Water for Drinking.   223

collected in a cup, c, that is supported by a rude tripod of sticks, T, standing in the inside of the iron pot.

Occasional Means of Quenching Thirst.-A Shower of Rain will yield a good supply. The clothes may be stripped off and spread out, and the rain-water sucked from them. Or, when a storm is approaching, a cloth or blanket may be made fast by its four corners, and a quantity of bullets thrown in the middle of it ; they will cause the water that it receives, to drain to one point and trickle through the cloth, into a cup or bucket set below. A reversed umbrella will catch water ; but the first drippings from it, or from clothes that have been long unwashed, as from a macintosh cloak, are intolerably nauseous and very unwholesome. It must be remembered, that thirst is greatly relieved by the skin being wetted, and therefore it is well for a man suffering from thirst, to strip to the rain. Rain-water is lodged for some days in the huge pitcher-like corollas of many tropical flowers.

Sea-water.--Lives of sailors have more than once been saved when turned adrift in a boat, by bathing frequently and keeping their clothes damp with salt-water. However, after some days, the nauseous taste of the salt-water is very perceptible in the saliva, and at last becomes unbearable ; such, at least, was the experience of the surgeon of the wrecked ` Pandora.'

Dew-water is abundant near the sea-shore, and may be collected in the same way as rain-water. The storehouse at Angra Pequena, in S.W. Africa, in 1850, was entirely supplied by the dew-water deposi:,-;d on its roof. The Australians who live near the sea, go `q'nong the wet bushes with a great piece of bark, and brush into it the dew-drops from the leaves with a wisp of grass; collecting in this way large quantities of water. Eyre used a sponge for the same purpose, and appears to have saved his life by its use.

Animal Fluids are resorted to in emergencies ; such as the contents of the paunch of an animal that has been shot ; its taste is like sweet-wort. Mr. Darwin writes of people who, catching turtles, drank the water that was found in their