fish were caught on the ground, in the cantonments
at Poonah, on the 3rd of August, 1852.
The Indian record ceases here, but no doubt
such showers have been happening during the
last ten years as they happened during the
period it embraces.

There is staggering testimony in support of
the occurrence of these fish showers in this
temperate clime of England. The Rev. John
Griffith, writing from the vicarage, Aberdare,
upon the 8th March, 1859, respecting the
shower of fish in the valley of Aberdare, says
the following are " the words of the principal
witness as taken down by me on the spot where
it happened." This man's name is John Lewis,
a sawyer in Messrs. Nixon and Co.'s yard.
"On Wednesday, February 9, I was getting
out a piece of timber for the purpose of setting
it for the saw, when I was startled by something
falling all over me— down my neck, on my head,
and on my back. On putting my hand down
my neck I was surprised to find they were little
fish. By this time I saw the whole ground
covered with them. I took off my hat, the
brim of which was full of them. They were
jumping all about. They covered the ground
in a long strip of about eighty yards by
twelve as we measured afterwards. That shed
(pointing to a very large workshop) was
covered with them, and the shoots were quite
full of them. My mates and I might have
gathered basketfuls of them, scraping with our
hands. We did gather a great many, about a
bucketful, and threw them into the rain-pool,
where some of them now are. There were two
showers, with an interval of about ten minutes,
or thereabouts. The time was eleven A.M. The
morning up-train to Aberdare was just then
passing. It was not blowing very hard but
uncommon wet; just about the same wind as there is
to-day (blowing rather stiff), and it came from
this quarter (pointing to the south of west).
They came down with the rain, in a body like."
Such is the testimony. The Rev. John Griffiths,
the vicar of the parish, sent eighteen or twenty
of these little fishes to Professor Owen; they
were very lively, some large, stout, and measuring
four inches; the rest, small.

The upshot of this affair remains to be told.
A savan connected with the British Museum
wrote to the Zoologist to say the fish sent, were
minnows, a bucketful of which the mates of John
Lewis had thrown over him, and he had returned
them to the rain-pool from which they were
originally taken. The fish forwarded, are very
unlike those taken up in whirlwinds in tropical
countries, and we must make allowance for
unintentional exaggerations of quantity, &c., in an
account given a month after the event had
occurred. But this savan is corrected by
another, who says the fish were not minnows,
there being only one minnow, the rest being
smooth-tailed sticklebacks. Both the savans,
however, agree in attributing the whole affair to
some practical joker. And thus the matter rests.
There are two savans against a sawyer and a
vicar; judging, however, from the tone in which
the parties express themselves, and from what
waterspouts and whirlwinds have done even in
temperate England, I confess I incline less to
the authority of the savans than to the testimony
of the sawyer as reported by the vicar.
If a reader at the library of the British Museum
were to do what Dr. Buist did for Indian fish
showers during a period of thirty years—gather
into one group the testimonies to frog and fish
showers, cobweb and insect showers, sirocco and
volcano showers of red and other coloured rain,
the results would probably root in the general
mind the conviction that there are many
unexplained and wonderful yet instructive phenomena
in these occurrences.

THE BLEEDING DIAMOND.

THERE are not many things more terrible and
loathsome to the traveller by steam-boat who is
not thoroughly accustomed to the sad sea waves,
and who has " found his sea-legs," as the phrase
goes, merely to have them perpetually sliding
away from under him, than the dinners provided
by the principal steam navigation companies of
Europe. Dinner on board an American or West
India mail-packet, or of one of the P. and O.'s
magnificent vessels, is of course quite another
kind of thing. You have gone through your
apprenticeship of sea-sickness, and entered upon
good sound journey-work of substantial eating.
With plenty of champagne, and all the luxuries
that are out of season, with pretty ladies to talk
to, and a commander who is a gentleman to help
the soup, you enjoy your repast, and feel quite
ready for a little music or limited loo, afterwards.
But, oh, those dreadful steam-boat dinners when
the voyage is as short as it is tempestuous! How
willingly would you forfeit thrice the amount of
the passage-money you have paid, adding a
handsome bonus to it, to be spared the unearthly
sound of the dinner-bell, the sickening spectacle
of the steward's assistants issuing from the galley
with those appalling dishes reeking with an odour
far worse to you than bilge-water, and with their
battered pewter covers distilling drops of unctuous
transpiration. Boiled mutton again! Yes, the old,
old boiled mutton, with the steaming festoons of
woolly fat, the frightful yawning incision in the
centre, revealing the red, red raw within, the
coagulated lumps of flour and grease, with the
small-shot dipped in verdigris and passing muster
for capers, ironically served as sauce. There
is that about the foggy potatoes, the misty
dabs of greens, the tarts, apparently containing
"zostera marina" stewed in molasses, the bilious
cheese, and the stringy celery of a steam-boat
dinner, to me inexpressibly hideous and
revolting. A momentary contemplation, to say
nothing of the consumption of them, will
convince the strongest of humanity that he resembles
a late Prince of Denmark, in having " that within
which passeth show." What though the
banquets—say on board the Antwerp or the Scotch
boats—do consist of something else besides boiled