“I was informed by an eye-witness, that the cattle in herds of thousands rushed into the river Parana, and being exhausted by hunger they were unable to crawl up the muddy banks, and thus were drowned. The arm which runs by San Pedro was so full of putrid carcasses, that the master of a vessel told me, that the smell rendered it quite impossible to pass that way. Without doubt, several hundred thousand animals thus perished in the river. Their bodies, when putrid, floated down the stream, and many in all probability were deposited in the estuary of the Plata. All the small rivers became highly saline, and this caused the death of vast numbers in particular spots, for when an animal drinks of such water it does not recover. I noticed, but probably it was the effect of a gradual increase, rather than of any one period, that the smaller streams in the Pampas were paved with bones. Subsequently to this unusual drought, a very rainy season commenced, which caused great floods. Hence it is almost certain, that some thousands of these skeletons were buried by the deposits of the very next year. What would be the opinion of a geologist viewing such an enormous collection of bones, of all kinds of animals and of all ages, thus embedded in one thick earthy mass? Would he not attribute it to a flood having crept over the surface of the land, rather than to the common order of things?” Captain Owen mentions a curious effect of a drought on the elephants at Benguela on the western coast of Africa:—“A number of these animals had some time since entered the town in a body to possess themselves of the wells, not being able to procure any water in the country. The inhabitants mustered, when a desperate conflict ensued, which terminated in the ultimate discomfiture of the invaders, but not until they had killed one man, and wounded several others.” The town is said to have a population of nearly three thousand. Dr. Malcolmson states, that during a great drought in India the wild animals entered the tents of some troops at Ellore, and that a hare drank out of a vessel held by the adjutant of the regiment. In connexion with droughts may be mentioned a plan {133} proposed by Mr. Espy of the United States of America, for remedying them by means of _artificial rains_. That gentleman says, that if a large body of heated air be made to ascend in a column, a large cloud will be generated, and that such cloud will contain in itself a self-sustaining power, which may move from the place over which it was formed, and cause the air over which it passes to rise up into it and thus form more cloud and rain, until the rain may become general.