ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS.
[1] p. 3.—“On the Chimborazo, eight thousand feet higher than Etna.”
Small singing birds, and even butterflies, are found at sea at great distances from the coast, (as I have several times had opportunities of observing in the Pacific), being carried there by the force of the wind when storms come off the land. In the same involuntary manner insects are transported into the upper regions of the atmosphere, 16000 or 19000 feet above the plains. The heated crust of the earth occasions an ascending vertical current of air, by which light bodies are borne upwards. M. Boussingault, an excellent chemist who, as Professor at the newly instituted Mining Academy at Santa Fé de Bogota, visited the Gneiss Mountains of Caraccas, in ascending to the summit of the Silla witnessed, together with his companion Don Mariano de Rivero, a phenomenon affording a remarkable ocular demonstration of the fact of a vertically ascending current. They saw in the middle of the day, about noon, whitish shining bodies rise from the valley of Caraccas to the summit of the Silla, which is 5400 (5755 E.) feet high, and then sink down towards the neighbouring sea coast. These movements continued uninterruptedly for the space of an hour, and the objects, which at first were mistaken for a flock of small birds, proved to be small agglomerations of straws or blades of grass. Boussingault sent me some of the straws, which were immediately recognised by Professor Kunth for a species of Vilfa, a genus which, together with Agrostis, is very abundant in the provinces of Caraccas and Cumana: it was the Vilfa tenacissima of our Synopsis Plantarum æquinoctialium Orbis Novi, T. i. p. 205. Saussure found butterflies on Mont Blanc, as did Ramond in the solitudes which surround the summit of the Mont Perdu. When Bonpland, Carlos Montufar, and myself, reached, on the 23d of June, 1802, on the eastern declivity of the Chimborazo, the height of 18096 (19286 E.) feet—a height at which the barometer sank to 13 inches 111⁄5 lines (14.850 English inches), we saw winged insects fluttering around us. We could see that they were Dipteras, resembling flies, but on a sharp ridge of rock (cuchilla) often only ten inches wide, between steeply descending masses of snow, it was impossible to catch the insects. The height at which we saw them was nearly the same at which the uncovered trachytic rock, piercing through the eternal snows, gave to our view, in Lecidea geographica, the last traces of vegetation. The insects were flying at a height of about 2850 toises (18225 E. feet), or about 2600 E. feet higher than Mont Blanc. Somewhat lower down, at about 2600 toises (10626 E. feet), also therefore within the region of perpetual snow, Bonpland had seen yellow butterflies flying very near the ground. According to our present knowledge the Mammalia which live nearest to the region of perpetual snow are in the Swiss Alps, the Marmot which sleeps through the winter, and a very small field-mouse (Hypudæus nivalis), described by Martins, which on the Faulhorn lays up a store of the roots of phænogamous alpine plants almost under the snow. (Actes de la Société Helvétique, 1843, p. 324.) The beautiful Chinchilla, of which the bright and silky fur is so much prized, is often supposed by Europeans to be an inhabitant of the high mountain regions of Chili: this, however, is an error; the Chinchilla laniger (Gray) only lives in the mild temperature of the lower zone, and is not found farther south than the parallel of 35°. (Claudio Gay, Historia fisica y politica de Chile, Zoologia, 1844, p. 91.)
While on our European Alps, Lecideas, Parmelias, and Umbilicarias form only a few coloured patches on the rocks which are not completely covered with snow, in the Andes, beautiful flowering phænogamous plants, first described by us, live at elevations of thirteen to fourteen thousand feet (13700 to nearly 15000 E.) We found there woolly species of Culcitium and Espeletia (C. nivale, C. rufescens, and C. reflexum, E. grandiflora, and E. argentea), Sida pichinchensis, Ranunculus nubigenus, R. Gusmanni with red or orange-coloured blossoms, the small moss-like umbelliferous plant Myrrhis andicola, and Fragosa arctioides. On the declivity of the Chimborazo the Saxifraga boussingaulti, described by Adolph Brongniart, grows beyond the limit of perpetual snow on loose boulders of rock, at 14796 (15770 E.) feet above the level of the sea, not at 17000, as stated in two estimable English journals. (Compare my Asie Centrale, T. iii. p. 262, with Hooker, Journal of Botany, vol. i. 1834, p. 327, and Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, vol. xvii. 1834, p. 380.) The Saxifrage discovered by Boussingault is certainly, up to the present time, the highest known phænogamous plant on the surface of the earth.
The perpendicular height of the Chimborazo is, according to my trigonometrical measurement, 3350 toises (21422 E. feet.) (Recueil d’Observ. Astron., vol. i., Introd. p. lxxii.) This result is intermediate between those given by French and Spanish academicians. The differences depend not on different assumptions for refraction, but on differences in the reduction of the measured base lines to the level of the sea. In the Andes this reduction could only be made by the barometer, and thus every measurement called a trigonometric measurement is also a barometric one, of which the result differs according to the first term in the formula employed. If in chains of mountains of great mass, such as the Andes, we insist on determining the greater part of the whole altitude trigonometrically, measuring from a low and distant point in the plain or nearly at the level of the sea, we can only obtain very small angles of altitude. On the other hand, not only is it difficult to find a convenient base among mountains, but also every step increases the portion of the height which must be determined barometrically. These difficulties have to be encountered by every traveller who selects, among the elevated plains which surround the Andes, the station at which he may execute his geodesical measurements. My measurement of the Chimborazo was made from the plain of Tapia, which is covered with pumice. It is situated to the west of the Rio Chambo, and its elevation, as determined by the barometer, is 1482 toises (9477 E. feet.) The Llanos de Luisa, and still more the plain of Sisgun, which is 1900 toises (12150 E. feet) high, would have given greater angles of altitude; I had prepared everything for making the measurement at the latter station when thick clouds concealed the summit of Chimborazo.
Those who are engaged in investigations on languages may not be unwilling to find here some conjectures respecting the etymology of the widely celebrated name of Chimborazo. Chimbo is the name of the Corregimiento or District in which the mountain of Chimborazo is situated. La Condamine (Voyage à l’Equateur, 1751, p. 184) deduces Chimbo from “chimpani,” “to pass over a river.” Chimbo-raço signifies, according to him, “la neige de l’autre bord,” because at the village of Chimbo one crosses a stream in full view of the enormous snow-clad mountain. (In the Quichua language “chimpa” signifies the “other, or farther, side;” and chimpani signifies to pass or cross over a river, a bridge, &c.) Several natives of the province of Quito have assured me that Chimborazo signifies merely “the snow of Chimbo.” We find the same termination in Carguai-razo. But razo appears to be a provincial word. The Jesuit Holguin, (whose excellent “Vocabulario de la Lengua general de todo el Peru llamada Lengua Qquichua ó del Inca,” printed at Lima in 1608, is in my possession,) knows nothing of the word “razo.” The genuine word for snow is “ritti.” On the other hand, my learned friend Professor Buschmann remarks that in the Chinchaysuyo dialect (spoken north of Cuzco up to Quito and Pasto,) raju (the j apparently guttural) signifies snow; see the word in Juan de Figueredo’s notice of Chinchaysuyo words appended to Diego de Torres Rubio, Arte, y Vocabulario de la Lengua Quichua, reimpr. en Lima, 1754; fol. 222, b. For the two first syllables of the name of the mountain, and for the village of Chimbo, (as chimpa and chimpani suit badly on account of the a), we may find a definite signification by means of the Quichua word chimpu, an expression used for a coloured thread or fringe (señal de lana, hilo ó borlilla de colores),—for the red of the sky (arreboles),—and for a halo round the sun or moon. One may try to derive the name of the mountain directly from this word, without the intervention of the village or district. In any case, and whatever the etymology of Chimborazo may be, it must be written in Peruvian Chimporazo, as we know that the Peruvians have no b.
