50 DR. HOOKER'S MISSION TO INDIA. 
probably render them unfavourable to Lichens, for these, though com- 
mon, hardly ever assume the foliaceous form. Insects and birds are 
more numerous, with jays, crows, ei sparrows, and Maina (Pastor); 
also the Phenicophaus tristis (Mahoka of the natives), a walking cuckoo, 
with a voice like that of its English name-sake, late in the season. 
It is a bird, which, though of frequent occurrence, is rarely seen.— 
Height above the sea, 1339 feet. 
In the evening visited the hot springs, situated close to the road. 
Such springs are abundant in the earlier rocks of India, from the 
plains of Thibet almost to Cape Comorin, and at all elevations. These 
springs, four in number, rise in as many little ruined brick tanks, about 
two yards across. Another tank is fed by a cold spring, about twice 
that size, which flows between two of the hot ones, only two or three 
paces distant from the latter on either side. All run through the 
primitive rocks, meet in one stream after a few yards, and are con- 
ducted to a cold-water tank, about eighty yards distant, by bricked 
The temperatures of the hot springs were, respectively, ane 
170°, 178°, and 190°; that of the cold 84°, at 4 p.m., and 75° 
7 A.M., of the following morning; the hottest is the middle of et 
five. The water of the cold spring is sweet, but not good, and emits 
gaseous bubbles: it is covered with a green floating Oonferva. Of the 
four last, the most copiousis about three feet deep ; it bubbles livelily, 
its heat boils eggs: the water though brilliantly clear, has an intolerably 
nauseous taste. This and the other warm ones deposit salts in a very 
concrete state on the brinks and surrounding rocks. 
onferve abound in the warm streams from the springs: two 
species, one ochreous-brown, and the other green, occur on the margins 
of the tanks themselves, and in the hottest water, the brown being the 
best Salamander, and forming a belt within the green: both appear 
in broad luxuriant strata where the water is cooled down to 168°, 
and below, to 90°. Of flowering plants, three showed in an eminent 
degree a constitution capable of resisting, if not a predilection for, the 
heat. These were exclusively Cyperacee, a Cyperus, and Eleocharis (?) 
having their roots in water of 100°, and where they are probably ex- 
posed to a greater heat, and a Fuirena (2) at 98°, all very luxuriant. 
From the edges of the four hot springs I gathered sixteen species of 
flowering-plants (Desmodium, Oldenlandia, three Composite, Boerhaavia, 
two Graminee, Panicum, Eragrostis, and eight Cyperaceg), and from 
