1 130 PUNJAB.
2 Sood, Oxus, and the wheat harvest is gathered by the end of April.6 Such, _
3 es during winter, is the general temperature of the Punjab south of
4 the Salt range. North of that, and even outside the limits of
5 the mountains, the cold is greater, an effect attributable to
6 a slight increase of elevation rather than to change of latitude.
7 The British, in marching through that tract in December, 1839,
8 found the cold severe, the thermometer during the night
9 7 Hough, App.70. sinking to 2° below the freezing point.” The heat in sum-
10 ® Burnes’ Bokh, mer is excessive; in the plains at Mooltan® it is so great
11 ll, 1175 Masson, as to be proverbial. At Lahore it was found, in the beginning
12 Bal. Afg. Panj. 1. . _
13 896; Vigne, of June, to raise the thermometer to 112°, in a tent artificially
14 : Ciee Ged cooled. A traveller who experienced the heat of this season
15 Ret sue describes it as ‘‘ perfectly intolerable; we are unable,” he adds,
16 183, 135. “‘to eat, drink, or sleep, and support existence by suction
17 1 Osborne, 135. alone.’””! Bernier,? who had endured the heat of the most sultry
18 ? Voyages, li.257. part of Arabia, found that of the country between Lahore and
19 Kashmir much more distressing, and each morning entertained
20 a dread of being unable to survive till the evening. He describes
21 his body as having become as it were a dry sponge, and he no
22 sooner took a draught of water than it oozed from all parts of
23 his skin, from which the cuticle had peeled, leaving the surface
24 covered with pustules. Some of his companions died of heat
25 even in the shade.
26 The indigenous vegetation of the plain of the Punjab
27 closely resembles that of the drier tracts of Eastern Hindostan ;
28 2 Burnes, .6; trees are scarce, and there occur extensive tracts,? containing
29 BIph., 20:82, only a few bushes, principally babools of the mimosa species.
30 44, 120, Even the date-palm is, according to Burnes,‘ an exotic, introduced
31 5 Wood, Oxus, 92, by the Mahometan invaders. The wild palm,’ a species which
32 6 id. ib.; Burnes, produces no fruit, is in, many places abundant; as are the peloo®
33 mete (Salvadora Persica), various species of willows, the pepool (ficus
34 religiosa), divers species of acacias and tamarisk, the byr-apple
35 or ju-jube (zizyphus ju-juba), and capparis, called here kureel,
36 juwassi, or camel-thorn; the falee, a tree called sissoo in Eastern
37 Hindostan, and sometimes of twelve feet girth, useful for boat-
38 7 Lord, Med, Me- DUilding ; the neem (melia azadurachta), the mudar (tropcea), the
39 moir on the Plain fog/se (ocymum sanctum), kurmul, or wild rue.” Fuel is scarce,
40 Waddor ete in consequence of the general absence of trees, and cow-dung® is
41 dus, in App. to extensively used for the purpose. The towns and villages of the
42 Burnes’ Pers. 2
43 Narr. $27. Punjab are, however, generally surrounded by groves, but these are
44 ® Burnes, (. 4.