Geology and Natural History. 383 
a table land, Males! upt inland and sloping slightly seaward, thus 
giving as a cross section of the island, in the vicinity of the city, 
a structure like the preceding, 
The soil of the island is scanty except in the little village in the 
interior fet “ section), where it has accumulated through the aid 
of rains. e fruit trees are cultivated with great care. Else- 
where the Picks are not nag peered entirely bare. There is no 
vegetable mould and the earth is red, the same characteristic “red 
earth” or clay as that found in pent Santo Domingo, the 
Bahamas, &c. The climate and vegetation are very similar to the 
rainless parts of Santo Domingo. Showers are very rare, springs, 
properly speaking, do not exist and the water supply is derived 
principally from “carefully constructed cisterns; the deficiency 
eing made up by poor water obtained from the shallow wells. 
The plants are of the same species, at least in part, as those tie 
between Santiago and Monte Cristo, Santo Domingo. 
three species of stunted acacias, or Cereus, 10 to 12 feet high, ant 
One or two species of Opuntias are the most striking. Another 
noticeable feature is the large number of individuals of two species 
of land shells, a Pupa and a Cyclostoma, which literally swarm 
over the trunks of the trees and lie in little eaps around their 
roots. Besides these, lizards a foot and a half long, by thousands, 
make up the greater part of the native “oa Very few birds are 
found, and I have not seen a single sna 
I have learned but little of the Sabonue islands. On Little 
Curagao there is a deposit of guano, now being mined on a large 
scale. Buenos Ayres shows a series of péaks, several hundred 
and, as the result of careful i Bree 8, Tk am led t > believe that the 
large peninsula adjoining the ba wy of Maseoihe is also of the 
i EEK, Communic cated.)—A r able group of very 
small an has long been known to occur a a locality called 
Spergen al nea i aibemseeee. Indiana, at about the horizon of 
the St. Louis fines of the Lower Carboniferous series. 
most sing ted peculiarity of these fossils is, that, although show- 
ing every evitlence of being adult forms, most of them are of ve; 
iminutive sizes, and look like the merest miniature representa- 
tions of known larger a tad They belong, for the most part, 
to well known wn genera of Corals, Blastoidea, Brachiopoda, argirss 
libranchiata, Gasteropoda, Cephal opoda, &e., and are found i 
very beautiful state of preservation, crowded together i in jeuisthes 
ers. 
® 
A few of these little fossils have been found at the same horizon 
in Bitacia: Towa, and Missouri, scattered through the rocks, along 
with larger species; but at no other locality have so many of the 
