From Hensleigh Wedgwood [13–19 March 1859]1
Oxford & Cambridge Club
My dear Charles
I don’t know whether you admit those showers of fishes as an undoubted fact, but I ascertained that this was certainly the case with the one mentioned in the Times last week.2 The fishes fell in a violent shower of rain in the yard of our colliery over a space of about 100 yards long by 14 or 15 broad3 A large proportion fell on the roof of our engineers shed about 25 high in the ridge Others in a puddle in the yard which is dry in dry weather & these were living & were gathered by several of the people. The overlooker had a lot of them in a goldfish jar which were minnows & stickleback
The birds were busy with those that fell on the roof which of course were killed
A story loses nothing by telling & a lady on the train told us she understood they were forced to sweep them away with besoms.
Affecty yours | H Wedgwood
CD annotations
Footnotes
Bibliography
Hadfield, Charles. 1967. The canals of South Wales and the border. 2d ed. Newton Abbot, Devon: David & Charles in conjunction with the University of Wales Press. [vols. 4,7]
Summary
HW has confirmed the report in the Times of a shower of fish (minnows and sticklebacks) that fell on the Wedgwood colliery.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-13854
- From
- Hensleigh Wedgwood
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- unstated
- Source of text
- DAR 205.2: 262
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp †
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13854,” accessed on 26 September 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13854.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7
