Those alone who have tried it, know how delicious it is to be seated in such shade, and drink the cool pleasant fluid of the cocoanut. To see a field of glittering white sand, representing water, with the cocoanut trees extending their tall and waving trunks around the margin, formed a singular and very pretty view. The front pair of legs terminate in very strong and heavy pincers, and the last pair are fitted with others weaker and much narrower. Liesk assures me that he has repeatedly seen this effected. Then turning round its body, by the aid of its posterior and narrow pair of pincers, it extracts the white albuminous substance. The young are likewise hatched, and live for some time, on the coast. In turning down the edges, it actually punched many small holes quite through the tin! The stony branches or plates, when taken fresh from the water, have a harsh feel and are not slimy, although possessing a strong and disagreeable smell. Little red spots were produced on the tender skin of the arm, which appeared as if they would have formed watery pustules, but did not. This is a wonder which does not at first strike the eye of the body, but, after reflection, the eye of reason. The immensity of the ocean, the fury of the breakers, contrasted with the lowness of the land and the smoothness of the bright green water within the lagoon, can hardly be imagined without having been seen. But we shall immediately see, that in this, as well as in the cratertheory, a most important consideration has been overlooked, namely, on what have the reefbuilding corals, which cannot live at a great depth, based their massive structures? From these observations, confirmed by many others, it may be safely inferred that the utmost depth at which corals can construct reefs is between 20 and 30 fathoms. From the fact of the reefbuilding corals not living at great depths, it is absolutely certain that throughout these vast areas, wherever there is now an atoll, a foundation must have originally existed within a depth of from 20 to 30 fathoms from the surface. For as mountain after mountain, and island after island, slowly sank beneath the water, fresh bases would be successively afforded for the growth of the corals. And the quiet waters of this channel generally bathe a fringe of low alluvial soil, loaded with the most beautiful productions of the tropics, and lying at the foot of the wild, abrupt, central mountains. What can be more singular than these structures? As far as the actual reef of coral is concerned, there is not the smallest difference, in general size, outline, grouping, and even in quite trifling details of structure, between a barrier and an atoll. But what has caused these reefs to spring up at such great distances from the shores of the included islands?