cies, Koenigia islandica in great profusion, and Funaria hygrometrica. Leaving the river, I walked over several vast mounds of red earth, at the north end of the Geyser, in my way to the top of the mountain. Here and there a boiling spring was forcing its turbid and discoloured waters through holes in the surface. Some were completely in the thick muddy state of a puddle, and were bubbling, as any glutinous substance would do over a fire. In many places was heard a rumbling noise like the subterraneous boiling of water, although there was no orifice near, by which the fluid could make its escape. On these spots, which were so much heated by subterraneous streams that I could scarcely bear my hands upon the ground, I found a great profusion of Riccia glauca,* growing in patches, and extending almost uninterruptedly over a space of ten or twelve feet in diameter. The soil for more than half way up the mountain was composed of a coarse reddish kind of earth, intermixed with some other of a dirty yellow colour, with small intervals of hard rock, and with this terminated the highest of the hot springs, which however was but a feeble one. Thence to the summit the mountain was entirely formed of a loosely laminated rock, whose strata seemed to lie in almost every direction, but chiefly vertically. There was no appearance whatever of any part of the hill having been in a state of fusion. Many of the strata were still in their original bed, and the pieces which had fallen from them had their edges very sharply defined, and had broken off in laminæ of about an inch in thickness. The stone is extremely hard and compact, of a rusty brown colour, in some specimens more inclining to gray, and with a perfectly smooth and flat surface. Sir John Stanley supposes that its substance is chiefly argallaceous, and that, like every other stone in the island, it has undergone some change by fire. I met with nothing remarkable on the summit, where there is a considerable extent of flat surface, almost covered with Trichostomum canescens, intermixed with the Lichen islandicus ; and from each extremity of this plain arises a conical eminence, unequal in height, of the same nature as the rock it springs from, and producing no plants that are not to be seen equally abundant in various other parts of the country. The most scarce were Trichostomum ellipticum, which grows in tolerable plenty upon the dry rocks, and Andraea Rothii, which, though it has been found in but few countries, is very abundant in Iceland. The top of Laugerfell afforded me a very commanding prospect. Just beneath me, facing the south-east, was to be seen at one view the

* I think, but dare not trust too implicitly to my memory, that I saw abundance of it in fructification. I made no memorandum on this subject, and the specimens which were intended to enable me to answer this, as well as other questions relative to natural history, were all unhappily lost.

steam rising from upwards of a hundred boiling springs, among which the great Geyser, from its regularly circular figure, looked like an artificial reservoir of water. A little stream at the bottom of the hill formed the boundary to these, beyond which was an extensive morass, whose sameness was only interrupted by the rather wide course of the river Hvitaa, winding through it. The view was terminated, in that quarter of the compass, by a long range of flat and tame mountains, over which towered the three-pointed and snow-capped summit of Hecla, which rises far above the neighbouring hills, and is, in clear weather, plainly visible when standing by the Geyser. In the north-east was situated the church and farm of Haukardal, and a continuation of the morass, bounded by some lofty jökuls of fantastic shapes. In the north-west, at a small distance from the place where I stood, and, indeed, only separated from it by a narrow portion of the morass, with a small river winding through it, rose another chain of mountains, thinly covered with vegetation, beyond which some jökuls showed their white summits. In the south the morass was extended almost to the coast, and looked like a great sea, having three or four rather lofty, but completely insulated mountains, with flat summits, rising from its bosom. It was my custom, during my stay in this place, to cook my provisions in one or other of the boiling springs; and accordingly, a quarter of a sheep was this day put into the Geyser, and Jacob left to watch it, holding it fastened to a piece of cord, so that, as often as it was thrown out by the force of the water, (which very frequently happened) he might readily drag it in again. The poor fellow, who was unacquainted with the nature of these springs, was a good deal surprised; at the time when he thought the meat nearly cooked sufficiently, he observed the water in a instant sink down, and entirely disappear; not rising again till towards evening. We were therefore obliged to have recourse to another spring, and found, that, in all, it required twenty minutes to perform the operation properly. It must be remembered, however, that the quarter of an Icelandic sheep is very small, perhaps not weighing more than six pounds, and is moreover extremely lean. I do not apprehend that longer time would have been necessary to have cooked it in an English kitchen; for the hot springs in Iceland, at least such of their waters as are exposed to the air, are never of a greater heat than 212° of Fahrenheit; so that when I hear travellers speaking of having boiled their eggs in two minutes in such springs, or of having cooked their meat in a proportionably short space of time, I do not doubt the fact, but I must be allowed to suspect that their victuals would not be dressed to my taste. The next eruption of the Geyser, which took place at half past nine, was a very magnificent one, and preceded by more

