84 DR. HOOKER's MISSION TO INDIA. 
scales of brown and yellow. Three ticks had fastened on it, each ofa 
size covering three or four scales: the first was yellow, corresponding x 
with the yellow colour of the animal's belly, where it lodged, the 
second brown, from the head ; but the third, which was clingiug to the 
parti-coloured scales of the neck, had its body party-coloured, the hues 
corresponding with the individual scale it covered. The adaptation of 
the two first specimens in colour to the parts to which they adhered, is 
sufficiently remarkable; but the third case was passing strange. 
Here I sank a thermometer twenty-eight inches, in a soil as 
hard as iron. The temperature at 9 P.w., 70°; 11 p.m., 72°, and 
on the following morning, 54 a.m., 68? 5’. Can this increase be- 
tween 9 and 11 be owing to the slow transmission of the solar heat 
of the previous day downwards? The thermometer was carefully 
guarded with flannel; and the corresponding temperature of the air in 
the shade was, at 9 r.m., 62°, and at 54 a.m., 53? 5'. 
Between 9 aud 114 r.m., the sky was illumined by a magnificent 
aurora, which I need not trouble you with describing again. 
At 9, I went down to the bed of the river, to see at what rate the 
sand was parting with its heat about my Calotropis; and as I tried the 
same at dawn of the following morning, I shall give you them both 
together. 
9 P.M. 1 past 5 A.M. 
Surface . 51° : 43° 5/ 
liinch. 60 50 
31 , 67 57-5 
- oe 70 5’ ; 67 
IA S s 40 : 12 inch. . 67 5’ Sand wet. 
if: c ditto. 
Feb, 15th.—Our passage through the Soane sands was very tedious, 
though accomplished in excellent style, the elephants pushing forward 
the heavy waggons of mining tools with their foreheads. The wheels 
were sometimes buried to the axles in sand, and the bullocks found 
themselves rather in the way than otherwise. The body of water, over 
which we ferried, was not above eighty yards wide, and nearer to the 
opposite bank. In the rains, when the whole space of three miles is one 
roaring stream, ten or twelve feet deep, this river must present an im- 
posing spectacle. 
