258 YIEWS, &C. PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS. 



the head. The Remora, says Columbus, would rather let 

 itself be torn to pieces than relinquish its prey, and the little 

 fish and the turtle are thus drawn out of the water together. 

 "Nostrates," says Martin Anghiera, the learned secretary of 

 Charles V, "piscem Reversum appellant, quod versus venatur. 

 Non aliter ac nos canibus gallicis per sequora campi lepores 

 insectamur, illi (incolae Cubaa insula?) venatorio pisce pisces 

 alios capiebant."* We learn from Dampier and Commerson, 

 that this artifice of employing a sucking-fish to catch other 

 fishes is very common on the eastern coasts of Africa, near 

 Cape Natal and Mozambique, as well as on the island of 

 Madagascar.f An acquaintance with the habits of animals, 

 and the same necessities, lead to similar artifices and modes of 

 capture amongst tribes having no connection with one another. 



Although, as we have already remarked, the actual seat of 

 the Lithophytes who build calcareous walls, lies within a zone 

 extending from 22 to 24 degrees on either side of the equator, yet 

 coral-reefs, favoured, it is supposed, by the warm Gulf Stream, 

 are met with around the Bermudas in 32 23' lat., and these 

 have been admirably described by Lieutenant Nelson. : In the 

 southern hemisphere corals (Millepores and Cellepores) are 

 found singly as far as Chiloe and even to the Chonos- Archi- 

 pelago and Tierra del Fuego, in 53 lat., while Retepores 

 have even been found as far as 72^ lat. 



Since Captain Cook's second voyage, the hypothesis 

 advanced by him as well as by Reinhold and George Forster, 

 that the flat coral islands of the South Pacific have been built 

 up by living agents from the depths of the sea's bottom, has 

 found numerous advocates. The distinguished naturalists 

 Quoy and Gaimard, who accompanied Captain Freycinet on 

 his voyage of circumnavigation in the frigate "Uranie," were 

 the first who expressed themselves, in 1823, with much free- 

 dom against the views advanced by the two Forsters (father 

 and son), by Flinders, and Peron. " In directing the 



* Petr. Martyr, Oceania, 1532, Dec. 1, p. 9; Gomara, Hist, de las 

 Indias, 1553, fol. xiv. 



f Lacep&de, Hist. nat. des Poissons, t. i. p. 55. 



Transactions of the Geological Soc., 2nd Ser. vol. v. P. 1, 1837, 

 p. 103. 



Annales des Sciences naturelles, t. vi., 1825, p. 273. 



