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 Kachh* 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 14i'3 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 their 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 ram, 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 he met with in a stream, it is in 
nine cases out of ten brackish, — not wholesome for beasts and deadly for men. 
But even in 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 Jerox, 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, that 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. 
