250 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



Extensive coral reefs are reported at and north of the Port of Canaainii. 

 Spix and Martins report from the "inland water of Camamu Madre- 

 pora 21 va [Dichoccenia uva E. & H.] which we noted near M. astroides 

 and acropora."'^ The next place south of there at which corals are 

 known is at the Lagoa de Itahype, south latitude 14° 40'. This place 

 was visited by Spix and Von Martins 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 Lagoa de Almada, and it is under this 

 name that Spix and Martins speak of it. It is now more commonly 

 known as Lagoa 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 qxiarried for 

 lime and for building stone. It is 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. . . . Mndrepora [Heliastraea] 

 caver7iosa, hexagona, asiroites, 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 Guaiu 

 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 Bahia 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 Baliia. 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.vonSpix u. C.F. P. von Martius. ReiseinBrasilien. II.,p.710. Miinchen, 

 1828. 



a Reise in Brasilien. II., p. 684-G86. Miinchen, 1828. 



