50 



OLAF3EN AND POV'elSEn's 



VARIATIONS PRODUCED IN THE TEMPERATURE OF TH5 

 AIR IN WINTER BY THE THERMAL SPRINGS. 



The extraordinary changes in the air in the district of Bor- 

 garfiord, may be considered as phenomena, but they are only 

 occasioned by the multitude of hot-baths or thermal springs, 

 which exist in that quarter. These changes are particularly re- 

 markable in the valley of Reykholtz, where the interior of the 

 soil, as well in winter as in summer, retains a permanent heat, 

 go that the surface never freezes, an admirable advantage for 

 cattle. The smoke and continual vapours that rise in the air, 

 occasion many showers, that fall even during the finest sun- 

 shine, but they do not last long, as they proceed only from 

 clouds that have been precipitately formed : such showers, 

 however, merely proceed from the lightness of the atmosphere : 

 for the more condensed vapours, which cannot rise so hish as 

 the smoke, fall m such abundance, that the herbage and plants 

 % are loaded with large drops of water to the extent of twenty 

 paces ia circumference, even during the prevalence of sun- 

 shine and winds, and this more or less according to the size 

 or circumference of the thermal springs. On approaching these 

 spots, one's hair and clothes become perfectly white, as if 

 covered with hoar frost, and shortly after they are quite wet. 



In the hottest part of summer, no peasants or labourers are 

 to be found in the fields, as they remain in shady spots or within 

 their houses : they work only in the morning and evening ; and 

 when the nights are clear in harvest time, they employ themselves 

 in getting in their crops. This method of living is customary 

 throughout the country. 



Our travellers now enter into very minute and dry descrip- 

 tions of various kinds of stones, earth, and fossils, which, we 

 should think, cannot excite the smallest interest in the mind of 

 any reader, except the lapidary and mineralogist. They are also 

 very diffuse in their description of the plants in this district, 

 amongst which we find the following particulars of the 



PREPARATION OF THE LICHEN TSLANDICUS*. 



We read in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences at 

 Stockholm, for the year 1739 and 1744, that the Icelanders 

 prepared a bread from this moss. Although we have not been 

 able to procure sufficient authority for this assertion, we do not 

 doubt its possibility, if a little flour were added to the com- 

 position, as we have made the experiment ourselves. But^hc 



* A vegetable which has lately been introduced to this country, antf 

 employed with considerable success in pulmonary consumptions. 