But what if the name of this giant mountain should have nothing in common with the language of the Incas, but should have descended from a more remote antiquity? According to the generally received tradition, it was not long before the arrival of the Spaniards that the Inca or Quichua language was introduced into the kingdom of Quito, where the Puruay language, which has now entirely perished, had previously prevailed. Other names of mountains, Pichincha, Ilinissa, and Cotopaxi, have no signification at all in the language of the Incas, and are therefore certainly older than the introduction of the worship of the sun and the court language of the rulers of Cuzco. In all parts of the world the names of mountains and rivers are among the most ancient and most certain monuments or memorials of languages; and my brother Wilhelm von Humboldt has employed these names with great sagacity in his researches on the former diffusion of Iberian nations. A singular and unexpected statement has been put forward in recent years (Velasco Historia de Quito, T. i. p. 185) to the effect that “the Incas Tupac Yupanqui and Huayna Capac were astonished to find at their first conquest of Quito a dialect of the Quichua language already in use among the natives.” Prescott, however, appears to regard this statement as doubtful. (Hist. of the Conquest of Peru, Vol. i. p. 115.)
If the Pass of St. Gothard, Mount Athos, or the Rigi, were placed on the summit of the Chimborazo, it would form an elevation equal to that now ascribed to the Dhawalagiri in the Himalaya. The geologist who rises to more general views connected with the interior of the earth, regards, not indeed the direction, but the relative height of the rocky ridges which we term mountain chains, as a phenomenon of so little import, that he would not be astonished if there should one day be discovered between the Himalaya and the Altai, summits which should surpass the Dhawaligiri and the Djawahir as much as these surpass the Chimborazo. (See my Vues des Cordillères et Monumens des peuples indigènes de l’Amérique, T. i. p. 116; and my Notice on two attempts to ascend the Chimborazo, in 1802 and 1831, in Schumacher’s Jahrbuch for 1847, S. 176.) The great height to which the snow line on the northern side of the Himalaya is raised in summer, by the influence of the heat returned by radiation from the high plains of the interior of Asia, renders those mountains, although situated in 29 to 30½ degrees of latitude, as accessible as the Peruvian Andes within the tropics. Captain Gerard has attained on the Tarhigang an elevation as great, and perhaps (as is maintained in the Critical Researches on Philosophy and Geography) 117 English feet greater than that reached by me on the Chimborazo. Unfortunately, as I have shewn more at large in another place, these mountain journies beyond the limits of perpetual snow (however they may engage the curiosity of the public) are of only very inconsiderable scientific use.
[2] p. 4.—“The Condor, the giant of the Vulture tribe.”
In my Recueil d’Observations de Zoologie et d’Anatomie comparée, vol. i. pp. 26-45, I have given the natural history of the Condor, which, before my journey to the equatorial regions, had been much misrepresented. (The name of the bird is properly Cuntur in the Inca language; in Chili, in the Araucan, Mañque; Sarcoramphus Condor of Duméril.) I made and had engraved a drawing of the head from the living bird, and of the size of nature. Next to the Condor, the Lämmergeier of Switzerland, and the Falco destructor of Daudin, probably the Falco Harpyia of Linnæus, are the largest flying birds.
The region which may be regarded as the ordinary haunt of the Condor begins at the height of Etna, and comprises atmospheric strata from ten to eighteen thousand (about 10600 to 19000 English) feet above the level of the sea. Humming birds, which make summer excursions as far as 61° N. latitude on the north-west coast of America on the one hand, and the Tierra del Fuego on the other, have been seen by Von Tschudi (Fauna Peruana, Ornithol. p. 12) in Puna as high as 13700 (14600 English) feet. There is a pleasure in comparing the largest and the smallest of the feathered inhabitants of the air. Of the Condors, the largest individuals found in the chain of the Andes round Quito measured, with extended wings, 14 (nearly 15 English) feet, and the smallest 8 (8½ English) feet. From these dimensions, and from the visual angle at which the bird often appeared vertically above our heads, we are enabled to infer the enormous height to which the Condor soars when the sky is serene. A visual angle of 4´, for example, gives a perpendicular height above the eye of 6876 (7330 English) feet. The cave (Machay) of Antisana, which is opposite the mountain of Chussulongo, and from whence we measured the height of the soaring bird, is 14958 (15942 English) feet above the surface of the Pacific. This would give the absolute height attained by the Condor at fully 21834 (23270 English) feet; an elevation at which the barometer would hardly reach 12 French inches, but which yet does not surpass the highest summits of the Himalaya. It is a remarkable physiological phenomenon, that the same bird, which can fly round in circles for hours in regions of an atmosphere so rarified, should sometimes suddenly descend, as on the western declivity of the Volcano of Pichincha, to the sea-shore, thus passing rapidly through all gradations of climate. The membranous air-bags of the Condor, if filled in the lower regions of the atmosphere, must undergo extraordinary distension at altitudes of more than 23000 English feet. Ulloa, more than a century ago, expressed his astonishment that the vulture of the Andes could soar in regions where the atmospheric pressure is less than 14 French inches, (Voyage de l’Amérique meridionale, T. ii. p. 2, 1752; Observations astronomiques et physiques, p. 110). It was then believed, in analogy with experiments under the air-pump, that no animal could live in so low a pressure. I have myself, as I have already noticed, seen the barometer sink on the Chimborazo to 13 French inches 11·2 lines (14.850 English inches). Man, indeed, at such elevations, if wearied by muscular exertion, finds himself in a state of very painful exhaustion; but the Condor seems to perform the functions of respiration with equal facility under pressures of 30 and 13 English inches. It is apparently of all living creatures on our planet the one which can remove at pleasure to the greatest distance from the surface of the earth; I say at pleasure, for minute insects and siliceous-shelled infusoria are carried by the ascending current to possibly still greater elevations. The Condor probably flies higher than the altitude found as above by computation. I remember on the Cotopaxi, in the pumice plain of Suniguaicu, 13578 (14470 English) feet above the sea, to have seen the bird soaring at a height at which he appeared only as a small black speck. What is the smallest angle under which feebly illuminated objects can be discerned? Their form, (linear extension) has a great influence on the minimum of this angle. The transparency of the mountain atmosphere at the equator is such that, in the province of Quito, as I have elsewhere noticed, the white mantle or Poncho of a horseman was distinguished with the naked eye at a horizontal distance of 84132 (89665 English) feet; therefore under a visual angle of 13 seconds. It was my friend Bonpland, whom, from the pleasant country seat of the Marques de Selvalegre, we saw moving along the face of a black precipice on the Volcano of Pichincha. Lightning conductors, being long thin objects, are seen, as has already been remarked by Arago, from the greatest distances, and under the smallest angles.
