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provisional one, and we shall have to return several times, 
when not only will the species of the flora and fauna have to 
be collected as completely as possible, but also a picture must 
be formed of the phenomena that concurred in re-establishing 
life in these islands. 
To night I can only outline an account of what was found 
by myself and -others before me. I propose to begin with the 
botanical side of the exploration, which is the best-known part, 
and to conclude by devoting a few words to the zoological part. 
It is not a very unusual phenomenon that somewhere in the 
ocear a new island arises. This is mostly formed by the action 
of anthozoa or coralpolyps, and it is a matter of course that 
the question of how these newly-formed islands acquire their 
garb of vegetation has been faced by several investigators. 
Several naturalists have given attention to this and among them 
are renowned men like Darwin, Guppy, Hemstzy and Beccari. 
During his voyage on the ,Beagle”, Cuartes Darwin got oppor- 
tunities of becoming acquainted with isolated islands, and also 
the botanists who made the voyage on the ,Challenger” collected 
numerous interesting data. The coral-islands, however, are gene- 
rally small, flat, level islands, which with the thin layer of sand 
cast on them by the sea, do not possess enough of fertile soil 
for forest-plants. The plants that manage to live on them at 
the start, are accordingly, as a rule, those hard starvelings, accu- 
stomed to be content with a very modest spot on the earth, 
which can make a shift to subsist on what little there is of 
food, and capable of defying the unfavourable conditions of soil 
and climate fatal to less hardy plants. To express it more briefly, 
the plants living there are such as have been adapted to life 
in suchlike places: these are generally the littoral and the man- 
grove-plants. But the latter at least require mostly for their — 
growth an oozy, muddy soil, whereas the genuine beach-plants 
will put up even with comparatively bare coral-rocks. Now the 
investigation of newly-risen coral-islands has established the fact 
that these are soon occupied by the usual beach-plants, which _ oF 
mostly possess seeds or fruits that can float for a long time in 
- 
- sea-water without losing their g 
