26 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



part, little of which is left. At the eastern end of the island, where it 

 is wider, a salt pond exists. 



Passing into Douglas Channel, Booby Island (Plate XXXII.), a long 

 barren line of rocks, is seen to the eastward, presenting very much the 

 same appearance as Rose Island, with low seolian hills, but without a 

 beach to either the sea face or the bank side of the range. The contrast 

 of the appearance of Booby Island, as seen from the bank or from the 

 northern side, is most characteristic. On the sea face it is one series of 

 Eeolian hill slopes, piled one on top of another, while on the bank side 

 the steeper slope of the hills has been cut away from the base nearly to 

 the summit, leaving only a series of rounded tops on the horizontal lint, 

 of the summits of the vertical shore cliffs. Booby Island is bare, with 

 rounded summit, the whole surface of the island honeycombed more or 

 less by the action of the sea. On both sides of the island the waves 

 have made greater or less inroads, and have cut away the lower parts 

 of the island, especially on the southeastern face, leaving round them a 

 shallow bank formed of disintegrated aeolian rock, on which animal life 

 is not plentiful — having on it a few patches of Gorgonians and of coral- 

 line alga? — either on the sea or the bank face of the shoal. But as we 

 go into deeper water, four to six fathoms, toward the steep edge of the 

 bank, in the direction of the Providence Channel, we come upon more 

 or less extensive patches of coral heads, separated by clear sand, which 

 form an irregular belt of corals to twelve or to sixteen fathoms in depth 

 along the sea face of the bank, from its northeastern extremity to the 

 western end of New Providence. 



Samphire and Upper Samphire Cays have the same general structure 

 as Booby Island. There is perhaps a little more low vegetation on these 

 rocks, and they appear a little greenei'. Tbey are the remnants of cays 

 which were undoubtedly similar to Hog, Rose, and Booby Islands, and 

 which once formed long narrow aeolian ranges on that part of the bank. 

 The disintegrating action of the sea has, however, left only parts of these 

 ranges, either as low cays like the Samphires, or the patches of small 

 banks rising nearly to the surface on the two sides of the Fleeming Chan- 

 nel. In the distance we passed the western end of Current Island, a 

 low point covered by a few trees. The point is formed of low undulat- 

 ing hills, of about the same height as Hog Island, and presenting the 

 same structural features. 



On our way to the Little Bahama Bank we passed again over the bank 

 lying between Nassau and the Fleeming Channel. Through this we 

 passed, and steered for our anchorage on the northwestern extremity of 