The accounts of the habits of the Condor in the mountainous districts of Quito and Peru, given by me in a monograph on this powerful bird, have been confirmed by a later traveller, Gay, who has explored the whole of Chili, and has described that country in an excellent work entitled Historia fisica y politica de Chile. The Condor, which, like the Lamas, Vicunas, Alpacas, and Guanacos, does not extend beyond the equator into New Granada, is found as far south as the Straits of Magellan. In Chili, as in the mountain plains of Quito, the Condors, which at other times live either solitarily or in pairs, assemble in flocks to attack lambs and calves, or to carry off young Guanacos (Guanacillos). The ravages annually committed among the herds of sheep, goats, and cattle, as well as among the wild Vicunas, Alpacas, and Guanacos of the Andes, are very considerable. The inhabitants of Chili assert that, in captivity, the Condor can support forty days’ hunger; when free, his voracity is excessive, and, vulture-like, is directed by preference to dead flesh.
The mode of capture of Condors in Peru by means of palisades, as described by me, is practised with equal success in Chili. When the bird has gorged himself with flesh, he cannot rise into the air without first running for some little distance with his wings half expanded. A dead ox, in which decomposition is beginning to take place, is strongly fenced round, leaving within the fence only a small space, in which the Condors attracted by the prey are crowded together. When they have gorged themselves with food, the palisades not permitting them to obtain a start by running, they become, as remarked above, unable to rise, and are either killed with clubs by the country people, or taken alive by the lasso. On the first declaration of the political independence of Chili, the Condor appeared on the coinage as the symbol of strength. (Claudio Gay, Historia fisica y politica de Chile, publicada bajo los auspicios del Supremo Gobierno; Zoologia, pp. 194-198.)
Far more useful than the Condor in the great economy of Nature, in the removal of putrefying animal substances and in thus purifying the air in the neighbourhood of human habitations, are the different species of Gallinazos, of which the number of individuals is much greater. In tropical America I have sometimes seen as many as 70 or 80 assembled at once round a dead animal; and I am able, as an eye-witness, to confirm the fact long since stated, but which has recently been doubted by ornithologists, of the whole assembly of these birds in such cases taking flight on the appearance of a single king-vulture, who yet is no larger than the Gallinazos. No combat ever takes place; but the Gallinazos (the two species of which, Cathartes urubu and C. aura, have been confounded with each other by an unfortunately fluctuating nomenclature) appear to be terrified by the sudden appearance and courageous demeanour of the richly coloured Sarcoramphus papa. As the ancient Egyptians protected the bird which rendered them similar services towards the purification of their atmosphere, so in Peru the careless or wanton killing of the Gallinazos is punished with a fine, which in some towns amounts, according to Gay, to 300 piastres for each bird. It is a remarkable circumstance, stated so long ago as by Don Felix de Azara, that these species of vultures, if taken young and reared, will so accustom themselves to the person who feeds them, that they will follow him on a journey for many miles, flying after the waggon in which he travels over the Pampas.
[3] p. 4.—“Their rotating bodies.”
Fontana, in his excellent work “Über das Viperngift,” Bd. i. S. 62, relates that he succeeded, in the course of two hours, by means of a drop of water, in bringing to life a rotifera which had lain for two years and a half dried up and motionless. On the action and effect of water, see my “Versuche über die gereizte Muskel- und Nervenfaser,” Bd. ii. S. 250.
What has been called the revivification of Rotiferæ, since observations have been more exact and have had to undergo stricter criticism, has been the subject of much animated discussion. Baker affirmed that he had resuscitated, in 1771, paste-eels which Needham had given him in 1744! Franz Bauer saw his Vibrio tritici, which had been dried up for four years, move again on being moistened. An extremely careful and experienced observer, Doyère, in his Mémoire sur les Tardigrades, et sur leur propriété de revenir à la vie (1842), draws from his own fine experiments the following conclusions:—Rotiferæ come to life, i. e. pass from a motionless state to a state of motion, after having been exposed to temperatures of 19°.2 Reaumur below, and 36° Reaumur above, the freezing point; i. e. from 11°.2 to 113°.0 Fah. They preserve the capability of apparent revivification, in dry sand, up to 56°.4 R. (158°.9 Fah.); but they lose it, and cannot be excited afresh, if heated in moist sand to 44° only (131°.0 Fah.) Doyère, p. 119. The possibility of revivification or reanimation is not prevented by their being placed for twenty-eight days in barometer tubes in vacuo, or even by the application of chloride of lime or sulphuric acid (pp. 130-133). Doyère has also seen the rotiferæ come to life again very slowly after being dried without sand (desséchés à nu), which Spallanzani had denied (pp. 117 and 129). “Toute dessiccation faite à la température ordinaire pourroit souffrir des objections auxquelles l’emploi du vide sec n’eût peut-être pas complètement repondu: mais en voyant les Tardigrades périr irrévocablement à une température de 44°, si leurs tissus sont pénétrés d’eau, tandis que desséchés ils supportent sans périr une chaleur qu’on peut évaluer a 96° Reaumur, on doit être disposé à admettre que la revivification n’a dans l’animal d’autre condition que l’intégrité de composition et de connexions organiques.” In the same way, in the vegetable kingdom, the sporules of cryptogamia, which Kunth compares to the propagation of certain phænogamous plants by buds (bulbillæ), retain their germinating power in the highest temperatures. According to the most recent experiments of Payen, the sporules of a minute fungus (Oïdium aurantiacum), which covers the crumb of bread with a reddish feathery coating, do not lose their power of germination by being exposed for half an hour in closed tubes to a temperature of from 67° to 78° Reaumur (182°.75 to 207°.5 Fah.), before being strewed on fresh perfectly unspoilt dough. May not the newly discovered monad (Monas prodigiosa), which causes blood-like spots on mealy substances, have been mingled with this fungus?
Ehrenberg, in his great work on Infusoria (S. 492-496), has given the most complete history of all the investigations which have taken place on what is called the revivification of rotiferæ. He believes that, in spite of all the means of desiccation employed, the organization-fluid still remains in the apparently dead animal. He contests the hypothesis of “latent life;” death, he says, is not “life latent, but the want of life.”
