in the Pacific, 6^c. " 7 



than the fact that the small number of species of plants found 

 on these islands previous to the visits of man, are all those 

 whose seeds would bear this mode of transportation, without 

 injury to the germinating principle, and belong to an almost 

 equal number of orders, and sometimes of classes, whose 

 primeval soils were widely remote from each other. 



But there is nothing whatever in the appearance of the 

 reefs, confirmatory of the supposition that the windward por- 

 tion was constructed anteriorly to the opposite one. They 

 have both precisely the same level, present similar inequalities 

 of surface, and an equally perpendicular wall facing the sea. 

 'The only material difference is, that the elevated fragmentary 

 beach is in general, as might be expected, first formed and 

 highest on the windward side. 



But even this is not invariably the case. At Minerva or 

 Clermont Tonnerre Island, which is situated on the southeast- 

 ern skirts of the Dangerous Archipelago, in about 18^ 26' 

 South lat. and 136° 30' West long., and whose greatest extent 

 is from E. S. E. to W. N. W., or nearly in the direction of the 

 S. E. trade wind ; the northern shore is the more elevated one. 

 The southern or windward side of the lagoon is here bounded 

 by a low, naked line of reef rock, and several small, detached 

 islets. At Ocean Island, in lat. 28° 22' North, long. 178° 30' 

 West, near the limits of the N. E. trade wind in the Pacific, 

 the highest points, and the only ones in fact above water, are 

 a ridge some three miles long and no where above ten feet 

 high, at the S. E. extremity of the reef: and two knolls 

 about a mile and a quarter in circuit, on the South skirt of 

 the laa:oon. The reef extends from the S. E. ridse, about 

 eieht and a half miles to the N. W. in form of an oval, whose 

 shorter diameter is six miles from N. E. to S. W. 



On no part of this extensive reef, is there any thing to show 

 that one portion of it is of higher antiquity than the rest, and 

 it is on all sides washed by an unfathomable ocean. It can- 

 not surprise us that while so little was known of the habits 



there for supplies. Tlie turtles, however, appear to liave been rlriven away by 

 ihe intruders, as he caught but about twenty, of small size, during his long 

 slay ; whereas Capt. Cook procured thnc hundred during his brief visit. 



