THE MANGEOVE. 
245 
tical as that of a Surmullet, with protuberant lips. 
The air-bladder of this fish is very beautiful ; it is 
shaped somewhat like a heart with the point split 
instead of the summit ; it is of the consistence of 
kid leather, and of the purest white, with a brilliant 
satin lustre, but in drying it becomes stiff, semi- 
transparent, and bladder-like. A playful imagina- 
tion might trace in it when fresh, a resemblance to a 
sporting gentleman’s wash-leather breeches, tied at 
the waistband. 
THE MANGROVE. 
Eminently characteristic of a tropical shore is the 
dense belt of Mangrove bushes with which it is in 
many places lined. To an European it is a strange 
sight to see a grove of trees growing actually out of 
the sea, and his admiration is not diminished when 
he examines more closely the structure of these 
singular plants. The extensive morass at Crab-pond 
Point, a flat of fetid mud over which the tide flows 
daily, is closely covered with Mangroves. The trunk 
of every tree springs from the union of a number of 
slender arches, each forming the quadrant of a circle, 
whose extremities penetrate into the mud. These 
are the roots of the tree, which always shoot out in 
this arched form, often taking a regular curve of six 
feet in length before they dip into the mud. The 
larger ones send out side shoots which take the same 
curved form at right angles ; and thus by the cross- 
ing of the roots of neighbouring trees, and of the 
subordinate roots of each, a complex array of arches 
