IN THE ANTILLES. 
25 
answer that. The alligator and the sea serpents, that one of the 
men who had served on the Australian station had seen, w'ere of 
use in disposing of the objection that it lived in the sea, but my 
hardest trouble came with the shell. In the end they took the 
idea that the crocodile and alligator had very tough skins, and 
that if the turtle hadn’t a shell to distinguish it b}", it would be 
only a poor sort of crocodile. One of them helped me much 
by suggesting that the Bloater was not less a ship because she 
had iron plates on her sides ! 
There is one point about the coral reefs that forces itself 
upon my notice, and especially to-day — the very large amount 
of the material of their composition due to encrusted marine 
vegetation, particularly the coralline seaweeds. Many of these 
grow with a stout encrustation of carbonate of lime (nullipores) 
and thus form great masses which in some reefs seem to nearly 
rival the true corals in bulk. This has an interesting bearing 
on the great coral-reef controversy, since species of coralline 
seaweeds live at greater depths than corals, and thus may be 
efficient in laying the foundations of coral islands at depths 
beneath the zone of coral life. This is a matter which calls for 
an exhaustive inquiry into the range in depth of coralline life, 
and the answer cannot fail to affect the general question, since 
the gigantic operations of these vegetable reef-builders have 
been almost wholly left out of the discussion. 
The topsy-turvydom in Nature’s wa}'S in this place is an 
exacting accompaniment of life. When a fisherman goes up a 
hill to gather crabs for bait, one feels he may as well catch his 
fish in the air — not that flying fish are unknown. It amounts to 
a wound to the feelings when it is discovered that the very 
sharks are harmless. They are said to be extremely abundant 
here, literally jostling each other on the bottom, and they are 
not difficult to catch, but they never rise at negro, and are 
believed to prefer white man or pig, especially the latter. One 
bathes with impunity anyhow, and since pigs do not abound in 
these waters, I fancy the sharks must gain an honest living by 
eating each other. There w'as a shark once hooked from on 
board one of Her Majesty’s ships, a frigate, and the line made 
fast. That shark towed the frigate and she dragged her anchors. 
One does not like to tamper with a story like this, embedded in 
the general faith in our first line of defence, but the truth about 
the navy must be told by someone — who is not a marine. 
When Mister William comes this way I feel something is 
going to happen — he is by no means suggestive of the stormy 
petrel, but rather he is an omen of gloom and ruin. The first 
time he came I gave him a small coin and some tobacco, and I 
heard the tale of his woes : how he had never even a chance 
given him of getting work or doing anything, though he had 
spent weeks in a mountain solitude in the expectation of some 
one seeking him out and rewarding his merit. He then burned 
a hole in the cooking-pot and went on his way. He passed two 
