rought, on a brilliantly sunny afternoon. Standing at the front door
of a house at Fisherton, a suburb about six miles from Rosario, we
noticed right down in the S.W., on the horizon, great banks of
grey-looking clouds, which, to our surprise, seemed to be rolling
rapidly up the sky towards us. They had a most alarming appearance, for
these masses of grey cloud approaching so rapidly seemed to portend a
storm of terrible force. In less than twenty minutes from the time we
first saw the clouds the afternoon had changed from brilliant sunshine
to pitchy darkness. So rapidly had the darkness come on us that no one
was prepared, and no matches or lights were forthcoming; so there we
stood in a room in absolute darkness, no glimmer of light even revealing
where the windows were situated in the room. Though all doors and
windows were closely shut, we could feel the dust entering in clouds
through the cracks, making it quite unpleasant breathing. When the storm
caught us we had to stand and wait, I must own with some fear as to how
it was going to end. Up to this time the storm had come up and fallen on
us in total silence: now, after about ten minutes of pitch darkness, we
could hear in the far distance the wind coming. It came up with cyclonic
force, and then everything in the way of tins and buckets began to be
blown in every direction, and the horses to gallop about neighing,
evidently very much frightened. The wind was the forerunner of the rain,
which gradually began to clear the air, though, of course, for some time
it rained mud, much to the detriment of the houses, and to anyone
unfortunate enough to be caught out of doors in the storm; indeed, one
of our friends, who insisted on starting for the station just as the
storm descended on us, was found crouching under his umbrella by one of
the posts of the railway fence, with a face as black as a sweep's, and,
by then, deeply repentant that he had started for the station against
advice. Indeed, many caught out in camp by the storm lost their lives
through falling into wells, and, in some cases, the river. But,
fortunately, nowadays--principally, I fancy, owing to the larger area of
country under cultivation--these dust storms do not recur.

LOCUSTS.

During the past century considerable study has been centred upon the
life and habits of the locust, mainly from the desire to seek its
subjugation and destruction, and, whilst much general biological
information has