iversal "why and because"
of every familiar or unfamiliar occurrence: I leave that to more
pretentious philosophers; smiling occasionally in my sleeve at the
egotism which cannot see its own _non-sequiturs_. But still less can I
consent to set aside every phenomenon which I cannot explain, with the
common resource,--"Pooh! pooh! there must be some mistake!" Rather would
I say, "There must still be some ignorance in me: near as I have reached
to the summit of the ladder of knowledge, there must be still one or two
rongs to be mounted before I can proclaim my mastery of all, absolutely
_all_, the occult causes of things. Therefore, till then I must be
content with the lowlier task of patiently accumulating evidence."

At various times and in various places popular superstition has been
excited by the occurrence of what have been called showers of blood. The
destruction of cities and of kingdoms has been, according to historians,
preceded by this awful omen. Yet this has been explained by a very
natural and accountable phenomenon. In the year 1553, the hedges and
trees, the stones of the pathway, and the clothes of many persons, were
sprinkled copiously with drops of red fluid, which was supposed to be
blood, till some observant person noticed the coincident appearance of
unusual swarms of butterflies, and marked that the coloured drops
proceeded from them. Again, at Aix la Chapelle in 1608, the same awful
appearance occurred, especially on the walls of a particular churchyard.
M. Peiresc, an able naturalist, residing at Aix, traced the phenomenon
here to the same cause. Just before, he had found a large chrysalis,
which he had enclosed in a box, in order to identify the species to
which it belonged. A few days after, hearing a rustling, he opened the
box, and discovered a beautiful butterfly evolved from the pupa, which
had left upon the floor of its prison a large red stain. He saw that the
character of this deposit agreed exactly with that of the ominous drops
abroad, and remarking an unusual abundance of the same kind of
butterfly, he conceived that he had revealed the cause of the terrific
phenomenon. He was confirmed in this belief by the circumstance that the
supposed blood-drops were not found in the streets of the town, nor upon
the roofs of the houses, where they must have occurred had they fallen
from the sky; and, moreover, that it was rare to see any on the exposed
parts of stones, walls, &c.; but rather under