We have evidence of the diminution, if not of the entire disappearance or suspension of organic functions, in the hybernation or winter sleep both of warm and cold-blooded animals, in the dormice, marmots, sand martins (Hirundo riparia) according to Cuvier (Règne animal, 1829, T. i. p. 396), frogs and toads. Frogs, awakened from winter-sleep by warmth, can support an eight times’ longer stay under water without being drowned, than frogs in the breeding season. It would seem as if the functions of the lungs in respiration, for some time after their excitability had been suspended, required a less degree of activity. The circumstance of the sand-martin sometimes burying itself in a morass is a phenomenon which, while it seems not to admit of doubt, is the more surprising, as in birds respiration is so extremely energetic, that, according to Lavoisier’s experiments, two small sparrows, in their ordinary state, decomposed, in the same space of time, as much atmospheric air as a porpoise. (Lavoisier, Mémoires de Chimie, T. i. p, 119.) The winter-sleep of the swallow in question (the Hirundo riparia) is not supposed to belong to the entire species, but only to have been observed in some individuals. (Milne Edwards, Elémens de Zoologie, 1834, p. 543.)
As in the cold zone the deprivation of heat causes some animals to fall into winter-sleep, so the hot tropical countries afford an analogous phænomenon, which has not been sufficiently attended to, and to which I have applied the name of summer-sleep. (Relation historique, T. ii. pp. 192 and 626.) Drought and continuous high temperatures act like the cold of winter in diminishing excitability. In Madagascar, (which, with the exception of a very small portion at its southern extremity, is entirely within the tropical zone,) as Bruguière had before observed, the hedgehog-like Tenrecs (Centenes, Illiger), one species of which (C. ecaudatus) has been introduced into the Isle of France, sleep during great heat. Desjardins makes, it is true, the objection that the time of their slumber is the winter season of the southern hemisphere; but in a country in which the mean temperature of the coldest month is 3° Reaumur (6°.75 Fah.) above that of the hottest month in Paris, this circumstance cannot change the three months’ “summer-sleep” of the Tenrec in Madagascar and at Port Louis, into what we understand by a winter-sleep, or state of hybernation.
In the hot and dry season, the crocodile in the Llanos of Venezuela, the land and water tortoises of the Orinoco, the huge boa, and several smaller kinds of serpents, become torpid and motionless, and lie incrusted in the indurated soil. The missionary Gili relates that the natives, in seeking for the slumbering Terekai (land tortoises), which they find lying at a depth of sixteen or seventeen inches in dried mud, are sometimes bitten by serpents which become suddenly aroused, and which had buried themselves at the same time as the tortoise. An excellent observer, Dr. Peters, who has just returned from the East Coast of Africa, writes thus to me on the subject:—“During my short stay at Madagascar I could obtain no certain information respecting the Tenrec; but, on the other hand, I know that in the East of Africa, where I lived for several years, different kinds of tortoises (Pentonyx and Trionchydias) pass months during the dry season of this tropical country inclosed in the dry hard earth, and without food. The Lepidosiren also, in places where the swamps are dried up, remains coiled up and motionless, encased in indurated earth, from May to December.”
Thus we find an annual enfeeblement of certain vital functions in many and very different classes of animals, and, what is particularly striking, without the same phenomena being presented by other living creatures nearly allied to them, and belonging to the same family. The northern glutton (Gulo), though allied to the badger (Meles), does not like him sleep during the winter; whereas, according to Cuvier’s remark, “a Myoxus (dormouse) of Senegal (Myoxus coupeii), which could never have known winter-sleep in his tropical home, being brought to Europe fell asleep the first year on the setting in of winter.” This torpidity or enfeeblement of the vital functions and vital activity passes through several gradations, according as it extends to the processes of nutrition, respiration, and muscular motion, or to depression of the activity of the brain and nervous system. The winter-sleep of the solitary bears and of the badger is not accompanied by any rigidity, and hence the reawakening of these animals is so easy, and, as was often related to me in Siberia, so dangerous to the hunters and country people. The first recognition of the gradation and connection of these phenomena leads us up to what has been called the “vita minima” of the microscopic organisms, which, occasionally with green ovaries and undergoing the process of spontaneous division, fall from the clouds in the Atlantic sand-rain. The apparent revivification of rotiferæ, as well as of the siliceous-shelled infusoria, is only the renewal of long-enfeebled vital functions,—a state of vitality which was never entirely extinct, and which is fanned into a fresh flame, or excited anew, by the appropriate stimulus. Physiological phenomena can only be comprehended by being traced throughout the entire series of analogous modifications.
[4] p. 5.—“Winged insects.”
Formerly the fertilization of flowers in which the sexes are separated was ascribed principally to the action of the wind: it has been shown by Kölreuter, and with great ingenuity by Sprengel, that bees, wasps, and a host of smaller winged insects, are the chief agents. I say the chief agents, because to assert that no fertilization is possible without the intervention of these little animals appears to me not to be in conformity with nature, as indeed has been shown in detail by Willdenow. (Grundriss der Kräuterkunde, 4te Aufl., Berl. 1805, S. 405-412.) On the other hand, Dichogamy, coloured spots or marks indicating honey-vessels (maculæ indicantes), and fertilization by insects, are, in much the greater number of cases, inseparably associated. (Compare Auguste de St. Hilaire, Leçons de Botanique, 1840, p. 565-571.)
The statement which has been often repeated since Spallanzani, that the diœcious common hemp (Cannabis sativa) yields perfect seeds without the neighbourhood of pollen-bearing vessels, has been refuted by later experiments. When seeds have been obtained, anthers in a rudimentary state, capable of furnishing some grains of fertilizing dust, have been discovered near the ovarium. Such hermaphroditism is frequent in the entire family of Urticeæ, but a peculiar and still unexplained phenomenon has been presented in the forcing-houses at Kew by a small New Holland shrub, the Cœlebogyne of Smith. This phænogamous plant produces in England perfect seeds without trace of male organs, or the hybridising introduction of the pollen of other species. An ingenious botanist, Adrien de Jussieu, in his “Cours Elementaire de Botanique,” 1840, p. 463, expresses himself on the subject as follows:—“Un genre d’Euphorbiacées (?) assez nouvellement décrit mais cultivé depuis plusieurs années dans les serres d’Angleterre, le Cœlebogyne, y a plusieurs fois fructifié, et ses graines étaient évidemment parfaites, puisque non seulement on y a observé un embryon bien constitué, mais qu’en le semant cet embryon s’est développé en une plante semblable. Or les fleurs sont dioïques; on ne connait et ne possède pas (en Angleterre) de pieds mâles, et les recherches les plus minutieuses, faites par les meilleurs observateurs, n’ont pu jusqu’ici faire découvrir la moindre trace d’anthères ou seulement de pollen. L’embryon ne venait donc pas de ce pollen, qui manque entièrement: il a dû se former de toute pièce dans l’ovule.”
In order to obtain a fresh confirmation or elucidation of this highly important and isolated phenomenon, I addressed myself not long since to my young friend Dr. Joseph Hooker, who, after making the Antarctic voyage with Sir James Ross, has now joined the great Thibeto-Himalayan expedition. Dr. Hooker wrote to me in reply, on his arrival at Alexandria near the end of December 1847, before embarking at Suez: “Our Cœlebogyne still flowers with my father at Kew as well as in the Gardens of the Horticultural Society. It ripens its seeds regularly: I have examined it repeatedly very closely and carefully, and have never been able to discover a penetration of pollen-tubes either in the style or ovarium. In my herbarium the male blossoms are in small catkins.”
