1605 exclaim, 'C'est une merveille de voir chacun de ces atollons, environné d'un grand banc de pierre tout autour, n'y ayant point d'artifice humain." "1 Of the enchanting beauty of the coral beds themselves we are assured that language conveys no adequate idea. "There were corals," says Prof. Ball, "which, in their living state, are of many shades of fawn, buff, pink, and blue, while some were tipped with a magenta-like bloom. Sponges which looked as hard as stone spread over wide areas, while sprays of coralline added their graceful forms to the picture. Through the vistas so formed, golden-banded and metallic-blue fish meandered, while on the patches of sand here and there Holothurias and various mollusca and crustaceans might be seen slowly crawling." Abercromby also gives a very graphic description of a Coral reef. As we approached," he says, “the "the roaring surf on the outside, fingery lumps of beautiful live coral began to appear of the palest lavenderblue color; and when at last we were almost 1 Darwin, Coral Reefs. the whole floor was one mass within the spray, "But it is only when venturing as far as is prudent into the water, over the outward edge of the great sea wall, that the true character of the reef and all the beauties of the ocean can be really seen. After walking over a flat uninteresting tract of nearly bare rock, you look down and see a steep irregular wall, expanding deeper into the ocean than the eye can follow, and broken into lovely grottoes and holes and canals, through which small resplendent fish of the brightest blue or gold flit fitfully between the lumps of coral. The sides of these natural grottoes are entirely covered with endless forms of tender-colored coral, but all beautiful, and all more or less of the fingery or branching species, known as madrepores. It is really impossible to draw or describe the sight, which must be taken with all its surroundings as adjuncts. The vegetation of these fairy lands is also very lovely; the Coral tree (Erythrina) with light green leaves and bunches of scarlet 1 Abercromby, Seas and Skies in many Latitudes. blossoms, the Cocoa-nut always beautiful, the breadfruit, the graceful tree ferns, the Barringtonia, with large pink and white flowers, several species of Convolvulus, and many others unknown to us even by name. THE SOUTHERN SKIES In considering these exquisite scenes, the beauty of the Southern skies must not be omitted. "From the time we entered the torrid zone,” says Humboldt, “we were never wearied with admiring, every night, the beauty of the southern sky, which, as we advanced towards the south, opened new constellations to our view. We feel an indescribable sensation, when, on approaching the equator, and particularly on passing from one hemisphere to the other, we see those stars which we have contemplated from our infancy, progressively sink, and finally disappear. Nothing awakens in the traveller a livelier remembrance of the immense distance by which he is separated from his country, than the aspect of an unknown firmament. The grouping of the stars of the first magnitude, some scattered nebulæ rivalling in splendour the milky way, and tracts of space remarkable for their extreme blackness, give a particular physiognomy to the southern sky. This sight fills with admiration even those, who, uninstructed in the branches of accurate science, feel the same emotions of delight in the contemplation of the heavenly vault, as in the view of a beautiful landscape, or a majestic river. A traveller has no need of being a botanist to recognise the torrid zone on the mere aspect of its vegetation; and, without having acquired any notion of astronomy, he feels he is not in Europe, when he sees the immense constellation of the Ship, or the phosphorescent clouds of Magellan, arise on the horizon. The heaven and the earth, in the equinoctial regions, assume an exotic character." "The sunsets in the Eastern Archipelago," says H. O. Forbes,1 were scenes to be 66 1 A Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago. remembered for a life-time. The tall cones of Sibissie and Krakatoa rose dark purple out of an unruffled golden sea, which stretched away to the south-west, where the sun went down; over the horizon gray fleecy clouds lay in banks and streaks, above them pale blue lanes of sky, alternating with orange bands, which higher up gave place to an expanse of red stretching round the whole heavens. Gradually as the sun retreated deeper and deeper, the sky became a marvellous golden curtain, in front of which the gray clouds coiled themselves into weird forms before dissolving into space. THE POLES The Arctic and Antarctic regions have always exercised a peculiar fascination over the human mind. Until now every attempt to reach the North Pole has failed, and the South has proved even more inaccessible. In the north, Parry all but reached lat. 83; in the south no one has penetrated beyond |