THE STRAIT OF SUND-A. lo; 
of the Chama gigas, supposed to be the largest species of 
sheil-fish that exists in the universe. One of the old Dutch 
navigators observes, that thirty of his people made a verj 
comfortable supper of a single cockle, for the relation of which 
it may readily be supposed he obtained very little credit. 
The gigantic Chama, which was the Dutchman's cockle, is, 
however, sufficiently large for the purpose ; near the shores 
of the island we found several of these shells, some of which 
could not be of less weight than four hundred pounds the 
pair. 
It is sufficiently remarkable that, although different kinds ' 
of what are usually called corals or corallines are found on the 
shores of the West India islands, no huge masses of rock, nor 
reefs, nor islands wholly composed of this material, have 
been discovered. A process of creation, carried on by such 
minute and imperceptible gradation, may probably require a 
pacific ocean, and be liable to too much interruption from the 
hurricanes of the Atlantic, or from the stream which, sweep- 
ing round the Cape of Good Hope, sets with rapidity through 
the gulf of Mexico and beyond the banks of Newfoundland. 
When we reflect, however, that a very large proportion of 
the multitude of islands which are found between the tropics, 
in the opposite hemisphere, have been created by the meanest 
and most insignificant of animated beings, so very insignifi- 
cant indeed that many of the species have not yet been dis- 
covered by man, " it is impossible," as Sir George Staunton 
has well observed, " not to be struck with the diversified 
" operations of nature for obtaining the same end, whether 
" employed in originally fixing the granite foundation of the 
