Bloodworm Showers?

　　Naturalist Philip Henry Gosse, in his book The Romance of Natural History (London: James Nisbet and Co., 1866; vol. II, Second series, pp. 98-99), had an experience with a phenomenon that closely resembled drops of blood. In Ashburton, a neighborhood in Devon, England, the scientist noticed that in the cratered[1] white mud at the bottom of a shallow pond, there appeared to be many patches of "what looked exactly like blood...." It appeared to the experienced natural scientist that two or three drops of blood had fallen in one spot.
　　Upon examination of the spots, Gosse determined that their color was very-bloodlike, and that the spots even had what he called "just that curdled[2] appearance that drops of blood assume when that fall into still water." Upon "minute[3] examination," Gosse saw a motion within the spot and found that each "drop" was composed of many thin 1.5 inch-long worms protruding from the mud. He took samples and found the creatures to be worms with transparent bodies, red-hued by virtue of their visible blood-vessels (Gosse, p. 100).
　　In his Secrets of Earth and Sea, Sir Ray Lankester (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1920), explains "showers of blood" as being due to showers of red insects. He feels that there may be falls of hundreds of small red river-worms (such as Tubifex). The mechanism for these showers proposed by Lankester is the ubiquitous[4] whirlwind that lifts the worms out of the water and drops them elsewhere (p. 207).

血虫雨

　　博物学家Philip Henry Gosse在《自然史传奇》中，用极生动的语言描述了一种酷似“血雨”的现象：在英国德文郡附近Ashburton有一个浅水池塘，Gosse在池塘底部的白色沟壑中发现了许多“看起来很象血迹”的污块。在这位经验丰富的科学家看来，这儿显然曾经降落过数滴血雨。

　　经过观察，Gosse再次肯定那些污迹的颜色确实非常象血，甚至还带有如血滴落入静水中所呈现的凝固状态。经过“更仔细的端详”， Gosse发现血块中稍有动静。原来每块“血迹”都是由许多细小蠕虫组成。这些蠕虫从泥沙里钻出，身长1.5英寸，身体透明，血管脉络清晰，因而通体呈红色。

　　无独有偶，Ray Lankester爵士在他的《大地与海洋的秘密》中也认为“血雨”或许源于血色小虫，正是那上百只血红色的河流蠕虫（比如血虫）形成了所谓的“血雨”现象。至于它们是怎样移动的，据Lankester推测，或许是那无处不在的旋风卷起河水中的蠕虫后，将它们带到了别处。