Authors: Charles Fort
This is the way an invasion began. A great deal was written about conditions in the invaded land. Probably the scarcity of insects in England was unprecedented. There was no drought. It is simply that the insects had died out. And billions were coming from somewhere else.
“Margate Overwhelmed!”
In the
Field,
August 28, a correspondent writes: “On Wednesday (25th) I went to Ramsgate by steamboat, and, as we approached within five or six miles of Margate, complaints of wasps began to be heard. I soon ascertained that they were not wasps, but a bee-like fly. As we neared Margate, they increased to millions, and at Margate they were almost unendurable.” Some specimens were sent to the Editor of the
Field,
and he identified them as
Syrphi.
There had been a similar multitude at Walton, on the coast, about thirty miles north of Margate, the day before.
The little band of scouts, at Ashford—they carried lanterns. Then green processions—yellow multitudes—the military-looking
Syrphi,
costumed like hussars—
A pilgrimage was on.
“Thunder bugs” appeared between Wingham and Adisham. The tormented people of the region said that they had never seen anything of the kind before
(Field,
August 21). Wasps and flies “in overwhelming numbers” besieging Southampton
(Gardeners’ Chronicle,
September 18). London an arriving point—the descent of crane flies upon London—doorsteps and pavements looking muddy with them—people turning out with buckets of boiling water, destroying multitudes of them
(Illustrated London News,
September 18). This is one of the ways of treating tourists.
I think that there is a crowd psychology of insects, as well as of men, or an enjoyment of communicated importance from a crowd of millions to one of the bugs. They were humming to England, not merely with bands playing, but each of them blowing some kind of a horn of his own. There are persons who would be good, if they thought that they could go to heaven, or so swarm in the sky, with millions of others, all tooting saxophones.
Pilgrims, or expeditionaries, or crusaders—it was more like a crusade, with nation after nation, or species after species, pouring into England, to restore something that had been lost.
In
Sci. Op.,
3-261, is an account of a new insect that appeared in England, in July of this year, 1869. For accounts of other unknown insects that appeared in England, in this summer, see the
Naturalists’ Note Book,
1869-318;
Sci. Gos.,
1870-141;
Ent. Mo. Mag.,
1869-86, and February, 1870;
Sci. Op.,
2-359. It was a time of “mysterious strangers.”
In the
Times,
August 21, someone noted the absence of small, white butterflies, and wondered how to account for it. In the
Entomologist,
Newman wrote that, up to July 12th, he had seen, of this ordinarily abundant insect, only three specimens. Upon pages 313-315, half a dozen correspondents discussed this remarkable scarcity. In the
Field,
September 4, someone told of the astonishing scarcity of house flies: in more than six weeks, at Axminster, he had seen only four flies. London
Standard,
August 20—that, at St. Leonard’s-on-Sea, all insects, except ladybirds and black ants, were “few and far between.” In
Symons’ Met. Mag.,
August, 1869, it is said that, at Shiffnal, scarcely a white butterfly had been seen, and that, up to July 21st, only one wasps’ nest had been found. Correspondents, in the
Entomologist,
September and October, mentioned the scarcity of three species of white butterflies, and noted the unprecedented fewness of beetles, bees, wasps, and moths. Absence of hornets is commented upon, in the
Field,
July 24.
They were pouring into England.
An army of beetles appeared in the sky. At Ullswater, this appearance was a military display. Regiment after regiment, for half an hour, passed over the town
(Land and Water,
September 4).
The spiders were coming.
Countless spiders came down from the sky into the city of Carlisle, and, at Kendal, thirty-five miles away, webs fell enormously
(Carlisle Journal,
October 5). About the 12th of October, “a vast number” of streamers of spiders’ web and spiders came down from the sky, at Tiverton, Devonshire, 280 miles south of Carlisle. See the
English Mechanic,
November 19, and the
Tiverton Times,
October 12. As if in one persisting current, there was a repetition. Upon the morning of the 15th, webs, “like pieces of cotton,” fell from the sky, at South Molton, near Tiverton. Then fell “wondrous quantities,” and all afternoon the fall continued “covering fields, houses, and persons.” It was no place for flies, but to this webby place flies did come.
Species after species—it was like the internationalism of the better-known crusades—
The locusts were coming.
