SPITI VALLEY, &c. 251 



ous or subsequent months), it was an oversight which this physical fact 

 led to in the inference that the Ooa Jdo, or Tartaric barley, might be 

 acclimated to the mountains of Northern Europe. The excessive cold that 

 reigns at the highest cultivable levels of the Intra Himalayan regions 

 during the greater part of the year, in no way cramps the progress of 

 vegetation, since this is effected by the necessary quantity of heat during 

 the appropriate season, and whicli, though perhaps never so considerable 

 as in Southern Europe is more constant : and the solar rays of this 

 parallel of latitude, in so thin and transparent an atmosphere, are infinitely 

 more powerfid ; to such an extent, that the difference between their direct 

 ardor and the shade is often more than one hundred degrees, and the 

 contiguous slopes of the same ridge, within the space of a few hundred 

 yards, present torrents of liquid snow and streams of unthawed ice.* 

 These facts, and their effects upon the constitution of men, animals, 

 and vegetation, are not properly understood in Europe, or if known, 

 are explained upon theoretical assumptions which have no grounds of 

 existence in nature. 



The feebleness of the sun's rays in any part of Europe must render the 

 mountain acclivities, of even moderate elevations, inimical to the success of 

 the Tartaric grains, though the degree of cold there never approximates 

 to that which reigns in the high zones Spili. Of this we have analogies 



* It will scarcely be credited that in the beginning of Sf])tcmber, upon the Northern slope of 

 the Paralassa, at an elevation of fifteen thousand five hundred feet, a tiierniometcr resting upon the 

 rocks marked 158°, while tiio temperature of the air was 55°; — again in the middle of October 

 when tiie Sun's Southern declination is already great, at the Chinese village of Laiigtcha, elevated 

 more than fourteen thousand five hundred feet, the sun's rays absorbed by the sand had a tempera- 

 ture of 130°, while the air w as 4G°. In the end of the same month, in a valley flanked by lofty 

 rocks, but at an elevation ol tutlvc thousand feet, a thermometer stood in my pocket at 105*. 

 Wherever we go we find tiic sun's rays oppressive, and much o«' our surprise at the high zones of 

 inhabitants, and cultivation, ceases when we become acquainted witii these circumstances. 



