372 Observations made on a Botanical Excursion. [Oct, 



alluvium full of quartz pebbles. Effloresced salts are frequent in the 

 exposed rocks, and probably inimical to Lichens, which though common 

 hardly ever assumed the foliaceous form. Insects and birds are more 

 numerous, with Jays, Crows, Doves, Sparrows and Maina (Pastor), also 

 the Phcenicophaus tristis, (Mahoka of the natives,) with a voice like 

 the English Cuckoo as heard late in the season. 



Height of Belcuppee above the sea 1139 feet. 



In the evening visited the hot-springs, situated close to the road. 

 These are four in number, rise in as many little ruined brick tanks, abou^ 

 2 yard across. Another tank, fed by a cold spring, about twice that 

 size, flows between too of the hot, and only two or three paces distance 

 from one of the latter on either hand. 



All burst through the gneiss rocks, meet in one stream after a few 

 yards, and are conducted to a pool of cold water, about 80 yards off, 

 by bricked canals. 



The temperatures of the hot springs were respectively 169°, 170°, 

 173° and 190° ; of the cold, 84° at 4 p. m. and 75° at 7 a. m. of the 

 following morning. The hottest is the middle of the five. The water 

 of the cold spring is sweet but not good, and emits gaseous bubbles ; 

 it is covered with a green floating Conferva. 



Of the four hot, the most copious is about three feet deep, bubbles 

 livelily its gasses, boils eggs, and though brilliantly clear, has an exceed- 

 ingly nauseous taste. This and the other warm ones deposit salt in a 

 very concrete state, on the bricks and surrounding rocks. 



Conferva abound in the warm stream from the springs, and two 

 Species, one ochreous brown, and the other green, occur on the margins 

 of the tanks themselves, and in the hottest water ; the brown is the best 

 Salamander, and forms 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 constitu- 

 tion capable of resisting, if not a predilection for the heat ; these were 

 Cyperacea all, a Cijperus and Eleocharis ? having their roots in water 

 of 100°, and where they are probably exposed to greater heat, and a 

 Fuirene ? at 98° ; all were very luxuriant. 



From the edge of the four hot springs I gathered seven or eight 

 species of flowering plants, and from the cold tank five, which did not 

 grow in the hot. 