Upon the 4th of September, a locust was caught in Yorkshire
(Entomologist,
1870-58). There are no locusts indigenous to England. At least up to May 1895, no finding of a locust in its immature state had ever been recorded in Great Britain
(Sci. Gos.,
1895-83). Upon the 8th and 9th of October, locusts appeared in large numbers, in some places, in Pembrokeshire, Derbyshire, Gloucestershire, and Cornwall. They had the mystery of the ladybirds. They were of a species that, according to records, had never before appeared in England. An entomologist, writing in the
Journal of the Plymouth Institute,
4-15, says that he had never heard of a previous visit to England by this insect
(Acridium peregrinum).
It seems that in all Europe this species had not been seen before. In the
Ent. Mo. Mag.,
7-1, it is said that these locusts were new to European fauna, and were mentioned in no work upon European
Orthoptera.
At the meeting of the Entomological Society of London, Nov. 15, 1869, it was decided, after a discussion, that the ladybirds had not come from France, but had flown from places in England, and had been carried back, by winds to other parts of England. There was no recorded observation to this effect. It was the commonplace ending of a mystery.
I add several descriptions that indicate that, in spite of London’s most eminent bugmen, the ladybirds were not English ladybirds.
Inverness Courier,
September 2—“That they are foreigners, nobody doubts. They are nearly twice the size of the common English lady birds, and are of a paler color.” See the
Student,
4-160—“the majority were of a large size, and of a dull, yellow hue.” In the London
Standard,
August 23, it is said that some of the insects were almost half an inch long.
That the locusts were foreigners was, by the Entomological Society of London, not discussed. Nothing else was discussed. Crane flies and
Syrphi
and spiders and all the rest of them—not a mention. I know of no scientist who tried to explain the ladybirds, and mentioned locusts. I know of no scientist who tried to explain the locusts and mentioned ladybirds—no scientist who wrote upon a scarcity of insects, and mentioned the swarms—no scientist who told of swarms, and mentioned scarcity.
The spiders, in a localized fall that lasted for hours, arrived as if from a persisting appearing-point over a town, and the ladybirds repeatedly arrived, as if from an appearing-point a few miles from a coast. The locusts came, not in one migration, but as if successively along a persisting path, or current, because several had been caught more than a month before large numbers appeared
(Field,
October 23).
A mob from the sky, at Burntisland, Scotland—“spinning jennys” that were making streets fuzzy with their gatherings on cornices and window sills
(Inverness Courier,
September 9). An invasion at Beccles was “an experience without precedent.” A war correspondent tells of it, in the
Gardeners’ Chronicle,
September 18. The invaders were gnats—correspondent trying to write about them, from an ink pot filled with drowned gnats—people breathing and eating gnats. Near Reading, “clouded yellow butterflies,” insects that had never before been recorded in Berkshire, appeared
(Sci. Gos.,
1869-210). At Hardwicke, many bees of a species that was unknown to the observer, were seen
(Nature,
2-98).
Field,
August 21 and November 20—swarms of hummingbird hawkmoths. As described in
Science Gossip,
1869-273, there was, at Conway, “a wonderful sight”—a flock of hummingbird hawkmoths and several species of butterflies. Clouds of insects appeared in Battersea Park, London, hovering over trees, in volumes so thick that people thought the trees had been set afire
(Field,
June 4, 1870). An invasion at Tiverton, seemingly coming with the spiders, “a marvelous swarm of black flies” made its headquarters upon the Town Hall, covering the building, turning it dark inside, by settling upon the window glass
(Tiverton Times,
October 12). At Maidstone, as if having arrived with the lady birds, a large flight of winged ants was seen
(Maidstone Journal,
August 23). Midges were arriving at Inverness, August 18th. “At some points the cloud was so dense that people had to hold their breath and run through
(Inverness Courier,
August 19).
Thrips
suddenly appeared at Scarborough, August 25th
(Sci. Op.,
2-292). At Long Benton, clouds of
Thrips
descended upon the town, wafting into houses, where they were dusted from walls, and swept from floors
(Ent. Mo. Mag.,
1869-171). Also, at Long Benton appeared an immense flight of the white butterflies that were so scarce everywhere else, gardeners killing thousands of them
(Ent. Mo. Mag.,
December, 1869). At Stonefield, Lincolnshire, appeared beetles of a species that had never been seen there before
(Field,
October 16).
It was more than a deluge of bugs. It was a pour of species. It was more than that. It was a pour on a want.
