Page:Cyclopaedia, Chambers - Supplement, Volume 2.djvu/350

 R A I

R A I

witnefies of it. Thefc rains of frogs always happen after very dry feafons, and are much more frequent in the hotter countries than the cold ones, In Italy they are very fre- quent, and it is not uncommon to fee the ftreets of Rome ('warming both with young frogs and toads in an inftant, in a mower of rain ; they hopping every where between the people's legs as they walk, though there was not the leaft appearance of them before. Nay, they have been feen to fail through the air down upon the pavements. This feems a ftrong circumftance in favour of their being rained down from the clouds, but when ftrictly examined, it comes to nothing; for thefe frogs that are feen to fall, are always found dead, lamed, or bruifed by the fall, and never hop about as the reft ; and they are never feen to fall, except clofe under the walls of houfes, from the roofs and gutters of which they have accidentally flipped down. People, who love to add to ftrange things yet ftranger, affirm that people have had the young frogs fall into their hats in the midft of an open field, but this is idle and wholly falfe. People, who cannot agree to their falling from the clouds, have tried to folve the difficulty of their fudden appear- ance, by fuppofing them hatched out of the egg, or fpawn, by thefe rains. Nay, forne have fuppofed them made im- mediately out of the duft ; but there are unanswerable argu- ments againft all thefe fuppofitions. Equivocal generation, or the Spontaneous production of animals out of duft, being now wholly exploded. The fall from the clouds muft de- ftroy and kill thefe tender and foft bodied animals j and they cannot be at this time hatched immediately out of eggs ; becaufe the young frog does not make its appearance from the egg in this form, but has its hinder legs enve- loped in a fkin, and is what we call a tadpole ; and the young frogs are at leaft an hundred times larger at this time of their appearance, than the egg from which theyfhould be hatched.

It is a certainty that the frogs, which make their appear- ance at this time, were hatched, and in being long before, but tljat the dry feafons had injured them, and kept them " fluggifhly in holes, or coverts, and that all the rain does, is the enlivening them, giving new fpirits, and calling them forth to feck new habitations, and enjoy the element they were deftined, in great part, to live in. Theophraftus, the greateft of all the naturalifts of antiquity, has affirmed the fame thing. We find that the error of fuppofing thefe creatures to fall from the clouds was as early as that author's time, and alfo that the truth, in regard to their appearance, was as early known; though, in the ages fince, authors have taken care to conceal the truth, and to hand down to us the error. We find this venerable fage, in a frag- ment of his on the generation of animals which appear on a fudden, bantering the opinion, and aflerting that they were hatched and living long before. The world owes, however, to the accurate Seignior Redi the great proof of this truth, which Theophraftus only has affirmed ; for this gentleman differing fame of thefe new appearing frogs, found in their ftomachs herbs, and other half digefted food, and openly fhewing this to his credulous country- men, afked them whether they thought that nature, which engendered, according to their opinion, thefe animals in the clouds, had alfo been fo provident as to engender grafs there alfo for their food and nourifhment.

To the raining of frogs we ought to add the raining of grafshoppers and locufts, winch have fometimes appeared in prodigious numbers, and devoured the fruits of the earth. There has not been the leaft pretence for the fuppofing that thefe animals defcended from the clouds, but that they ap- peared on a fudden in prodigious numbers. The naturalift, who knows the many accidents attending the eggs of thefe, and other the like animals, cannot but know that fome feafons will prove particularly favourable, to the hatching them, and the prodigious number of eggs, that many in- fects lay, could not but every year bring us fuch abun- dance of the young, were they not liable to many acci- dents, and had not provident nature taken care, as in many plants, to continue the fpecies by a very numerous ftock of feeds, of which perhaps not one in five hundred need take root, in order to continue an equal number of plants. As it is thus alfo in regard to infects, it cannot bu£ happen, that if a favourable feafon encourage the hatch- ing of all thofe eggs, a very fmall number of which alone were neceffary to continue the fpecies, we muft, in fuch feafons, have a proportionate abundance of them. We had lately in London fuch a prodigious fwarm of the little beetle, we call the lady coiv, that the very pofts in the ftreets were every where covered with them. But thanks to the progrefs of philofophy among us, we had no body to affert that it rained cow ladies, but contented ourfelves with fay- ing that it had been a favourable feafon for their eggs. The late prodigious number of a fort of grub which did vaft mifchief among the corn and grafs, by eating off their roots, might alfo have been fuppofed to proceed from its having rained grubs by people fond of making every thing a prodigy ; but our knowledge in natural hiftory affined us, that thefc were only the hexapode worms of the com- mon hedge beetle, called the cock chafer.