numerous shocks of the ground and subterraneous noises, than I had yet witnessed. The whole height to which the greatest jet reached, could not be so little as a hundred feet. It must be observed, however, that I had no instruments with me for measuring elevations, and therefore could only judge by my eye; Jacob and myself watching at the same time, and each giving his estimate. The difference between us was but trifling, and I always took the lowest calculation. My method was, to compare the height of the water with the diameter of the basin, which I knew to be fifty-one feet, and this jet was full twice that height. The width of the stream is not equally easily determined by the eye, on account of the stream and spray that envelopes it: in most instances, not more, probably, than eighteen or twenty feet of the surface of the water is cast into the air; but it occasionally happens, as was the case now, that the whole mass, nearly to the edge of the basin, is at once heaved up: all however is not spouted to an equal height; for the central part rises the highest, but having gained some elevation, the spray divides, and darts out little jets on every side, that fall some way over the margin of the basin. After this last discharge, the water subsided about fifteen feet in the pipe, and so remained some time; but in about two hours the funnel was filled to within two feet of the edge. As often as I tried the heat of the water in the pipe, I always found it to be 212°; but when the basin was filled, on immersing the thermometer as far from the margin as I could reach with my arm, I found the heat never more than 180°; although in the centre it was boiling at the same time. It seems probable that the height to which the Geyser throws its waters may have increased in the course of a few years; as when Sir Joseph Banks visited Iceland in 1772, the greatest elevation to which the water rose was ascertained to be sixty feet; while in the year 1789, its height was taken by a quadrant, by Sir John Stanley, and found to be between ninety and one hundred feet, and this day if I am not mistaken, it was still greater. Povelsen and Olafsen were probably deceived when they imagined they saw the loftiest jets reach to the height of sixty toises, or three hundred and sixty feet. Previous to the last eruption, Jacob and myself amused ourselves with throwing into the pipe a number of large pieces of rock and tufts of grass, with masses of earth about the roots; and we had the satisfaction to find them all cast out at the eruption, and many of them fell ten and fifteen feet beyond the margin. Some rose considerably higher than the jets which forced them up; others fell down into the basin, and were cast out again with the next discharge. The stones were mostly as entire as when they were put in, but the tufts of grass and earth were shivered into numerous small black particles, and were thrown up by the

first jet in quick succession, producing a very pretty effect among the white spray. This whole day had been fine, with but little

rain.