Entomologists’ Record,
1870—that, in this summer of 1869, in England, there had been such an “insect famine” that swallows had starved to death.
23
Melbourne Argus,
Jan. 21, 1869—there was a carter. He was driving a five-horse truck along the bed of a dry creek. Down the gulley shot a watery fist that was knuckled with boulders. A dead man, a truck, and five horses were punched into trees.
New Orleans Daily Picayune,
Aug. 6, 1893—a woman in a carriage, crossing a dried-up stream, in Rawlings County, Kansas. It was a quiet, summery scene.
There was a rush of water. The carriage crumbled. There was a spill of crumbs that were a woman’s hat and the heads of horses.
Philadelphia Public Ledger,
Sept. 16, 1893—people asleep in the town of Villa-canas, Toledo, Spain. The town was raided by trees. Trees smashed through the walls of houses. People in bed were grabbed by roots. A deluge had fallen into a forest.
Bright, clear day, near Pittsburgh, Pa. From the sky swooped a wrath that incited a river. It was one bulk of water: two miles away, no rain fell
(New Orleans Daily Picayune,
July 11, 1893). A raging river jeered against former confinements. Some of its gibes were freight cars. It scoffed with bridges. Having made a high-water mark of rebellion, it subsided into a petulance of jostling rowboats. Monastically, I have to accept that no line of demarcation can be drawn between emotions of minds and motions of rivers.
These sudden, astonishing leaks from the heavens are not understood. Meteorologists study them meteorologically. This seems logical, and is therefore under suspicion. This is the fallacy of all the sciences: scientists are scientific. They are inorganically scientific. Someday there may be organic science, or the interpretation of all phenomenal things in terms of an organism that comprises all.
If our existence is an organism, in which all phenomena are continuous, dreams cannot be utterly different, in the view of continuity, from occurrences that are said to be real. Sometimes, in a nightmare, a kitten turns into a dragon. Louth, Lincolnshire, England, May 29, 1920—the River Lud, which is only a brook, and is known as “Tennyson’s Brook,” was babbling, or maybe it was purling—
Out of its play, this little thing humped itself twenty feet high. A ferocious transformation of a brook sprang upon the houses of Louth, and mangled fifty of them. Later in the day, between banks upon which were piled the remains of houses, in which were lying twenty-two bodies, and from which hundreds of the inhabitants had been driven homeless, the little brook was babbling, or purling.
In scientific publications, early in the year 1880, an event was told of, in the usual, scientific way: that is, as if it were a thing in itself. It was said that a “water spout” had burst upon the island of St. Kitts, B.W.I. A bulk of water had struck this island, splitting it into cracks, carrying away houses and people, drowning 250 inhabitants. A paw of water, clawed with chasms, had grabbed these people.
In accordance with our general treatments, we think that there are waterspouts and cloudbursts, but that the waterspout and cloudburst conveniences arise, when nothing else can, or, rather, should, be thought of, and as labels are stuck on events that cannot be so classified except as a matter of scientific decorum and laziness. Some of the sleek, plump sciences are models of good behavior and inactivity, because, with little else to do, they sit all day on the backs of patient fishmongers.
As a monist, I think that there is something meteorological about us. Out of the Libraries will come wraths of data, and we, too, shall jeer against former confinements. Our gibes will be events, and we shall scoff with catastrophes.
The “waterspout” at St. Kitts—as if it were a single thing, unrelated to anything else.
The West Indian,
Feb. 3, 1880—that, while the bulk that was called a waterspout was overwhelming St. Kitts, water was falling upon the island of Grenada, “as it had never rained before, in the history of the island.” Grenada is 300 miles from St. Kitts.
I take data of another occurrence, from the
Dominican,
and
The People,
published at Roseau, Dominica, B.W.I. About eleven o’clock, morning of January 4th, the town of Roseau was bumped by midnight. People in the streets were attacked by darkness. People in houses heard the smash of their window panes. Night fell so heavily that it broke roofs. It was a daytime night of falling mud. With the mud came a deluge.
The River Roseau rose, and there was a conflict. The river, armed with the detachables of an island, held up shields of mules, and pierced the savage darkness with spears of goats. Long lines of these things it flung through the black streets of Roseau.
In the Boiling Lakes District of Dominica, there had been an eruption of mud, at the time of the deluge, which was like the fall of water upon St. Kitts, eight days later. There had, in recorded time, never been an eruption here before.