The mining of fifties has been a prodigy alfo much talked of in France, where the ftreets of a town at fome diftance from Paris, after a terrible hurricane in the night, which tore up trees, blew down houfes, CjfY. were found in a manner covered with fifties of various fizes. No body here made any doubt of thefe having fallen from the clouds; nor did the abfurdity offifh, of five or fix inches long, being generated in the air, at all ftartle the people, or fhake their belief in the miracle, till they found, upon enquiry, that a very well ftocked fifh-pond, which ftood on an eminence in the neighbourhood, had been blown dry- by the hurricane, and only the great fifh left at the bottom of it, all the fmaller fry having been toffed into their ftreets.

Upon the whole, all the fuppofed marvellous rams have- been owing to fubftances naturally produced on the earth, and either never having been in the air at all, or only car- ried thither by accident.

In Silefia, after a great dearth of wheat in that country, there happened a violent ftorm of wind and rain, and the earth was afterwards covered, in many places, with fmall round feeds. The vulgar cried out that providence had fent them food, and that it had rained millet ; but thefe were, in reality, only the feeds of a fpecies of veronica, or fpeed- well, very common in that country, and whofe feeds being juft ripe at that time, the wind had diflodged them from their capfules, and fcattcred them about. In our own country, we have hiirories of rains of this marvellous kind, but all fabulous. It was once faid to rain wheat in Wilt- shire, and the people were all alarmed at it as a miracle; till Mr. Cole fhewed them, that what they took for wheat was only the feeds, or kernels of the berries of ivy, which being then fully ripe, the wind had diflodged from the fides of houfes, and trunks of trees, on which the ivy which produced them crept.

And we even once had a raining of fifhes near the coaft of Kent in a terrible hurricane, with thunder and lightning. The people who faw fmall fprats ftrewed all abouts after- wards, would have it that they had fallen from the clouds ; but thofe who knew how far the high winds have been known to carry the fea water, did not wonder that they ihould be able to carry fmall fifh with it fo fmall a part of the way. Philof. Tranf.

Rains, in the fea language, that tra£t of the fea to the north- wards of the equator, between four and ten degrees of lati- tude, and lying between the meridian of Cape Verde and that of the eaftermoft iflands of the fame name. They call this trait the rains, becaufe there are almoft continual calms,, conftant rains, and thunder and lightning to a ftrange degree there ; and the winds, when they do ever blow, are only fmall uncertain gufts, and fhift about all round the compafs ; fo that fhips are fometimes here de- tained a long while, and can make but very little way.

Rain fowl, an Englifh name given by many to the common green wood-pecker, or fiats viridis, from an obfervation that it is always moft clamorous when rainy weather is coming on. The Latins have, for the fame reafon, called it the pluvialis avis. See the article Picus.

Animalcules in RAiia-water. The accurate Mr. Lewenhoek has obferved, that there are no living creatures to be dif- cerned in freih rain-water, but that after it has ftood fome days, it will be found to abound with great numbers of animalcules, fo fmall, that they are to a mite what a bee is to a horfe. In fome days more animalcules much larger are difcovered.

Another very remarkable kind is difcovered in rain- water, after {landing fome time ; thefe have two little horns, which are in continual motion. The fpace between the horns is flat, though the body is round, but tapering a little toward the end, where there is a tail four times as long as the body, and of the thicknefs of the thread of a fpider's web. Thefe are fo fmall, that many hundred of them are not equal to a grain of fand ; and if they meet with any- little filament in the water, they are ufually entangled in it, and ufe great efforts to difengage their tails. Another animalcule there alfo is in rain-water, of an oval figure, with the head at the fmaller end. Thefe have fe- veral feet extremely minute and fine, and they can, at pleafure, contract their bodies into a round fhape, which they ufually do as the water dries away. A third fort Mr. Lewenhoek obferved alfo, twice as long as broad, and eight times fmaller than the laft ; thefe alfo had fmall feet, and were very nimble. But the brifkeft of all were a yet greatly fmaller kind ; thefe were not of a thoufandth part of the fize of a loufe's eye, and they moved round with incre- dible fwiftnefs. Baker's Microfcop. p. 82.

RAISE, in the manege, is ufed for working ; thus to raife a horfe upon corvets, caprioles, and pefades, is to makij- him work at corvets, caprioles, &c.

Raise is likewife ufed for placing a horfe's head right, and making him carry well, and hinaring him to carry low, or to arm himfelf.

RAISINS (Cycl.) — Raisin brandy, a name given by our di-

ftillers to a very clean and pure fpirit, procured from raifms

3 fermented