232 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. 
within the memory of many now living. So late 
as the beginning of this century, the excessive 
growth of red alge on the surface of the Elbe 
made that river for several days seem to run 
blood ; while shortly afterwards some portions of 
the Nile reddened in the same way, and remained 
blood-like and putrid for many months, thus re- 
peating as it were the old miraculous plague of 
Egypt. In Silliman’s North American Fournal 
there appeared several years ago a description of an 
extraordinary fountain of blood discovered in South 
America. A person approaching the grotto from 
which the waters flowed observed a disagreeable 
odour, and when it was reached, he saw several pools 
of the blood ina state of coagulation. Dogs ate 
it eagerly. The late Don Raphael Osijo undertook 
to send some bottles of this singular liquid—rival- 
ling the famous blood of St. Januarius—to London 
for analysis, but it corrupted within twenty-four 
hours, bursting the bottles. Before the potato- 
blight broke out in 1846, red mould spots ap- 
peared on wet linen surfaces exposed to the air in 
bleaching-greens, as well as on household linens 
kept in damp places in Ireland. In September 
1848, Dr. Eckard, of Berlin, while attending a 
cholera patient, observed the same appearance on 
a plate of potatoes which had been placed in a 
cupboard of the patient’s house. The potatoes 