Three months before, there had been, in another part of the West Indies, a catastrophe like that of St. Kitts. Upon Oct. 10, 1879, a deluge fell upon the island of Jamaica, and drowned 100 of the inhabitants (London
Times,
Nov. 8, 1879). A flood that slid out from this island was surfaced with jungles—tangles of mahogany logs, trees, and bushes; brambled with the horns of goats and cattle; hung with a moss of the fleece of sheep. Incoming vessels plowed furrows, as if in a passing cultivation of one of the rankest luxuriances that ever vegetated upon an ocean. Passengers looked at tangles of trees and bodies, as if at picture puzzles. In foliage, they saw faces.
For months, there had been, in the Provinces of Murcia and Alicante, Spain, a drought so severe that inhabitants had been driven into emigration to Algeria. Whether we think of this drought and the prayers of the people as having relation or not, there came a downpour that was as intense as the necessities. See London
Times,
Oct. 20, 1879. Upon October 14th, floods poured upon these parched provinces. Perhaps it was response to the prayers of the people. Five villages were destroyed. Fifteen hundred persons perished.
Virtually in the same zone with Spain and the West Indies (U.S. Colombia) a deluge fell, in December. The River Cauca rose beyond all former high water marks, so suddenly that people were trapped in their houses. This was upon December 19th.
The next day, the earth started quaking in Salvador, near Lake Ilopanga. This lake was the crater of what was supposed to be an extinct volcano. I take data from the
Panama Daily Star and Herald,
Feb. 10, 1880.
Upon the 31st of December—four days before occurrences in the island of Dominica—the earth quaked in Salvador, arid from the middle of Lake Ilopanga emerged a rocky formation. Water fell from the sky, in bulks that gouged gullies. Gullies writhed in the quaking ground. The inhabitants who cried to the heavens prayed to Epilepsy. Mud was falling upon the convulsions. A volcanic island was rising in Lake Ilopanga, displacing the water, in streams that writhed from it violently. Rise of a form that filled the lake—it shook out black torrents—head of a Gorgon, shaggy with snakes.
Beginning upon October 10th, and continuing until the occurrence at St. Kitts, deluge after deluge came down to one zone around this earth—or a flight of lakes was cast from a constellational reservoir, which was revolving and discharging around a zone of this earth. In the minds of most of us, this could not be. We have been taught to look up at the revolving stars, and to see and to think that they do not revolve.
Our data are of the slaughters of people, who, by fishmongerish explanations, have been held back from an understanding of an irrigational system: of their emotions, and of the elementary emotions of lands. There’s a hope in a mind, and it turns to despair—or there’s a fertile region in the materials of a South American country—and an unsuspected volcano chars it to a woe of leafless trees. Plains and the promise of crops that are shining in sunlight—plains crack into disappointments, into which fall expectations. An island appears in the ocean, and after a while young palms feel upward. There’s a convulsive relapse, and subliminal filth, from the bottom of the ocean, plasters the little aspirations. Quaking lands have clasped their fields, and have wrung their forests.
Each catastrophe has been explained by the metaphysical scientists, as a thing in itself. Scientists are contractions of metaphysicians, in their local searches for completeness, and in their statements that, except for infinitesimal errors, plus or minus, completenesses have been found. I can accept that there may be Super-phenomenal Completeness, but not that there can be phenomenal completenesses. It may be that the widespread thought that there is God, or Allness, is only an extension of the deceiving process by which to an explanation of a swarm of lady birds, or to a fall of water at St. Kitts, is given a guise of completeness—or it may be the other way around—or that there is a Wholeness—perhaps one of countless Wholenesses, in the cosmos—and that attempting completenesses and attempting concepts of completenesses are localizing consciousness of an all-inclusive state, or being—so far as its own phenomena are concerned—that is Complete.
There have been showers of ponds. From blue skies there have been shafts of water, golden in sunshine. Reflections from stars have fluted sudden, dark, watery columns. There have been violent temples of water—colonnades of shafts, revealed against darkness by lightning—foaming façades as white as marble. Nights have been caves, roofed with vast, fluent stalactites.
These are sprinkles.
March, 1913.
The meteorologists study meteorologically. The meteorologists were surprised.
