250 BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 
Extensive coral reefs are reported at and north of the Port of Camamu. 
Spix and Martius report from the “inland water of Camamá Madre- 
рога uva [Dichocenia wa E. & H.] which we noted near M. astroides 
and acropora.”* The next place south of there at which corals are 
known is at the Lagóa de Itahype, south latitude 14° 40. This place 
was visited by Spix and Von Martius in 1818, and is described by them.? 
The location is so remarkable —the bottom of a fresh-water lake, seven 
kilometres from the sea—that I give at length what they say of it. 
This lake was formerly known as Lagóa de Almada, and it is under this 
name that Spix and Martius speak of it. It is now more commonly 
known as Глоба de Itahype. 
“On the shore it [granite] is exposed here and there in great naked 
banks through which trough-shaped depressions and zigzag channels seem to 
show a connection of the ocean with the lake in early times. There is still 
stronger proof of this connection in the form of the shore which toward 
Itahype and the sea on the southeast is flat and sandy, and especially in the 
presence of extensive coral reefs. These reefs may be seen at several places 
in the lake at a depth of from six to twelve feet, and the rock is quarried for 
lime and for building stone. Itis broken up with wedges and crowbars and. 
the pieces raised by divers. . . . The business is not very profitable because 
the coral banks in the great bay of Camamu are more easily worked. Those 
seen in this lake are exclusively madreporic. . . . Madrepora [Heliastraea] 
cavernosa, heaagona, astroites, Lam. n. s. There are also in the neighborhood 
banks of sea-mussels cemented in quartz sand but being impure and difficult 
to break they are not quarried. The water of the lake . . . is now fresh 
probably through the agency of Rio Itahype, which has gradually washed it 
out, or freshened the water cut off from the sea.” 
The reefs shown on the charts at Ilheos are crystalline rocks, — not 
corals. South of Ilheos the first coral reefs are those off Ponta Guaiü 
and are known as the Araripe reefs. They form part of a large group 
that extends across Ponta de Santo Antonio northwards for some nine 
no set dates for sailing. One depending upon these steamers is liable to have to 
wait at Dahia from one to three weeks or even a month, expecting the announce- 
ment of a date any day, and consequently unable to leave that city in order to 
utilize the time elsewhere. After nine days waiting at Bahia, I took a steamer for 
Ponta d'Areia and reached that place in eight days from Bahia. At the last-named 
place I was compelled to wait twenty-five days for a steamer to Rio de Janeiro. 
The trip that ought to have taken at the most seven or eight days consumed just 
thirty-eight days. 
1 J. B. von Spix u. С.Е. P. von Martius. Reisein Brasilien. IL,p.710. München, 
1828. 
2 Reise in Brasilien. IL, р. 684-685. München, 1828. 