[5] p. 7.—“Shine like stars.”
The luminosity of the ocean is one of those superb natural phenomena which continue to excite our admiration even when we have seen them recur every night for months. The sea is phosphorescent in every zone; but those who have not witnessed the phenomenon within the tropics, and especially in the Pacific, have only an imperfect idea of the grand and majestic spectacle which it affords. When a man-of-war, impelled by a fresh breeze, cuts the foaming waves, the voyager standing at the ship’s side feels as if he could never be satisfied with gazing on the spectacle which presents itself to his view. Every time that in the rolling of the vessel her side emerges from the water, blue or reddish streams of light appear to dart upwards like flashes of lightning from her keel. Nor can I describe the splendour of the appearance presented on a dark night in the tropic seas by the sports of a troop of porpoises. As they cut through the foaming waves, following each other in long winding lines, one sees their mazy track marked by intense and sparkling light. In the Gulf of Cariaco, between Cumana and the Peninsula of Maniquarez, I have stood for hours enjoying this spectacle.
Le Gentil and the elder Forster attributed the flashing to the electric friction excited by the ship in moving through the water, but the present state of our knowledge does not permit us to receive this as a valid explanation. (Joh. Reinh. Forster’s Bemerkungen auf seiner Reise um die Welt, 1783, S. 57; Le Gentil, Voyage dans les Mers de l’Inde, 1779, T. i. p. 685-698.)
Perhaps there are few natural subjects of observation which have been so long and so much debated as the luminosity of the waters of the sea. What we know with certainty on the subject may be reduced to the following simple facts. There are several luminous animals which, when alive, give out at pleasure a faint phosphoric light: this light is, in most instances, rather bluish, as in Nereis noctiluca, Medusa pelagica var. β (Forskäl, Fauna Ægyptiaco-arabica, s. Descriptiones animalium quæ in itinere orientali observavit, 1775, p. 109), and in the Monophora noctiluca, discovered in Baudin’s expedition, (Bory de St.-Vincent, Voyage dans les Iles des Mers d’Afrique, 1804, T. i. p. 107, pl. vi.) The luminous appearance of the sea is due partly to living animals, such as are spoken of above, and partly to organic fibres and membranes derived from the destruction of these living torch-bearers. The first of these causes is undoubtedly the most usual and most extensive. In proportion as travellers engaged in the investigation of natural phenomena have become more zealous in their researches, and more experienced in the use of excellent microscopes, we have seen in our zoological systems the groups of Mollusca and Infusoria, which become luminous either at pleasure or when excited by external stimulus, increase more and more.
The luminosity of the sea, so far as it is produced by living organic beings, is principally due, in the class of Zoophytes, to the Acalephæ (the families of Medusa and Cyanea), to some Mollusca, and to a countless host of Infusoria. Among the small Acalephæ, the Mammaria scintillans offers the beautiful spectacle of, as it were, the starry firmament reflected by the surface of the sea. This little creature, when full grown, hardly equals in size the head of a pin. Michaelis, at Kiel, was the first to show that there are luminous siliceous-shelled infusoria: he observed the flashing light of the Peridinium (a ciliated animalcule), of the cuirassed Monad the Prorocentrum micans, and of a rotifera to which he gave the name of Synchata baltica. (Michaelis über das Leuchten der Ostsee bei Kiel, 1830, S. 17.) The same Synchata baltica was subsequently discovered by Focke in the Lagunes of Venice. My distinguished friend and Siberian travelling companion, Ehrenberg, has succeeded in keeping luminous infusoria from the Baltic alive for almost two months in Berlin. He shewed them to me in 1832 with a microscope in a drop of sea-water: placed in the dark I saw their flashes of light. The largest of these little infusoria were 1-8th, and the smallest from 1-48th to 1-96th of a Paris line in length (a Paris line is about nine-hundredths of an English inch): after they were exhausted, and had ceased to send forth sparkles of light, the flashing was renewed on their being stimulated by the addition of acids or of a little alcohol to the sea-water.
By repeatedly filtering water taken up fresh from the sea, Ehrenberg succeeded in obtaining a fluid in which a greater number of these luminous creatures were concentrated. (Abhandlungen der Akad. der Wiss. zu Berlin aus dem J. 1833, S. 307; 1834, S. 537-575; 1838, S. 45 and 258.) This acute observer has found in the organs of the Photocaris, which emits flashes of light either at pleasure or when irritated or stimulated, a cellular structure with large cells and gelatinous interior resembling the electric organs of the Gymnotus and the Torpedo. “When the Photocaris is irritated, one sees in each cirrus a kindling and flickering of separate sparks, which gradually increase in intensity until the whole cirrus is illuminated; until at last the living fire runs also over the back of the small Nereis-like animal, so that it appears in the microscope like a thread of sulphur burning with a greenish-yellow light. It is a circumstance very deserving of attention, that in the Oceania (Thaumantias) hemisphærica the number and situation of the sparks correspond exactly with the thickened base of the larger cirri or organs which alternate with them. The exhibition of this wreath of fire is a vital act, and the whole development of light is an organic vital process which in the Infusoria shows itself as an instantaneous spark of light, and is repeated after short intervals of repose.” (Ehrenberg über das Leuchten des Meeres, 1836, S. 110, 158, 160, and 163.)
According to these suppositions, the luminous creatures of the ocean show the existence of a magneto-electric light-evolving process in other classes of animals than fishes, insects, Mollusca, and Acalephæ. Is the secretion of the luminous fluid which is effused in some luminous creatures, and which continues to shine for some time without any farther influence of the living animal (for example, in Lampyrides and Elaterides, in the German and Italian glow-worms, and in the South American Cucuyo which lives on the sugar-cane), only a consequence of the first electric discharge, or is it simply dependent on chemical mixture? The shining of insects surrounded by air has doubtless other physiological causes than those which occasion the luminosity of inhabitants of the water, fishes, Medusæ, and Infusoria. The small Infusoria of the ocean, being surrounded by strata of salt water which is a good conducting fluid, must be capable of an enormous electric tension of their light-flashing organs to enable them to shine so intensely in the water. They strike like Torpedos, Gymnoti, and the Tremola of the Nile, through the stratum of water; while electric fishes, in connexion with the galvanic circuit, decompose water and impart magnetism to steel bars, as I showed more than half a century ago (Versuche über die gereizte Muskel- und Nervenfaser, Bd. i. S. 438-441, and see also Obs. de Zoologie et d’Anatomie comparée, vol. i. p. 84); and as John Davy has since confirmed (Phil. Trans, for 1834, Part ii. p. 545-547), do not pass a flash through the smallest intervening stratum.
The considerations which have been developed make it probable that it is one and the same process which operates in the smallest living organic creatures, so minute that they are not perceived by the naked eye,—in the combats of the serpent-like gymnoti,—in flashing luminous infusoria which raise the phosphorescence of the sea to such a degree of brilliancy;—as well as in the thunder-cloud, and in the auroral, terrestrial, or polar light (silent magnetic lightnings), which, as the result of an increased tension in the interior of the globe, are announced for hours beforehand by the suddenly altered movements of the magnetic needle. (See my letter to the Editor of the Annalen der Physik und Chemie, Bd. xxxvii. 1836, S. 242-244).
