MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES: GIANT FROGS,ODD EGGS AND A SWARM OF GERMAN DRAGON FLIES

Folks - a collection of oddities today from our friend The Manchester Iris volume 1 and a pre-World War 2 issue of The Palestine Post, of all places, which I found on the Web.

Firstly, we start with The Palestine Post article, this being the earliest item in time:


The Way To Jerusalem Diary of a Jewish Traveller in the 15th Century

“The writer of this letter was Rabbi Obadiah ben Abraham of Bertinoro, famous as the author of the standard commentary on the Mishnah (the first authoritative collection of Jewish traditional religious law, the foundation of “Judaism” in the strict sense). He reached Jerusalem in 1488 after a journey from north Italy which occupied eighteen months.

{Obadiah is here writing about his journey from Alexandria in Egypt to Jerusalem -R } “We remained two days in Fauh, because the wind was not favourable; it is a large and beautiful place, and fish and vegetables can be got for almost nothing. We came next to Bulak which already forms the beginning of Cairo. On the Nile I saw the large species of frog, which the natives call El Timash (Crocodile); it is larger than a bear, and spots are visible on its skin. The ship`s crew say that there are some twice this size - the frogs which have remained from time of Moses, as Maimonides {a 12th century Jewish philosopher} mentions in his commentary…” (1)

Now to odd eggs :`The Manchester Iris` vol 1` “Eggs preserved 300 years. - In the wall of a chapel near the Lago Maggiore, built more than 300 years ago, three eggs, imbedded in the mortar of the wall, were found to be quite fresh. It has long been known that bird`s eggs brought from America or India, covered with a film of wax, have been hatched in Europe after the wax had been dissolved by alchohol.”(2)

And insects: 'On the 14th of May {1822} between six and seven in the evening, during a thunder shower, there fell at Leipzig such prodigious multitudes of insects, that they covered whole streets. The wind was very strong from the East, from which quarter vast swarms of insects were seen to approach, which fell with the rain in countless heaps. They are dragonflies, and it is inexplicable whence they can have come in such swarms, as there are no marshes near Leipzig on the east side. It was reported among the common people that it had rained locusts.' (3)

Ricky-Dicky-Devo

1 The Palestine Post December 25th 1932 p.8
2 The Manchester Iris vol. 1 June 22nd 1822. p.164
3 Ibid p.164

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