312 WANDEEINGS OF A 



cause ; and although the habit of closing doors and windows 

 by day — bottling up the cool air of night — ^does certainly 

 reduce the heat considerably, and prevents the entrance of 

 dust and hot winds, it may be questioned if the constitution 

 would, in the long run, suffer more if subjected to a few 

 degrees of higher temperature, with that indispensable requi- 

 site, light, which of all necessaries of animal life is one of the 

 most important. 



In countries subject to sudden and violent storms, it is 

 suggestive to note how easily organic remains can be trans- 

 ported in situations where no regular river or stream exists. 

 I have often picked up bones of sheep and cattle among the 

 debris in the bottoms of dried-up watercourses, many miles 

 distant from Eawul Pindee, and under conditions that clearly 

 showed they had been conveyed by floods and freshets. Such 

 occurrences are common in Central Africa, as shown by Sir 

 Samuel Baker in connection with the Blue Nile and rivers of 

 Abyssinia, where entire carcases of the elephant, hippopotamus, 

 tortoise, etc., are borne along the watercourses for long dis- 

 tances, and deposited pell-mell where sufficient resistance is 

 presented. The arrangement of fossil remains of like quadru- 

 peds, in the rock-fissures of Malta, seem to indicateia similar 

 origin, as likewise the wonderful assemblages of living and 

 extinct animals in the caverns and rock-fissures of Gibraltar. 

 Thus the presence of organic remains, under conditions such 

 as have just been stated, do not. necessitate the supposition 

 that a perennial stream or river once flowed on or near the 

 deposit. 



There could be no finer picture for the landscape-painter 

 than the view from Eawul Pindee of a full moon crowning 

 the top of the Peer Pinjal. That enormous barrier-chain, 

 illuminated by the glorious orb, whilst the intervening space 



