48 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
fish caught there, whilst those taken from the warm one near the Paumo- 
tus are scarcely eatable. 
By following the course of the Kuro-siwo vessels can go from Yokohama 
to San Francisco, a distance of more than four thousand miles, in thirteen 
days, and the same stream has swept vessels from Japan across the Pacific 
to America from time immemorial. But neither winds nor currents favor 
the theory that the Maori came from Malaysia, or the Tahitians from the 
the Sandwich Isles. 
The growth of coral, which forms large reefs near all the Pacific 
Islands, except the Galapagos, as before mentioned, depends upon the 
temperature of the water. Where the water is very warm the coral 
flourishes, but the larger kinds cannot live in a temperature lower than 
Fah. 
For this reason the hardier kinds alone are found near the Sandwich 
Islands, where the average temperature of the water is 74° Fah., but it grows 
in its greatest vigour and variety in the Fijian Sea, where the temperature 
is never lower than 74° Fah., and during the summer months is as high as 
85° Fah. The study of the coral polyp has occupied much attention during 
the last 830 years, and these animals are found to vary as much as the 
species of the most inclusive order of plants. Some small species live only 
at great depths; others, like the astreans, form immense conical masses ; 
others again grow upward in massive trunks, whilst the most beautiful 
kinds live either in the sheltered lagoon or on the surface of the reef. 
Small species have been dredged up from a depth of 190 fathoms ; but such 
kinds do not form reefs. The reef builders cannot live below the depth of 
fifteen fathoms, and even at this depth, all the reef forming species, cannot 
live, nor can those forming the base live near the surface. For this reason 
the astreans, who grow into immense spherical masses fifteen or twenty 
feet in diameter, forming the base of the reef, cannot live nearer the surface 
than six fathoms deep, so that at a pressure of two atmospheres their 
upward growth is checked. They however form a suitable basis for porites 
and meandrinas, whose habitat is nearer the surface, and so these kinds 
continue on the reef, growing upwards in immense tree-like trunks and 
branches, until they reach their limit, which they cannot pass. Here the 
lighter kinds millipores, madripores, and a great variety of sea ferns continue 
on the structure to the surface, and crown the reef with a shrubbery of 
every variety of colour. The reef is by no means solid, and the openings 
left in it are occupied by myriads of other animals, that seek shelter or food 
between the growing masses. Numerous sea shells and boring shells attach 
themselves in the crevices. The pearl shell and the immense treductina 
fix themselves securely to the wall; the echinus and the velopus find here 
