I6;2 On some zoological Fads 



iiient the mode of the nutrition of the vegetable becoTne?? 

 changed ; it soon languishes, and, tkough still alive, Lt 

 seems to have undergone a kind of general petrification. 

 I have brought home a great many fine specimens of this 

 sort, and the difficulty of transporting them alone prevented 

 me from bringing back a more considerable number. 



What is most singular in this operation of nature is, 

 the speed with which this kind of metamorphosis is eficcted. 

 I have reason, indeed, to believe, from my own observations, 

 that a shell, a month after its being cast on the shore, can 

 no longer be distinguished. 'Ilie force of the solar rays, 

 the vivacity of the light reflected by the white sand of the 

 coast, are sufficient in a few days, with the sea water, to 

 deprive it of its colour, and to disorganize it in such a 

 manner, tlwt in the middle of the calcareous stratum which 

 has alreadv seized it, the nm?t experienced eye might mis- 

 take it, ancl range it in the class of the oldest petrified shells. 

 One may judge of these alterations by the different speci- 

 mens — how easily this mistake n)ay be committed, and how- 

 impossible it would be to assign to the most of these shells 

 a character proper to distinguish them from real fossils. 



C. Of Zoophiles observed at great Heights above the pre- 

 sent Level r^ the Scti. 

 I have now concluded what relates to petrified shells, or 

 those merely incrusted : it is seen, that from the most 

 southern extremity of the eastern hemisphere to the middle 

 of the equatorial regions they are found in greater or less 

 numbers, and at greater or less heights. The case is not the 

 same with solid zoophites : as already said, I could not find 

 large species bevond the 34th degree of south latitude; and 

 it does not appear that any other traveller observed any con- 

 siderable number of these animals beyond the same point, 

 either in the northern or the southern hemisphere. Driven, 

 as we may say, from the one extremity of the world to the 

 other, it is in the bosom of the warmest seas that this in- 

 numera.ble family of animals seem to have fixed their habi- 

 tation and their empire : it is the latter zone in particular 

 which eives birth exclusively to those formidable reefs, 

 those numerous islands, those vast archipelagos, prodigious 

 monuments of their power. All the Society Isles, Maitea, 

 Tongataboo, Eona, Anamooka, Turtle Island in the Pa- 

 cific Ocean, ISew Caledonia, Chain Islands, Tethuroa, 

 Tioukea, Palliser's Isles, Tupai, Moopehea, the Isle of 

 Cocos and that of Pines, Norfolk Island, How's Island, 

 Palmerston Isles, several of the New Hebrides, Mallicolo, 



the 



