observed while staying in Cuba. 45 i 



for the most part, are beneath the surface of extreme low 

 water (for the rays of a vertical sun would be destructive to 

 their existence if laid dry), it would appear that this inner 

 reef was produced under different circumstances of relative 

 elevation of sea and land ; indicating a slight depression in 

 the one case, or an elevation in the other. In the groups of 

 zoophytes which form the aggregate both* of the ancient and 

 of the present, or outer, reef, although there are many spe- 

 cies which are common to both, a separate or distinguishing 

 character is apparent. That the circumstances which favoured 

 the growth of some species of zoophytes in the one case were 

 absent in the other, seems probable, as it is obvious that many 

 varieties existed formerly in great abundance in the old reef 

 which are not to be traced in the outer one. On comparing 

 the shells incorporated in the rock of the old reef, many were 

 observed to be of different species to those living in the Baxo, 

 or washed upon the beach ; and I looked in vain for some 

 which now exist in great profusion among the rocks, and cling 

 in vast numbers to the base of the old reef, where reached by 

 the tide. Extensive fissures, or cracks, in the surface of the 

 old coral rock are visible at low water. These cracks may 

 be traced running many hundreds of feet, commonly in an 

 east and west direction, parallel with the coast, and occasion- 

 ally traversing it at right angles. Some of them, being a few 

 inches wide, are filled with indurated coral sand and mud, 

 after the manner of a vein, which is occasionally ferruginous, 

 of a dark rusty brown colour, honeycombed, and equal in 

 density to the environing rock. Such extensive perpendicular 

 and longitudinal fissures in this old coral rock would denote 

 that other causes have been exerted than the mere erosion by 

 the ocean waves ; and, although we may look to a much less 

 remote date for these operations, we are led to ascribe them 

 to some such causes as have produced those changes in posi- 

 tion, and those alterations of structure and composition, which 

 we witness in the rocks of the interior. In this ancient rock 

 of the beach, now as compact as the hardest freestone, we 

 may notice numerous branching corals, of which I could 

 observe none resembling them on the living reef. These 

 zoophytes, as they are seen on the surface of the wave-worn 

 rocks, reminded me of those ramose forms which, years ago, I 

 had observed abundantly in the red chalk of Hunstanton 

 Cliff, in Norfolk, England. 



To return to our fishing excursions to the reefs and shoals 

 of El Baxo. The time selected for striking lobsters, and the 

 various fishes of these waters, with harpoons and barbed forks, 

 called grains, is by torch-light, at low water, on dark nights. 



l l 2 



