certain that they never fell at all, but the opinion has been a mere deception of the eyes. Men are extremely fond of the marvellous in their relations ; but the judicious reader is to examine ftrictly whatever is reported of this kind, and is not to fuffer himfelf to be deceived. There are two natural methods by which quantities of ftones and duft may fall in certain places, without their having been generated in the clouds, or fallen as rain. The one is by means of hurricanes ; the wind which we frequently fee tearing off the tiles of houfes, and carrying them to confiderable diftances, being equally able to take up a quantity of ftones, and drop them again at fome other place. But the other, which is much the moft: powerful, and probably the moft ufual way, is for the eruptions of volcano's, and burning mountains, to tofs up, as they fre- quently do, a vaft quantity of ftones, afhes, and cinders, to an immenfe height in the air j and thefe being hurried away by the hurricanes and impetuous winds, which ufual ly accompany thofe eruptions, and being in themfelves much lighter than common ftones, as being half calcined, may eaiily be thus carried to vaft diftances, and there falling in places where the inhabitants know nothing of the occaiion, they cannot but be fuppofed by the vulgar to fall on them from the clouds. It is well known, that in the great erup- tions of /Etna and Vefuvius, fhowers ot afhes, duff, and fmall cinders, have been ken to obfeure the air, and over- fpread the furface of the fea for a great way, and cover the decks of ffups ; and this at fuch a diftance, as it fhould appear fcarcc conceivable that they fhould have been car- ried to ; and probably, if the accounts of all the fhowers of thefe fubftances mentioned by authors be collected, they 3

will all be found to have fallen within fuch diftances of

vu 1 cano's; and if compared, as to the time of their falling, will be found to correfpond in that alfo with the eruptions of thofe mountains. We have known inftances of the alhes from Vefuvius hating been carried thirty, nav forty leagues, and peculiar accidents may have carried them yet farther. It is not to be fuppofed that thefe fhowers of ftones and duff fail for a continuance, in the manner of fhowers of rain, or that the fragments or pieces are as frequent as drops of water ; it is fufficient that a number of ftones, or a quantity of duft, fall at once on a place, where the in- habitants can have no knowledge of the part from whence they come, and the vulgar will not doubt their dropping from the clouds. Nay, in the canton of Berne in Swifferland, the inhabitants accounted it a miracle that it rained earth and fulphur upon them, at a time that a fmall vulcano ter- rified them ; and even while the wind was fo boifterous, and hurricanes fo frequent, that they faw almoft every moment the duff, fand, and little ftones torn up from the furface of the earth in whirlwinds, and carried to a confiderable height in the air, they never confidered, that both the fulphur thrown up by the vulcano, and the duft, &c. carried from their feet muff fall foon after fomewhere. It is very certain that in fome of the terrible ftorms of large hail, where the hail- ftones have been of many inches round, that on breaking them there have been found what people have called ftones in their middle ; but thefe ob- fervers needed only to have waited the diflblving of one of thefe hail-ffones, to have fecn the ffone in its center difu- nite alfo, it being only formed of particles of loofe earthy matter, which the water, exhaled by the fun's heat, had taken up in extremely fmall moleaulse with it; and this only having ferved to give an opake hue to the inner part of the congelation, to which the freezing of the water alone gave the apparent hardnefs of ftone.

Trie raining of blood has been ever accounted a more ter- rible fight, and a more fatal omen than the other preterna- tural rains-, already mentioned. It is very certain that na- ture forms blood no where but in the veffels of animals, and therefore fhowers of it from the clouds are by no means to be credited. Thofe who fuppofe that what has been taken for blood, has been actually (een falling through the air, have had recourfe to flying infects for its origin, and fuppofe it the eggs or dungs of certain butter-flies, dis- charged from them as they were high up in the air. But this feems a very wild conjecture, as we know of no butter- fly whofe excrements, or eggs, are of fuch a colour, or whofe abode is fo high, or their flocks fo numerous, as to be the occafion of this.

It is moft probable that thefe bloody waters were never feen falling, but that people feeing the ftanding waters blood co- loured, were sflfured, from their not knowing how it fhould elfe happen, that it had rained blood into them. A very memorable inffance of this there was at the Hague in the year 1670. Swammerdam, who relates it, tells us, that one morning the whole town was in an uproar on finding their lakes and ditches full of blood, as they thought, and having been certainly full of water the night before, they agreed it muff have rained blood in the night; but a cer- tain phyfician went down to one of the canals, and taking home a quantity of this blood coloured water, he examin- ed it by the microfcope, and found that the water was water frill, and had not at all changed its colour, but that it was full of prodigious fwarms of fmall red animals, all alive, and very nimble in their motions, whofe colour, and prodigious number, gave a red tinge to the whole body of the water they lived in, on a lefs accurate inspec- tion. The certainty that this was the cafe, did not how- ever perfuade the Hollanders to part with the miracle j they prudently concluded, that the fudden appearance of fuch a number of animals was as great a prodigy, as the raining of blood would have been ; and are affined to this day, that this portent foretold the fcene of war and deffruc~tion which Lewis the fourteenth afterwards brought into that country, which iiad before enjoyed forty years uninterrupted peace.

The animals which thus colour the water of lakes and ponds, are the pulices arborefcentes of Swammerdam, or the water fleas with branched horns. Theie creatures are of a reddifh yellow, or flame colour; they live about the fides of ditches, under weeds, and among the mud, and are therefore the lefs vifiblc, except at a certain time, which is in the end of May or beginning of June; it is- at this time that thefe little animals leave their receffes to float loofe about the water, to meet for the propagation of their fpecies, and by that means become vifible in the colour they give the water. This is vifible, more or lefs, in one part or other of almoft all ftanding waters at this feafon ; and it is always at this feafon that the bloody waters have alarmed the ignorant.

The raining frogs is a thing not lefs wonderful in the ac- counts of authors who love the marvellous, than thofe of blood or of ftones, and this is fuppofed to happen fo often, that there are multitudes who pretend to have been eye*

witneffes