Du Lise Island Flora. 237 



On the 3rd of May we anchored off Du Lise Island, the most 

 northern of the three islets which compose the Glorioso Group. 

 These islets lie about two hundred and seventy miles to the 

 south-west of Providence Island, and one hundred and twenty 

 miles in a west-by-north direction from the northern extremity 

 of Madagascar. 



Du Lise Island is of a very irregular shape, both as to its 

 surface and outline, and measures about a quarter of a mile 

 across in various directions. It seems to be formed entirely of 

 coral sandstone, conglomerate, and breccia, and presents to the 

 sea on its north-west side low jagged cliffs of consolidated coral 

 breccia, and on the opposite side a sloping beach composed of 

 hard coral sandstone arranged in gently inclined slabs ; while its 

 surface is in one place raised into a large mound about thirty feet 

 in 'height, covered with trees and rank grass, and probably com- 

 posed of blown coral sand. Among the tufts of grass on the 

 sloping sides of this mound were great numbers of Spirula-s\\e\\s 

 in a tolerably perfect condition. Many of them lay in sheltered 

 places where they could hardly have been deposited by the agency 

 of the wind alone, and yet if they had been dropped by birds after 

 the latter had devoured the soft body of the mollusc, one would 

 expect to have found the fragile shells in a more or less mutilated 

 state, which was not the case. The circumstance is, therefore, 

 a rather puzzling one to account for satisfactorily. 



The flora was more abundant in species than at any of the 

 coral islands to the northward. There were, moreover, no signs 

 of the island having been inhabited ; and consequently we saw 

 no palms, for the cocoa-nut does not seem to be indigenous at 

 any of the islands recently visited. The prevailing tree was a 

 good-sized banyan, of which many examples appeared to be very 

 old. There were also several Hibiscus trees. As to bushes, there 

 were a few isolated examples of the " Veloutier blanc," while the 

 low central part of the island, into which the seawater penetrated 

 so as to form a filthy salt-marsh, was covered with a dense im- 



