254 HEATED ROCKS. 



rapidly increases until May, which in most parts of 

 India represents the height of the hot season. The 

 period from March till the end of May may be taken 

 therefore as the most trying and disagreeable of the 

 year to Europeans, though it is by no means an un- 

 healthy time, in any other respect than that of high 

 solar temperatures. In Ceylon, however, April is the 

 worst period. 



Day after day during this hot season in the sub- 

 tropical zones, the sun, arising in fiery glory, shines 

 continually \vith a dazzling lustre, actually painful to 

 the unshaded eye; and the incandescent rays, glowing 

 in a sky of spotless azure, are poured down in a flood 

 of glaring sunshine, of whose power and intensity 

 those only who have themselves resided for some time 

 beneath a tropical sun can form an idea. Photographs, 

 for instance, taken during any part of the tropical day, 

 are always conspicuous by the intensity of their shadows, 

 which appear almost black, when contrasted with the 

 glare in the sun-lit portions ; and so completely parched 

 does the ground become that in general its unprotected 

 surface becomes so hot that it burns the hand when 

 placed upon it, and it appears calcined and cracked in 

 every direction. Rocks also become so heated that 

 long after nightfall we have found sitting down upon 

 them in thin trousers quite like taking a seat upon a 

 hot plate. After the close of a hot day therefore the 

 incautious sitter may have to jump up faster than 

 he sat down ; and when sitting down on any part of 

 the ground by day a rug or some protection against 

 the heated earth is often a positive necessity. The 

 ground itself during the continuance of a long drought 

 also becomes converted into a substance like sun-dried 



