PREFACE. 



The adventures and incidents of the follow- 

 ing story do not belong to the realm of fiction. 

 They are the actual happenings in the daily life 

 of several boys, one of whom, the author, resided 

 for five or six years upon a small key of the 

 great coral-reef that stretches away into the Gulf 

 of Mexico from the Florida Peninsula. A por- 

 tion of nearly every day was spent in floating 

 over the coral gardens, for which the locality is 

 famous, or in hunting or fishing for the strange 

 animals which there found a home. The excur- 

 sions were made, as described, under the guid- 

 ance of a naturalist who, while a surgeon in the 

 army and stationed at the post, was studying the 

 corals and other animals of the reef, and who 

 relied not a little upon the young naturalists 



(iii) 



