The ants are not the worst plagues in these countries: destructive as they are, they are not to be compared with the locusts; though, happily (and indeed were it otherwise, all man's labour would be vain), they are only occasional visitors. When they do come they lay the land utterly desolate. I once witnessed one of their visitations, and, but that I had myself seen the extent of the devastation caused by them, I certainly would not have believed it. They made their appearance at first in a large dense cloud, hovering high in the air, as if hesitating where to descend. All the shovels and pots and pans in Buenos Ayres were put in requisition to make a clatter to affright them, but in vain; down they came, to the consternation of the owners of every quinta, or garden, in the neighbourhood of the city. They soon spread for several miles over the surface of the land, and so thickly that it was like driving over gravel to go amongst them;--that, I well remember was just my impression upon going out upon the high road in a carriage whilst they were on the ground. They had then been at their work of destruction two or three days, and were for the most part so gorged as to be quite incapable of moving; in a day or two more they had literally not left a blade of grass or a green leaf to be seen; some of those that were not then dying of satiety began to devour one another. This was early in the year 1826. Though they were always as thick as grasshoppers, I never saw at Buenos Ayres what was termed a flight of locusts but that once, in nearly nine years. It was succeeded a few days afterwards by a flight of small black beetles, which came down like hail, and were swept up by shovels-full in our balconies: it was a small insect, about the size of an earwig, and was said to have the same habits; they worked their way into the house in great numbers, where they fell into a sort of torpid state, in which they became an easy prey to the ants, who upon this occasion were our active allies, and helped us to get rid of them. THE OLD MISSIONS OF THE JESUITS. To the eastward of Corrientes are the depopulated ruins, all that remain, of the once famed Missions of the Jesuits, the greater part of which were situated on the shores of the Paranã and Uruguay, where the courses of those rivers nearly meet. When the order was expelled from South America in 1767, there were a hundred thousand inhabitants in the thirty towns in those parts under their control. In those situated east of the Paranã, not a thousand souls remained in 1825, according to an account I received from the officer who was in command there at that period, and they were I believe shortly afterwards swept off during the war with Brazil for the occupation of the Banda Oriental. The other towns beyond the Paranã, being within the jurisdiction of Paraguay, have fared little better under Dr. Francia.