1872.] F. Stoliczka — Mammals and Birds inhabiting Kachh. 215 



moisture, unless the atmosphere be near the point of saturation ; and this 

 seems indeed to be of very rare occurrence. 



Mr. Wynne, in whose Memoir on the Geology of Kaebh* the physical 

 geography of the province is briefly referred to, states that the average rain- 

 fall for the last twenty-one years up to 1869 was only 143 inches ; within 

 the three past years the annual fall scarcely exceeded ten inches. Some tracts 

 of the country had actually barely a drop of rain during the whole year, and 

 these had to be deserted during the dry season by the inhabitants, who 

 generally on such occasions betake themselves with their cattle to Sind, re- 

 turning to theh* homes during the following rainy season. 



This state of affairs is not in any way mitigated by a marked change in 

 the general temperature of the air. Ice is apparently quite unknown in 

 Kachh. On very cold mornings in December and January, I occasionally 

 saw the thermometer as low as 35,° but it never sank to freezing point, and 

 that comparatively low temperature was observed only along the Ran, where 

 the wind blowing across the wet Ran was cooled down. Even in those two 

 months the thermometer was rarely under 80° or 90° after midday in the 

 shade, and in February, it generally rose to about 100.° In the sun I 

 have not seen it a single day under 100 degrees. 



In consequence of this scarcity of rain, on account of the great heat, 

 and further on account of the abundance of superficial sandy deposits, large 

 rivers are entirely unknown, at least during the greater part of the year. 

 The little water, which is supplied by a few springs in the hills, is generally 

 lost in the sand before it reaches the desert plain, or it accumulates into 

 small pools and hollows in suitable places, where clayey beds retard or stop 

 the percolation through the sand. But in slowly passing through the sand, 

 the water becomes more or less saturated with various salts, the consequence 

 being that, if any running water at all is to be met with in a stream, it is in 

 nine cases out of ten brackish, — not wholesome for beasts and deadly for men. 

 But even hi the wells, which the people sink for purposes of raising 

 water for irrigation, this is often brackish, and it is sometimes with the 

 greatest difficulty that perfectly fresh water can at all be obtained near a 

 village. The simple recollection of the foul and dirty fluid, that one is oc- 

 casionally obliged to accept in order to quench his thirst, is enough to make 

 one shudder. 



All these elements of physical condition, to which I have briefly refer- 

 red, tend towards making the country a terra hospitibus ferooc, an expression 

 often repeated for want of a more suitable one, or, as an early traveller ex- 

 pressed himself, a country fit only for a geologist to travel in. The general 

 result of those unfavourable physical conditions is, tbat we have before us a 

 few ranges of low hills of 80 or 100 miles in length, varying in height from 

 * Mem. Geol. Survey of India, vol. IX, p. 12 et seq. 



