64 ANIMAL ARTISANS 



gadera ' applied to this disease. Not even monkeys, 

 in their aerial retreats, escaped the contagion. Their 

 melancholy cries resounded through the woods." 



This flood-engendered pestilence then attacked the 

 horses of the llanos, and lastly the people, who for 

 some time abandoned horse-breeding. On the other 

 hand, great catastrophes in animal life, attributed 

 to floods by those who discover the remains of the 

 victims in later periods, may often have been due to 

 a different, or even exactly contrary, cause. 



Thus Charles Darwin noted that in the great 

 drought which afflicted South America from 1827 till 

 1830, when the deer used to come into the court- 

 yards to drink at the wells, and one proprietor lost 

 every head of a herd of twenty thousand cattle, 

 the latter animals in herds of thousands rushed into 

 the Parana, and then, being exhausted by hunger, 

 were unable to climb up the muddy banks, and so 

 were drowned. A very rainy season followed this 

 drought, and caused great floods. " Hence it is 

 almost certain that some thousands of the skeletons 

 were buried by the deposits next year. What would 

 be the opinion of a geologist, viewing such a collec- 

 tion of bones, of all kinds of animals, and of all 

 ages, thus embedded in one earthy mass? Would 

 he not attribute it to a flood having swept over the 

 land, rather than to the common order of things ? " 



