56 



Though I came across none myself, I was shown a 

 bottle containing a collection of scorpions, which had been 

 caught at Pamban ; and the big spider {Mygale), which is 

 accused of causing the death of sheep and goats by poisoning 

 them on the muzzle, has been captured by Mr. Henderson 

 in the zemindar's bungalow. 



Commencing near the zemindar's bungalow and extend- 

 ing for some distance along the north coast of the island, 

 is a fossil coral reef, which I cannot do better than describe 

 in Mr. Bruce Foote's words * : 



"The upraised reef," he says, "is a striking feature of 

 the north coast of Ramesvaram Island, and is worthy of much 

 closer study than the time at my disposal enabled me to bestow 

 upon it. It shows best along the beach beginning a couple 

 of hundred yards west of the zemindar's bungalow, where it 

 forms a little irregular scarp about a yard or 4 feet high, 

 against the roof of which the waves break in rough weather. 

 Of its true coral reef origin there can be no doubt, as in many 

 places the main mass of the rock consists of great globular 

 meandroid corals, or of huge cups of a species of porites 

 which, beyond being bleached by weather action, are very 

 slightly altered, and still remain in the position in which they 

 originally grew. The base of the reef is not exposed, as far as 

 I could ascertain, not having been sufficiently upraised along 

 the beach ; but in a well-section a little to the south of the 

 Gandhamana Parvattam Chatti*am the thickness of the coral 

 reef exposed above the surface of the water is at least 10 feet, 

 and probably much more. The great swampy flat forming the 

 northern lobe, as it were, of Ramesvaram Island, consists, I 

 believe, entirely of this upraised reef hidden only by a thin 

 coating of alluvium, or the water of the brackish lagoons which 

 cover the major part of the surface, but do not form a con- 

 tinuous sheet of water as shown in the map. 



"I came across masses of coral protruding at intervals through 

 the alluvium in the very centre of the flats north-westward of 

 the great sand-hill crowned by the chattram just named. The 

 raised reef is very well seen to the north-eastward of Eames- 

 varam town, where it forms a miniature cliff from 3 to 4 or 

 possibly 5 feet high, and continuing along the coast after the 

 latter turns and trends to north-west. Time did not admit of 

 my actually following it up to Pesausee Moondel Point, but 

 I went to within a mile of the point, and could see no change of 

 character of the coast line on examination through a strong 



1 Mem. Ocol. Sun'., Ind., vol. XX, 1883. 



