Of a partridge near the mouth of the Plata, “A man on horseback, by riding round and round in a circle, or rather in a spire, so as to approach closer each time, may knock on the head as many as he pleases.” Refers to Hearne’s Journey, page 383, for “In Arctic North America the Indians catch the Varying Hare by walking spirally round and round it, when on its form: the middle of the day is reckoned the best time, when the sun is high, and the shadow of the hunter not very long.” In the same place, “General Rosas is also a perfect horseman—an accomplishment of no small consequence in a country where an assembled army elected its general by the following trial: A troop of unbroken horses being driven into a corral, were let out through a gateway, above which was a cross-bar: it was agreed whoever should drop from the bar on one of these wild animals, as it rushed out, and should be able, without saddle or bridle, not only to ride it, but also to bring it back to the door of the corral, should be their general. The person who succeeded was accordingly elected, and doubtless made a general fit for such an army. This extraordinary feat has also been performed by Rosas.” Speaks of the Gaucho sharpening his knife on the back of the armadillo before he kills him. Alcide d’Orbigny, from 1825 to 1833 in South America, now (1846) publishing the results on a scale which places him second to Humboldt among South American travellers. Hail in Buenos Ayres as large as small apples; killed thirteen deer, beside ostriches, which last also it blinded, etc., etc. Dr. Malcomson told him of hail in India, in 1831, which “much injured the cattle.” Stones flat, one ten inches in circumference; passed through windows, making round holes. A difference in the country about Montevideo and somewhere else attributed to the manuring and grazing of the cattle. Refers to Atwater as saying that the same thing is observed in the prairies of North America, “where coarse grass, between five and six feet high, when grazed by cattle, changes into common pasture land.” (_Vide_ Atwater’s words in Silliman’s _North American Journal_, vol. i, p. 117.) I would like to read Azara’s Voyage. Speaks[196] of the fennel and the cardoon (_Cynara cardunculus_), introduced from Europe, now very common in those parts of South America. The latter occurs now on both sides the Cordilleras across the continent. In Banda Oriental alone “very many (probably several hundred) square miles are covered by one mass of these prickly plants, and are impenetrable by man or beast. Over the undulating plains, where these great beds occur, nothing else can now live.... I doubt whether any case is on record of an invasion on so grand a scale of one plant over the aborigines.”