The news from Southern India is of the gloomiest character.
A million and a quarter of people are receiving relief, and the mortality has risen to a height which, if it were to continue for twelve months, would sweep the whole of the refugees away. According to the Times' correspondent, everything depended, in Madras and Mysore, on the duration of the rains ; while according to a telegram of July 22, the rains have almost entirely ceased, and the calamity of a second year of famine is almost un- avoidable. This will be indefinitely heavier than the first year, the reserves of the poorer classes being gradually exhausted. Already that "tendency to death" which accompanies Indian famines is reported on by the doctors, and the Government of Madras is so alarmed that it has ventured to disobey instructions from home to sell its stores of grain.
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