At one o'clock this morning there was an eruption of the Geyser, which was repeated at half past three, and again at a quarter before eight, and at half past nine; after which the fountain continued to spout water about every two hours. All the eruptions were attended by the same circumstances as those of yesterday, and were preceded by similar tremblings of the ground and subterraneous noises; but none of them threw the water to any great elevation; the highest not appearing to exceed fifty feet. Close to the edge of many of the hot springs, and within a few inches of the boiling water, in places that are, consequently, always exposed to a considerable degree of heat, arising both from the water itself and the steam, I found Conferva limosa Dillw., in abundance, forming large dark green patches, which easily separated and peeled off from the coarse white kind of bolus that they were attached to. In a similar situation, also, I met with a new species of Conferva, (or rather Oscillatoria of Voucher,) of a brick-red colour, covering several inches of ground together, and composed of extremely minute unbranched filaments, in which, with the highest powers of my microscope, I was not able to discover any dissepiments. The margin of one of the hot springs, upon a white bolus, which was in a state of puddle from its mixture with the heated water, afforded me the finest specimens of Jungermannia angulosa* I ever saw, growing thickly matted in such great tufts, that I could with ease take off pieces of five or six inches in diameter. The under side of these patches had very much the appearance of purple velvet, owing to the numerous fibrous radicles of that colour which proceeded from the base of the stems, and suffered themselves to be detached, without difficulty, from the soil they had grown upon. In water, also, of a very great degree of heat, were, both abundant and luxurious, Conferva flavescens of Roth, and a new species allied to G.rivularis. After a day, almost the whole of which

Mr. Barrow, in his voyage to Cochinchina, gives us a very interesting account of the hot spring in the island of Amsterdam, which lies in latitude 33° 42′ south, and longitude 76° 51′ east. "Some of them," he says, “are running freely, others ooze out in a paste or mud. In some of the springs Fahrenheit's thermometer ascended from 62o in the open air to 196o; in some to 204°; and in others to 212o or the boiling point. In several places we observed patches of soft verdure, composed of a fine delicate moss, blended with a species of Lycopodium and another of Marchantia. These green patches were found to be floating on a hot paste, whose temperature, at eight or ten inches below the surface, upon which the roots of the plant spread, was 186°. This was the more remarkable, as the same species of Lycopodium, or club-moss, grows with great luxuriance, even in the winter season, on the black heaths of North BriLain."

had been showery, with the wind in the south-west, a fine but cold morning, attended with a northerly wind, afforded me a most interesting spectacle, the idea of which is too strongly impressed on my mind, ever to be obliterated but with memory itself. My tent had been pitched at the distance of three or four hundred yards from the Geyser, near a pipe or crater of considerable dimensions, in which I had hitherto observed nothing extraordinary. The water had been almost constantly boiling in it, and flowing gently over the mouth, thus forming a regular channel, which I believe had never ceased running during the whole time of my stay. My guide, however, had informed me that sometimes the eruptions of this spring were very violent, and even more remarkable than those of the Geyser; and it was on this account that he had placed the tents so close to it. At half past nine, whilst I was employed in examining some plants. gathered the day before, I was surprised by a tremendously loud and rushing noise, like that arising from the fall of a great cascade, immediately at my feet. On putting aside the canvas of my tent, to observe what could have occasioned it, I saw within a hundred yards of me a column of water rising perpendicularly into the air, from the place just mentioned, to a vast height; but what this height might be, I was so overpowered by my feelings, that I did not for some time think of endeavouring to ascertain. In my first impulse I hastened only to look for my port-folio, that I might attempt at least to represent upon paper what no words could possibly give an adequate idea of; but in this I found myself nearly as much at a loss as if I had taken my pen for the purpose of describing it; and I was obliged to satisfy myself with very litttle more than the out line and proportional dimensions of this most magnificent fountain. There was however sufficient time allowed me to make observations; for, during the space of an hour and half, an uninterrupted column of water was continually spouted out to the elevation of one hundred and fifty feet, with but little variation, and in a body of seventeen feet in its widest diameter; and this was thrown up with such force and rapidity, that the column continued to nearly the very summit as compact in body, and as regular in width and shape, as when it first issued from the pipe; a few feet only of the upper part breaking into spray, which was forced by a light wind on one side, so as to fall upon the ground at the distance of some paces from the aperture. The breeze also, at times, carried the immense volumes of steam that accompanied the eruption to one side of the column of water, which was thus left open to full view, and we could clearly see its base partly surrounded by foam, caused by the column's striking against a projecting piece of rock, near the mouth of the crater; but thence to the upper part, noth