Showers of frogs are not rustic imaginings

In may 1661 Samuel Pepys noted in his diary that "Elias Ashmole, the antiquary, did today assure me that frogs and many insects…

In may 1661 Samuel Pepys noted in his diary that "Elias Ashmole, the antiquary, did today assure me that frogs and many insects do often fall from the sky, already formed".

Occurrences of this kind are unusual but are now generally accepted as being the result of localised whirlwinds capable of sucking up small objects in their path. These objects may then be suspended for some considerable time in powerful updraughts before being deposited quite some distance away, very often in the course of a heavy, thundery shower.

But it was not always seen as so. In 1857 one of the most celebrated naturalists of the 19th century, Frank Buckland, had this to say about such happenings: "The actual fact that considerable spaces of ground have been suddenly covered with numerous small frogs, where there were no frogs before, has been proved beyond a doubt.

"Some have called in the aid of waterspouts, whirlwinds, and similar causes, to account for their elevation into the regions of air, and some have even thought that they were formed in the clouds, from whence they were precipitated."

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Buckland seemed to think that these reports of falling frogs were more common in the month of August, and often after a severe drought, and from this he drew his own conclusions: "Quite clearly the animals had been hatched, and quitted their tadpole state and their pond some time before they became visible to, or rather observed by, mortal eyes. Finding it unpleasant in the hot, parched fields, they wisely retreated to the coolest and dampest places they could find, where they escaped notice.

"Down comes the rain," he goes on, "and out come the frogs, pleased with the chance. Forthwith appears an article in the county paper; the good folks flock to see the phenomenon. There are the frogs hopping about; the visitors remember the shower, and a `simple countryman' swears the frogs fell in the shower, and he saw them fall. Frogs, visitors, countrymen and editors are all pleased, and they have no wish to be undeceived."

But Buckland was not of the eppur si muove philosophy; unlike Galileo, he was willing to recant. In response to a reviewer of his article who introduced some cogent evidence to the contrary, ending with "The explanation given of this phenomenon is as old as Theophrastus; why should Mr Buckland smile at the credulous rustics swallowing a shower of frogs," Buckland responded almost unequivocally: "The reviewer, I believe, is right; and I was wrong to a great extent in attributing the showers of frogs entirely to the sudden hatching of these young creatures from the spawn."