Poplars, mulberries, and willows are the principal trees:  the poplar is very much akin to the Sofaida of the Sutledge, it is a handsome tree, with a fine roundish crown.  The fruit trees generally appear small in gardens; lettuces and onions are commonly cultivated, especially the latter, fields of Lucerne are very abundant, and I believe clover also; a pony load of the former now costs five annas, but it is sufficient for a day’s consumption of two or three horses.  The pomegranate attains the ordinary size.  In gardens two or three Ranunculaceae, Jasminum, pinks, sweet-williams, marigolds, stocks, and wall-flowers, are common, with a broad-leaved species of flag, the flowers of which I have not seen.

The crops vary according to the mode in which they have been watered; if this has been properly done, they are rich.  Some of the fields are tolerably clean, others filled with weeds, among which a Dipsacea, and one or two Centaureae are very common.

The villages are not generally defended:  each house has its own straggling direction, is built of mud, and the roof is generally dome-shaped, and it has its own enclosure within a mud-wall.  The houses are very low, and indicate poverty, and want of ingenuity.  The better order appear always with arched roofs, and none are without picturesque ribs and recesses.

The vineries here are so well enclosed, that there is no way of access except by scaling the mud-wall:  the vines are planted in trenches; a row on each side, and allowed to run over the elevated spaces between the trenches.  In one garden pomegranates, a pomaceous tree, and mulberries, whose fruit is now ripe but quite devoid of flavour, occurred.  A Zygophyllum, a beautiful Capparis, an Anthemis, Marrubium, Centaureoides 2, occurred as weeds, with Plantago, Phalaris, Cichorium.

For an excellent register of the thermometer at this place, I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. Henderson; the range in the open air is from 60 degrees to 110 degrees!!!

The variations in the wet bulb are due to the currents of air, which beginning about 11 A.M., pass into a rather constant strongish west wind about 11.5 or 2 P.M., and even almost become hot.  The climate is excessively dry, as indicated by the effects it has on furniture, etc.

The difference of temperature between a tent, even with two flies or double roof, and the open air in free situations, is by no means great; thus when the thermometer was 105 degrees in part of my tent, it was scarcely 110 degrees in the sun; in Capt.  Thomson’s large tent 102 degrees; placed against the outer kunnat, it rose to 105 degrees.  Hanging free with black cloth round the bulb, 112 degrees.  But to shew the great heating powers of the sun, the thermometer with the bulb, placed on the ground and covered with the loose sand of the surface of the soil, rose to 141 degrees.