Sometimes one cannot even with high magnifying powers discern any animalcules in the luminous water; and yet, whenever the wave strikes and breaks in foam against a hard body, a light is seen to flash. In such case the cause of the phenomenon probably consists in the decaying animal fibres, which are disseminated in immense abundance throughout the body of water. If this luminous water is filtered through fine and closely woven cloths, these little fibres and membranes are separated in the shape of shining points. When we bathed at Cumana in the waters of the Gulf of Cariaco, and afterwards lingered awhile on the solitary beach in the mild evening air without our clothes, parts of our bodies continued luminous from the shining organic particles which had adhered to the skin, and the light only became extinct at the end of some minutes. Considering the enormous quantity of animal life in all tropical seas, it is, perhaps, not surprising that the sea water should be luminous, even where no visible organic particles can be detached from it. From the almost infinite subdivision of the masses of dead Dagysæ and Medusæ, the sea may perhaps be looked on as a gelatinous fluid, which as such is luminous, distasteful to, and undrinkable by man, and capable of affording nourishment to many fish. If one rubs a board with part of a Medusa hysocella, the part so rubbed regains its luminosity on friction with a dry finger. On my passage to South America I sometimes placed a Medusa on a tin plate. When I struck another metallic substance against the plate, the slightest vibrations of the tin were sufficient to cause the light. What is the manner in which in this case the blow and the vibrations act? Is the temperature momentarily augmented? Are new surfaces exposed? or does the blow press out a fluid, such as phosphuretted hydrogen, which may burn on coming into contact with the oxygen of the atmosphere or of the air held in solution by the sea-water. This light-exciting influence of a shock or blow is particularly remarkable in a “cross sea,” i. e. when waves coming from opposite directions meet and clash.
I have seen the sea within the tropics appear luminous in the most different states of weather; but the light was most brilliant when a storm was near, or with a sultry atmosphere and a vaporous thickly-clouded sky. Heat and cold appear to have little influence on the phenomenon, for on the Banks of Newfoundland the phosphorescence is often very bright during the coldest winter weather. Sometimes under apparently similar external circumstances the sea will be highly luminous one night and not at all so the following night. Does the atmosphere influence the disengagement of light, or do all these differences depend on the accident of the observer sailing through a part of the sea more or less abundantly impregnated with gelatinous animal substances? Perhaps it is only in certain states of the atmosphere that the light-evolving animalculæ come in large numbers to the surface of the sea. It has been asked why the fresh water of our marshes, which is filled with polypi, is never seen to become luminous. Both in animals and plants, a particular mixture of organic particles appears to be required in order to favour the production of light. Willow-wood is oftener found to be luminous than oak-wood. In England experiments have succeeded in making saltwater shine by pouring into it the liquor from pickled herrings. It is easy to shew by galvanic experiments that in living animals the evolution of light depends on an irritation of the nerves. I have seen an Elater noctilucus which was dying emit strong flashes of light when I touched the ganglion of his fore leg with zinc and silver. Medusæ sometimes shew increased brightness at the moment of completing the galvanic circuit. (Humboldt, Relat. Hist. T. i. p. 79 and 533.)
Respecting the wonderful development of mass and power of increase in Infusoria, see Ehrenberg, Infus. S. xiii. 291 and 512. He observes that “the galaxy of the minutest organisms passes through the genera of Vibrio and Bacterium and that of Monas, (in the latter they are often only 1⁄3000 of a line,)” S. xix. and 244.
[6] p. 7.—“Which inhabits the large pulmonary cells of the rattle-snake of the tropics.”
This animal, which I formerly called an Echinorhynchus or even a Porocephalus, appears on closer investigation, and according to the better founded judgment of Rudolphi, to belong to the division of the Pentastomes. (Rudolphi, Entozoorum Synopsis, p. 124 and 434.) It inhabits the ventral cavities and wide-celled lungs of a species of Crotalus which lives in Cumana, sometimes in the interior of houses, where it pursues the mice. Ascaris lumbrici (Gözen’s Eingeweidewürmer, Tab. iv. Fig. 10,) lives under the skin of the common earthworm, and is the smallest of all the species of Ascaris. Leucophra nodulata, Gleichen’s pearl-animalcule, has been observed by Otto Friedrich Müller in the interior of the reddish Nais littoralis. (Müller, Zoologia danica, Fasc. II. Tab. lxxx. a—e.) Probably these microscopic animals are again inhabited by others. All are surrounded by air poor in oxygen and variously mixed with hydrogen and carbonic acid. Whether any animal can live in pure nitrogen is very doubtful. It might formerly have been believed to be the case with Fischer’s Cistidicola farionis, because according to Fourcroy’s experiments the swimming bladders of fish appeared to contain an air entirely deprived of oxygen. Erman’s experience and my own shew, however, that fresh-water fishes never contain pure nitrogen in their swimming bladders. (Humboldt et Provençal, sur la respiration des Poissons, in the Recueil d’Observ. de Zoologie, Vol. ii. p. 194-216.) In sea-fish as much as 0·80 of oxygen has been found, and according to Biot the purity of the air would appear to depend on the depth at which the fish live. (Mémoires de Physique et de Chimie de la Societé d’Arcueil, T. i. 1807, p. 252-281.)
[7] p. 8.—“The collected labours of united Lithophytes.”
Following Linnæus and Ellis, the calcareous zoophytes,—among which Madrepores, Meandrinæ, Astreæ, and Pocilloporæ, especially, produce wall-like coral-reefs,—are inhabited by living creatures which were long believed to be allied to the Nereids belonging to Cuvier’s Annelidæ. The anatomy of these gelatinous little creatures has been elucidated by the ingenious and extensive researches of Cavolini, Savigny, and Ehrenberg. We have learnt that in order to understand the entire organization of what are called the rock-building coral animals, the scaffolding which survives them, i. e., the layers of lime, which in the form of thin delicate plates or lamellæ are elaborated by vital functions, must not be regarded as something extraneous to the soft membranes of the food-receiving animal.
Besides the more extended knowledge of the wonderful formation of the animated coral stocks, there have been gradually established more accurate views respecting the influence exercised by corals on other departments of Nature,—on the elevation of groups of low islands above the level of the sea,—on the migrations of land-plants and the successive extension of the domains of particular Floras,—and, lastly, in some parts of the ocean, on the diffusion of races of men, and the spread of particular languages.
As minute organic creatures living in society, corals do indeed perform an important part in the general economy of Nature, although they do not, as was begun to be believed at the time of Cook’s voyages, enlarge continents and build up islands from fathomless depths of the ocean. They excite the liveliest interest, whether considered as subjects of physiology and of the study of the gradation of animal forms, or whether they are regarded in reference to their influence on the geography of plants and on the geological relations of the crust of the Earth. According to the great views of Leopold von Buch, the whole formation of the Jura consists of “large raised coral-banks of the ancient world surrounding the ancient mountain chains at a certain distance.”
