^{page 138 note *} Skalholt consists of the Cathedral, a large building of wood, and of a very few houses belonging to the Bishop and his dependants. The Bishops of the southern division of Iceland have always resided there; but in future their residence will be at Rykiavick, a town now building on the south-west coast of the island. The present Bishop, however, the worthy and learned Mr Finsen, has obtained the permission of continuing his residence at Skalholt during the remainder of his life.

^{page 139 note *} Three or four only of the principal springs in Iceland are distinguished by the name of Geyzer, and of all the springs near Haukadal the greatest is alone called Geyzer or Great Geyzer.

^{page 140 note *} As the division of labour is yet very imperfeft in Iceland, the farmer is under the necessity, either of exercising himself the several trades required in the formation of the instruments of agriculture, or of maintaining such servants as are capable to supply them.

^{page 141 note *} Called in English the Mountain Avens. We found this plant growing very luxuriantly, and in great abundance, in every part of Iceland that we visited.

^{page 142 note *} Amongst others, he found the salix herbacea (test willow), the cerastium tomentosum (woolly mouse ear chickweed), the rumex digynus (round leaved mountain forrel), and the koenigia, (a plant peculiar to Iceland), growing in great abundance, though generally in low and marshy grounds.

^{page 143 note *} The crow berry. This is almost the only fruit we met with in Iceland. Mr Wright found a few strawberries. Neither gooseberries nor currants will come to perfection by any management whatever.

^{page 146 note *} The substance of these incrustations has been analysed by Professor Bergman, and he gives a long and particular account of it, in a letter to the Archbishop of Upsal, published with the Archbishop's Letters on Iceland. He says, “The strongest acids, the “floor acid not excepted, are not sufficient with a boiling heat to dissolve this substance. “It dissolves very little (if at all) by the blow-pipe with the fusible salt of urine, a little “more with borax, and makes a strong effervescence with sal sodæ. These effects are “peculiar only to a siliceous earth or flint. There cannot remain therefore a doubt “concerning the nature of this crustated stone,”

^{page 150 note *} Before the month of June 1789, the year I visited Iceland, this spring had not played with any great degree of violence, at least for a considerable time. (Indeed the formation of the pipe will not allow us to suppose, that its eruptions had at no former period been violent.) But in the month of June, this quarter of Iceland had suffered some very severe shocks of an earthquake ; and it is not unlikely, that many of the cavities communicating with the bottom ot the pipe, had been then enlarged, and new sources of water opened into them. The difference between the eruptions of this fountain, and those of the great Geyzer, may be accounted for from the circumstance of their being no bason over the pipe of the first, in which any water can be contained to interrupt the column as it rises. I should here slate, that we could not discover any correspondence between the eruptions of the different springs.

^{page 151 note *} Mr Baine measured the height to which a stone was thrown up by one of these jets, and sound it 129 feet. Some others rose considerably higher.