aordinary floods, when the
greatest number of land animals are destroyed, the waters are commonly
so turbid, especially at the bottom of the channel, that even aquatic
species are compelled to escape into some retreat where there is clearer
water, lest they should be stifled. For this reason, as well as the
rapidity of sedimentary deposition at such seasons, the probability of
carcasses becoming permanently imbedded is considerable.

_Flood in the Solway Firth, 1794._--One of the most memorable floods of
modern date, in our island, is that which visited part of the southern
borders of Scotland, on the 24th of January, 1794, and which spread
particular devastation over the country adjoining the Solway Firth.

We learn from the account of Captain Napier, that the heavy rains had
swollen every stream which entered the Firth of Solway; so that the
inundation not only carried away a great number of cattle and sheep, but
many of the herdsmen and shepherds, washing down their bodies into the
estuary. After the storm, when the flood subsided, an extraordinary
spectacle was seen on a large sand-bank called "the beds of Esk," where
there is a meeting of the tidal waters, and where heavy bodies are
usually left stranded after great floods. On this single bank were found
collected together the bodies of 9 black cattle, 3 horses, 1840 sheep,
45 dogs, 180 hares, besides a great number of smaller animals, and,
mingled with the rest, the corpses of two men and one woman.[1070]

_Floods in Scotland, 1829._--In those more recent floods in Scotland, in
August, 1829, whereby a fertile district on the east coast became a
scene of dreadful desolation, a vast number of animals and plants were
washed from the land, and found scattered about after the storm, around
the mouths of the principal rivers. An eye-witness thus describes the
scene which presented itself at the mouth of the Spey, in
Morayshire:--"For several miles along the beach crowds were employed in
endeavoring to save the wood and other wreck with which the
heavy-rolling tide was loaded; whilst the margin of the sea was strewed
with the carcasses of domestic animals, and with millions of dead hares
and rabbits."[1071]

_Savannahs of South America._--We are informed by Humboldt, that during
the periodical swellings of the large rivers in South America great
numbers of quadrupeds are annually drowned. Of the wild horses, for
example, which graze in immense troops in the savannahs,