In Ehrenberg’s Classification, (Abhandlungen der Akad. der Wiss. zu Berlin aus dem, J. 1882, S. 393-432) Coral-animals, (often improperly called, in English works, Coral-insects) are divided into two great classes: the single-mouthed Anthozoa, which are either free or capable of detaching themselves, being the animal-corals, Zoocorallia; and those in which the attachment is permanent and plant-like, being the Phyto-corals. To the first order, the Zoocorallia, belong the Hydras or Arm-polypi of Trembley, the Actiniæ decked with beautiful colours, and the mushroom-corals; to the second order or Phyto-corals belong the Madrepores, the Astræids, and the Ocellinæ. The Polypi of the second order are those which, by the cellular wave-defying ramparts which they construct, are the principal subject of the present note. These ramparts consist of an aggregate of coral trunks, which, however, do not instantly lose their common vitality as does a forest tree when cut down.
Every coral-trunk is a whole which has arisen by a formation of buds taking place according to certain laws, the parts of which the whole consists forming a number of organically distinct individuals. In the group of Phyto-corals these individuals cannot detach themselves at pleasure, but remain united with each other by thin plates of carbonate of lime. It is not, therefore, by any means the case that each trunk of coral has a central point of common vitality or life. (See Ehrenberg’s Memoir above referred to, S. 419.) The propagation of coral-animals takes place, in the one order, by eggs or by spontaneous division; and in the other order, by the formation of buds. It is the latter mode of propagation which, in the development of individuals, is the most rich in variety of form.
Coral-reefs, (according to the definition of Dioscorides, sea-plants, a forest of stone-trees, Lithodendra), are of three kinds;—coast reefs, called by the English “shore or fringing reefs,” which are immediately connected with the coasts of continents or islands, as almost all the coral banks of the Red Sea seen during an eighteen months’ examination by Ehrenberg and Hemprich;—“barrier-reefs,” “encircling-reefs,” as the great Australian barrier-reef on the north-east coast of New Holland, extending from Sandy Cape to the dreaded Torres Strait; and as the encircling-reefs surrounding the islands of Vanikoro (between the Santa Cruz group and the New Hebrides) and Poupynete (one of the Carolinas);—and lastly, coral banks enclosing lagoons, forming “Atolls” or “Lagoon-islands.” This highly natural division and nomenclature have been introduced by Charles Darwin, and are intimately connected with the explanation which that ingenious and excellent investigator of nature has given of the gradual production of these wonderful forms. As on the one hand Cavolini, Ehrenberg, and Savigny have perfected the scientific-anatomical knowledge of the organisation of coral-animals, so on the other hand the geographical and geological relations of coral-islands have been investigated and elucidated, first by Reinhold and George Forster in Cook’s Second Voyage, and subsequently, after a long interval, by Chamisso, Péron, Quoy and Gaimard, Flinders, Lütke, Beechey, Darwin, d’Urville, and Lottin.
The coral-animals and their stony cellular structures or scaffolding belong principally to the warm tropical seas, and the reefs are found more frequently in the Southern than in the Northern Hemisphere. The Atolls or Lagoon Islands are crowded together in what has been called the Coral-Sea, off the north-east coast of New Holland, including New Caledonia, the Salomon’s Islands, and the Louisiade Archipelago; in the group of the Low islands (Low Archipelago), eighty in number; in the Fidji, Ellice, and Gilbert groups; and in the Indian Ocean, on the north-east of Madagascar, under the name of the Atoll-group of Saya de Malha.
The great Chagos bank, of which the structure and rocks of dead coral have been thoroughly examined by Captain Moresby and by Powell, is so much the more interesting, because we may regard it as a continuation of the more northerly Laccadives and Maldives. I have already called attention elsewhere (Asie Centrale, T. i. p. 218), to the importance of the succession of these Atolls, running exactly in the direction of a meridian and continued as far as 7° south latitude, to the general system of mountains and the configuration of the earth’s surface in Central Asia. They form a kind of continuation to the great rampart-like mountain elevations of the Ghauts and the more northern chain of Bolor, to which correspond in the trans-Gangetic Peninsula the North and South Chains which are intersected near the great bend of the Thibetian Tzang-bo River by several transverse mountain systems running east and west. In this eastern peninsula are situated the chains of Cochin China, Siam, and Malacca which are parallel with each other, as well as those of Ava and Arracan which all, after courses of unequal length, terminate in the Gulfs or Bays of Siam, Martaban, and Bengal. The Bay of Bengal appears like an arrested attempt of nature to form an inland sea. A deep invasion of the ocean, between the simple western system of the Ghauts, and the eastern very complex trans-Gangetic system of mountains, has swallowed up a large portion of the low lands on the eastern side, but met with an obstacle more difficult to overcome in the existence of the extensive high plateau of Mysore.
Such an invasion of the ocean has occasioned two almost pyramidal peninsulas of very different dimensions, and differently proportioned in breadth and length; and the continuations of two mountain systems (both running in the direction of the meridian, i. e., the mountain system of Malacca on the east, and the Ghauts of Malabar on the west), shew themselves in submarine chains of mountains or symmetrical series of islands, on the one side in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands which are very poor in corals, and on the other side in the three long-extended groups or series of Atolls of the Laccadives, the Maldives, and Chagos. The latter series, called by navigators the Chagos-bank, forms a lagoon encircled by a narrow and already much broken, and in great measure submerged, coral reef. The longer and shorter diameters of this lagoon, or its length and breadth, are respectively 90 and 70 geographical miles. Whilst the enclosed lagoon is only from seventeen to forty fathoms deep, the depth of water at a small distance from the outer margin of the coral, (which appears to be gradually sinking), is such, that at half a mile no bottom was found in sounding with a line of 190 fathoms, and, at a somewhat greater distance, none with 210 fathoms. (Darwin, Structure of Coral Reefs, p. 39, 111, and 183.) At the coral lagoon called Keeling-Atoll, Captain Fitz-Roy, at a distance of only two thousand yards from the reef, found no soundings with 1200 fathoms.
“The corals which, in the Red Sea, form thick wall-like masses, are species of Meandrina, Astræa, Favia, Madrepora (Porites), Pocillopora (hemprichii), Millepora, and Heteropora. The latter are among the most massive, although they are somewhat branched. The corals which lie deepest below the surface of the water in this locality, and which, being magnified by the refraction of the rays of light, appear to the eye like the domes or cupolas of a cathedral or other large building, belong, so far as we were enabled to judge, to Meandrina and Astræa.” (Ehrenberg, manuscript notices.) It is necessary to distinguish between separate and in part free and detached polypifers, and those which form wall-like structures and rocks.
