258 Notes on the Life-History of Monachus Tropicals. (March 
designate as the North Triangle. The west island, distant seven 
and a half miles, was unvisited by us. 
A brief description of the east and north islands, the ones at 
which we obtained seals, will be of interest as depicting one of 
the hitherto unknown habitat of this animal. They are of coral 
formation and surrounded by dangerous reefs that here and 
there have reached the surface, from twenty-seven to twenty- 
eight fathoms of water surrounding them. Meandrina, Millepora, 
and Madrepora were the three genera noticed, the former, by far 
the more common, forming the bulk of the islands and outlying 
reefs. 
The East Triangle is an irregular oval in form, about half a 
mile in length by perhaps one hundred and fifty yards in greatest 
width. The northern part of the island is quite level, raised 
scarcely a yard above high tide, and consists of gleaming white 
coral sand interspersed with water-worn, rounded blocks of the 
same material. 
These sandy portions of the islands were the principal “ haul- 
ing-up” places of the seals. The southern part of the island is 
almost exclusively composed of these coral stones, strangely 
heaped up into pinnacles and ridges, about twenty feet above sea- 
level, between which lie gullies and circular pits six or seven 
feet in depth. 
Beginning a little distance from the smaller end of this island, 
so as to include between itself and the land a narrow lagoon, 
runs a reef which, for its entire length awash, loses itself in the 
sea before it reaches the Northern Triangle. This island, of ap- 
proximately half the area of the other, is quite similar to it in 
form and character. No trees or bushes grow upon either, three 
species of plants alone forming the observed vegetation. Two of 
these are trailing plants. The other, one of the Leguminosez, 
growing to a height of about two feet, formed sheltered nooks 
between the diverging stems, positions that were used as nests 
by the Booby (Sula cyanops) and the Man-o’-War-Bird (Fregata 
aquila). Sterna maxima was the only other bird noticed. Ala- 
crans (scorpions) a black kind, abounded in the sandy places, 
causing one to be somewhat careful where he sat or what he 
picked off the ground. The house-fly completes the list of the 
air-breathing observed fauna. 
_ Upon arriving at the islands we anticipan a stay long enough 
