Turning to the animal kingdom, he affirmed the tabulate corals of the Silurian rocks to be wonderfully like those which now exist; while even the families of the Aporosa were all represented in the older Mesozoic rocks.

Not far away, in a corner, on the top of the walnut whatnot, is a curious vase filled with pampas plumes; there are sea-shells and a piece of coral on the shelf below.

You will see the lime-mud hardened into rock beds; you will see the shells embedded in it; you will see the corals in every stage of destruction; you will see whole layers made up of innumerable fragments of Crinoidsno wonder they are innumerable, for, it has been calculated, there are in a single animal of some of the species 140,000 joints140,000 bits of lime to fall apart when its soft parts decay.

The deep has suddenly become shallow; the blue white, from the gleam of the white coral at the bottom.

Professor Duncan finds "several corals from the coast of Portugal more nearly allied to chalk forms than to any others.

For her face was fair beyond words; red upon white, like rose-leaves upon cream; and her eyes were bright and glancing like those of a falcon, and her nose was thin and straight, and her lips were very red, like to coral for redness, and her hair was dark and abundant and like to silk for softness.

Perhaps Rey had intended to run over the coral with his lighter craft, or perhaps he knew a lesser passage; and thus elude Jaffier's gunboat, or strand the latter upon the reefs....

For there are Crabs whose shelly coats are covered with coloured knobs and spikes, so that the sharpest eye cannot pick them out from the Corals on which they rest.

On a patch of Coral near Pig Island, by Robinson's Needle, A1: 32 35 2 S. On a patch of Coral near Pig Island, by Fox's Needle, with index error applied: 32 33 0 S. Mean: 32 34 1 S. DUCHATEAU ISLANDS, LOUISIADE ARCHIPELAGO.

The entrance into Papeiti, the port of Tahiti, is exceedingly dangerous; it is surrounded by reefs of coral as by a fortress, while wild and foaming breakers, rolling on every side, leave but a small place open through which a vessel can steer.

This is accounted for by the sensitiveness of the Corals to any unfavorable circumstances impeding their growth, as well as by the different rates of increase of the different kinds.

The same rock also occurs, among Captain King's specimens, from Bald-head in King George's Sound; but nearly on the summit of that hill, which is about five hundred feet high, were Found the ramified calcareous concretions, erroneously considered as corals by Vancouver and others;** but which appear, from Captain King's specimens, to be nothing more than a variety of the recent limestone so abundant throughout these shores.

Were we to classify the Florida Corals from the Reefs of the interior, the result would correspond exactly to a classification founded upon the living Corals of the outer Reef to-day.

[Illustration: CORALS OF MANY KINDS.]

Those who have stood under a Lombardy poplar in early spring, and looked up at its buds and twigs, showing like pink coral against the blue sky, and have felt the beauty of the sight, can imagine faintlybut only faintlythe beauty of these Madres de Cacao (Cacao-mothers), as they call them here, because their shade is supposed to shelter the Cacao-trees, while the dew collected by their leaves keeps the ground below always damp.