blackbird, Tur dus menda, poised Inmself on the top
of a fir-tree and sang to us about home; a chaffinch,
FringUla Unidlon, very nearly genuine, hopped on the
path and acted otherwise much like an English chaffinch
; a bullfinch, Pyrrhula murina, so like the real
thing as to have given rise to some discussion, piped
in the thicket ; and the canary, Serimis canarius, here
no albino prisoner, but a yellow-green sparroAV of unlimited
rapacity in the way of garden-seeds, settled
on the trees and twittered in large flocks. I walked
dovim to the baths by a short cut across the hills with
Air. Brown in the afternoon, and got a great deal of
pleasant information from him. It seems that he
Avas very much identified with the late rapid progress
of gardening and forestry. Between tAventy and
thirty years ago he went from England, a young gardener,
to lay out the splendid grounds of AI. José do
Canto at Ponta Delgada; he assisted in various
schemes of horticulture in the interest of AI. Ernest
do Canto, AI. Antonio Borges, and other wealthy proprietors,
and among other things designed the pretty
little public garden at Eurnas, which we passed through
on our AA’ay to the springs. The house which Air.
BroAvn noAV occupies, with ahont four hundred acres
of land, belongs, singularly enough, to a London
physician, and Air. Brown acts as his factor. It is
most comfortable and pleasant—^just one of those
places to suggest the illusory idea of going back
sometime and enjoying a month or tAA’o of rest.
The principal boiling springs are about half a mile
from the village. Round them, over an area of
perhaps a quarter of a mile square there are scorched-
looking heaj)s like those Avhich one sees about an
iron-AVork, only Avhitish usually, and often yelloAV from
an incrustation of sulphur. Over the ground among
one’s feet little pools of water collect everywhere, and
these are all boiling briskly. This boiling is due,
howoA^er, chiefly to the escape of carbonic acid, and
of vapour formed below, for the temperature even of
the h o ttest springs does not seem to rise to above
90° C. The largest of the springs is a well about
twelve feet in diameter, inclosed within a circular
Avail. The Avater hisses up in a wide column nearly
at the boiling point, bubbling in the centre to a height
of a couple of feet, and sending up columns of steam
Avith a slight sulphurous smell. A little fu rth er on
there is a smaller spring in even more violent ebullition,
tossing np a column five or six feet h ig h ; and
beyond this a vent opening into a kind of cavern, not
inaptly called ‘ Bocco do Inferno, which sends out
water, loaded with grey mud, Avith a loud rumbling
noise. The mnd comes splashing out for a time
almost uniformly, and with little commotion, and
then, as if it had been gathering force, a jet is driven
out with a kind of explosion to a distance of soAæral
yards. This spring, like all the others, is surrounded
hy mounds of silicions sinter, and of lime and alumina
and sulphur efflorescence. The mud is deposited
from th e water on the surface of the rock around in
a smooth paste, AAdiich has a high character all round
as a cure for all skin complaints. AA^hen I looked at
it first I could not account for the grooves running
in stripes all over the face of the rocks ; b u t I afterwards
found th a t they were the marks of fingers
collecting th e mud, and I was told th a t such marks
were more numerous on Sunday, AAdien the country