tes after my arrival, brought in seven
more. Now I well know that one man without dogs could hardly have killed
seven deer in a week. The men believed they had seen about fifteen dead
ostriches, (part of one of which we had for dinner;) and they said that
several were running about evidently blind in one eye. Numbers of small
birds, as ducks, hawks, and partridges, were killed. I saw one of the
latter with a black mark on its back, as if it had been struck with a
paving-stone. A fence of thistle-stalks round the hovel was nearly
broken down; and my informer, putting his head out to see what was the
matter, received a severe cut, and now wears a bandage. The storm was
said to have been of limited extent: we certainly saw, from our last
night's bivouac, a dense cloud and lightning in this direction. It is
marvellous how such strong animals as deer could thus have been killed;
but, I have no doubt, from the evidence I have given, that the story is
not in the least exaggerated." Dr. Malcolmson informed Mr. Darwin, that
he witnessed, in 1831, in India, a hail-storm, which killed numbers of
large birds, and much injured the cattle. These hail-stones were flat;
one was ten inches in circumference; and another weighed two ounces.
They ploughed up a gravel-walk like musket-balls, and passed through
glass windows, making round holes, but not cracking them.

There is much in the origin and formation of hail that cannot well be
explained. Volta regarded the formation of small flakes of ice, the
kernels of future hail-stones, in the month of July, during the hottest
hours of the day, as one of the most difficult phenomena in nature to
explain. It is difficult to account for the comparative scarcity of
hail-showers in winter; as also, for the great size which hailstones are
often known to attain.

It appears from certain resemblances in the descents of rain, snow, and
hail, that they have a common origin, their different formations being
explained by difference of temperature. Howard has observed a huge
nimbus affording hard snowballs and distinct flakes of snow at the same
time. Hail and rain are by no means uncommon from the same cloud. The
size of a cloud may be such, or clouds may exist in different elevations,
which in an upper region produce hail, in a lower region snow, and at a
still lower elevation rain. Rain may also form in an upper region of the
sky, and descend into a colder stratum of the atmosphere, and