March 23, 1913—250,000 persons driven from their homes—torrents falling, rivers rising, in Ohio. The floods at Dayton, Ohio, were especially disastrous.
Traffics of bodies, in the watery streets of Dayton. The wind whistles, and holds up a cab. They stop. Night—and the running streets are hustling bodies—but, coming, is worse than the sights of former beings, who never got anywhere in life, and are still hurrying. The wreck of a trolley car speeds down an avenue—down a side street rushes a dead man. Let him catch the car, and he’ll get about where all his lifetime he got catching other cars. A final dispatch from Dayton—“Dayton in total darkness.”
March 23, 24, 25—a watery sky sat on the Adirondack Mountains. It began to slide. It ripped its slants on a peak, and the tops of lamp posts disappeared in the streets of Troy and Albany. Literary event, at Paterson, N.J.—something that was called “a great cloudburst” grabbed a factory chimney, and on a ruled page of streets scrawled a messy message. With the guts of horses and other obscenities, it put in popularizing touches. The list of dead, in Columbus, Ohio, would probably reach a thousand. Connecticut River rising rapidly. Delaware River, at Trenton, N.J., fourteen feet above normal.
March 26th—in Parkersburg, W.V., people who called on their neighbors, rowed boats to second story windows. If they had in their cellars what they have nowadays, there was much demand for divers. New lakes in Vermont, and the State of Indiana was an inland sea. “Farmers caught napping.” Surprises everywhere: napping everywhere. Wherever Science was, there was a swipe at a sleep. Floods in Wisconsin, floods and destruction in Illinois and Missouri.
March 27th—see the
New York Tribune,
of the 28th—that the Weather Bureau was issuing storm warnings.
The professional wisemen were not heard from, before this deluge. Some of us would like to know what they had to say, afterward. They said it, in the
Monthly Weather Review,
April, 1913.
The story is told “completely.” The story is told, as if there had been exceptional rains, only in Ohio and four neighboring States. Reading this account, one thinks—as one should think—of considerable, or of extraordinary, rain, in one smallish region, and of its derivation from other parts of this earth, where unusual sunshine had brought about unusual evaporations.
Canada—and it was not here that the sun was shining. Waters falling and freezing, in Canada, loading trees and telegraph wires with ice—power houses flooded, and towns in darkness—crashes of trees, heavy with ice. California was drenched. Torrents falling, in Washington and Oregon. Unprecedented snow in Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma—Alabama deluged—floods in Florida.
“Ohio and four neighboring states.”
Downpours in France and in other parts of Europe.
Spain—seems that, near Valencia, one of these nights, there was a rotten theatrical performance. Such a fall of big hailstones that a train was stalled—vast tragedian, in a black cloak, posing on the funnel of an engine—car windows that were footlights—and disapproval was expressing with the looks of millions of pigeons’ eggs. Anyway, near Valencia, a fall of hail, three feet deep, stopped trains. Just where was all that sunshine?
South Africa—moving pictures of the low degree of the now old-fashioned “serials.” Something staged Clutching Hands. There were watery grabs from the sky, at Colesburg, Murraysburg, and Prieska. The volume of one of these bulks equaled one-tenth of the total rainfall in South Africa, in one year.
Snow, two months before its season, was falling in the Andes—floods in Paraguay, and people spreading in panics—Government vessels carrying supplies to homeless, starving people—River Uruguay rising rapidly.
Heavy rains in the Fiji Islands.
The rains in Tasmania, during the month of March, were twenty-six points above the average.
Upon the first day of the floods in “Ohio and four neighboring States” (March 22nd) began a series of terrific thunderstorms in Australia. There was a “rain blizzard” in New South Wales. In Queensland, all mails were delayed by floods.
New Zealand.
Wellington Evening Post,
March 31—“The greatest disaster in the history of the Colony!”
Where there had been sluggish rivers, bodies of countess sheep tossed in woolly furies. Maybe there is a vast, old being named God, and reported strands of tossing sheep were glimpses of his whiskers, in one of those wraths of his. In the towns, there were fantastic savageries. Wherever the floods had been before, it looks as if they had been to college. One of them rioted through the streets of Gore, having broken down store windows. It roystered with the bodies of animals, wrapped in lace curtains, silks, and ribbons. Down the Matura River sounded a torrent of “terrible cries.” It was a rush of drowning cattle. It was a delirium of brandishing horns, upon which invisible collegians were blowing a fanfare.