CONTRASTS OF CLIMATE. 119 



was over, I fell asleep on the wet ground, although I used 

 every exertion to keep myself awake. Twelve of the sol- 

 diers were ill next day." Only some of the fungi, whose 

 rapidity of growth is wonderful, and whose power of caus- 

 ing vomiting, drowsiness and intoxication is acknow- 

 ledged, can be plausibly brought to explain the phenomena 

 described by Park. The very sudden production of ex- 

 cessive mould on everything, so as to rot to its centre in 

 forty-eight hours, a piece of cloth or leather, evinced the 

 fungiferous force of the African rainy season. Moisture 

 and heat alone could not produce such effects, for in Brazil 

 no such phenomena are observed or recorded, although the 

 rains are as heavy and the temperature even a little 

 higher. 



Contrasted with Africa, is a spot almost as unhealthy as 

 " The- Coast." While the latter is low, wet, marshy and 

 filled with the rankest vegetation, the Maremma of Tus- 

 cany and the Roman States is high, dry, free from per- 

 ceptible moisture, and used chiefly as pasture-grounds, 

 which are in no respect unusually fertile or productive. 

 Yet the Maremma, throughout its extended domain of 

 nearly one hundred miles in length, is scourged by the 

 most intense forms of malarious fevers. The campagna 

 di Roma, so celebrated for its pernicious fevers, is included 

 in the Maremma. 



This apparent deviation from the healthfullness, which 

 should pertain to a country so dry, and so free from marshes 

 and streams, has always presented to the miasmatists an es- 

 pecial stumbling block ; and a clever writer seems to think 

 that a general malarious theory cannot be accredited by 

 the profession, which will not explain satisfactorily the 

 cause of the unexpected insalubrity of the Maremma. 



The surface of the Maremma is formed throughout of 