If we are struck with the great accumulation of building polypifers in some regions of the globe, it is not less surprising to remark the entire absence of their structures in other and often nearly adjoining regions. These differences must be determined by causes which have not yet been thoroughly investigated; such as currents, local temperature of the water, and abundance or deficiency of appropriate food. That certain thin-branched corals, with less deposit of lime on the side opposite to the opening of the mouth, prefer the repose of the interior of the lagoon, is not to be denied; but this preference for the unagitated water must not, as has too often been done (Annales des Sciences Naturelles, 1825, T. vi. p. 277), be regarded as a property belonging to the entire class. According to Ehrenberg’s experience in the Red Sea, that of Chamisso in the Atolls of the Marshall Islands east of the Caroline group, the observations of Captain Bird Allen in the West Indies, and those of Capt. Moresby in the Maldives, living Madrepores, Millepores, and species of Astræa and of Meandrina, can support the most violent action of the waves,—“a tremendous surf,”—(Darwin, Coral Reefs, pp. 63-65), and even appear to prefer the most stormy exposure. The living organic forces or powers regulating the cellular structure, which with age acquires the hardness of rock, resist with wonderful success the mechanical forces acting in the shock of the agitated water.
In the Pacific, the Galapagos Islands, and the whole Western Coast of America, are entirely without coral reefs, although so near to the many Atolls of the Low Islands, and the Archipelago of the Marquesas. This absence of corals might perhaps be ascribed to the presence of colder water, since we know that the coasts of Chili and Peru are washed by a cold current coming from the south and turning to the westward off Punta Parina, the temperature of which I found, in 1802, to be only 12°.5 Reaumur (60°.2 Fah.), while the undisturbed adjacent masses of water were from 22° to 23° Reaumur (81°.5 to 83°.8 Fah.); and there are also among the Galapagos small currents running between the islands, having a temperature of only 11°.7 Reaumur (58°.2 Fah.) But these lower temperatures do not extend farther to the north along the shores of the Pacific, and are not found upon the coasts of Guayaquil, Guatimala, and Mexico; nor does a low temperature prevail at the Cape de Verd Islands on the West Coast of Africa, or at the small islands of St. Paul (St. Paul’s rocks), or at St. Helena, Ascension, or San Fernando Noronha,—which yet are all without coral reefs.
While this absence of coral reefs appears to characterise the western coasts of Africa, America, and Australia, on the other hand such reefs abound on the eastern coasts of tropical America, of Africa, on the coasts of Zanzibar and Australia, and on that of New South Wales. The coral banks which I have chiefly had opportunities of observing are those of the interior of the Gulf of Mexico, and those to the south of the Island of Cuba, in what are called the “Gardens of the King and Queen” (Jardines y Jardinillos del Rey y de la Reyna). It was Columbus himself who, on his second voyage, in May 1494, gave that name to this little group of islands, because the agreeable mixture of the silver-leaved arborescent Tournefortia gnapholoides, flowering species of Dolichos, Avicennia nitida, and mangrove hedges, gave to the coral islands the appearance of a group of floating gardens. “Son Cayos verdes y graciosos llenos de arboledas,” says the Admiral. On the passage from Batabano to Trinidad de Cuba, I remained several days in these gardens, situated to the east of the larger island, called the Isla de Pinos, which is rich in mahogany trees: my stay was for the purpose of determining the longitude of the different keys (Cayos). The Cayo Flamenco, Cayo Bonito, Cayo de Diego Perez, and Cayo de piedras, are coral islands rising only from eight to fourteen inches above the level of the sea. The upper edge of the reef does not consist simply of blocks of dead coral; it is rather a true conglomerate, in which angular pieces of coral, cemented together with grains of quartz, are embedded. In the Cayo de piedras I saw such embedded pieces of coral measuring as much as three cubic feet. Several of the small West Indian coral islands have fresh water, a phenomenon which, wherever it presents itself, (for example, at Radak in the Pacific; see Chamisso in Kotzebue’s Entdeckungs-Reise, Bd. iii. S. 108), is deserving of examination, as it has sometimes been ascribed to hydrostatic pressure operating from a distant coast, (as at Venice, and in the Bay of Xagua east of Batabano), and sometimes to the filtration of rain water. (See my Essai politique sur l’Ile de Cuba, T. ii. p. 137.)
The living gelatinous investment of the stony calcareous part of the coral attracts fish, and even turtles, who seek it as food. In the time of Columbus the now unfrequented locality of the Jardines del Rey was enlivened by a singular kind of fishery, in which the inhabitants of the coasts of the Island of Cuba engaged, and in which they availed themselves of the services of a small fish. They employed in the capture of turtle the Remora, once said to detain ships (probably the Echeneis Naucrates), called in Spanish “Reves,” or reversed, because at first sight his back and abdomen are mistaken for each other. The remora attaches itself to the turtle by suction through the interstices of the indented and moveable cartilaginous plates which cover the head of the latter, and “would rather,” says Columbus, “allow itself to be cut in pieces than lose its hold.” The natives; therefore, attach a line, formed of palm fibres, to the tail of the little fish, and after it has fastened itself to the turtle draw both out of the water together. Martin Anghiera, the learned secretary of Charles V., says, “Nostrates piscem reversum appellant, quod versus venatur. Non aliter ac nos canibus gallicis per æquora campi lepores insectamur, illi (incolæ Cubæ insulæ) venatorio pisce pisces alios capiebant.” (Petr. Martyr, Oceanica, 1532, Dec. I. p. 9; Gomara, Hist. de las Indias, 1553, fol. xiv.) We learn by Dampier and Commerson that this piscatorial artifice, the employing a sucking-fish to catch other inhabitants of the water, is much practised on the East Coast of Africa, at Cape Natal and on the Mozambique Channel, and also in the Island of Madagascar. (Lacépède, Hist. nat. des Poissons, T. i. p. 55.) The same necessities combine with a knowledge of the habits of animals to induce the same artifices and modes of capture among nations who are entirely unconnected with each other.
Although, as we have already remarked, the zone included between 22 or 24 degrees of latitude on either side of the equator, appears to be the true region of the calcareous saxigenous lithophytes which raise wall-like structures, yet coral reefs are also found, favoured it is supposed by the warm current of the Gulf-stream, in lat. 32° 23´, at the Bermudas, where they have been extremely well described by Lieutenant Nelson. (Transactions of the Geological Society, 2d Series, 1837, Vol. V. Pt. i. p. 103.) In the southern hemisphere, corals, (Millepores and Cellepores), are found singly as far south as Chiloe, the Archipelago of Chonos, and Tierra de Fuego, in 53° lat.; and Retepores are even found in lat. 72½°.
Since the second voyage of Captain Cook there have been many defenders of the hypothesis put forward by him as well as by Reinhold and George Forster, according to which the low coral islands of the Pacific have been built up by living creatures from the depths of the bottom of the sea. The distinguished investigators of nature, Quoy and Gaimard, who accompanied Captain Freycinet in his voyage round the world in the frigate Uranie, were the first who ventured, in 1823, to express themselves with great boldness and freedom in opposition to the views of the two Forsters (father and son), of Flinders, and of Péron. (Annales des Sciences Naturelles, T. vi., 1825, p. 273.) “En appelant l’attention des naturalistes sur les animalcules des coraux, nous espérons démontrer que tout ce qu’on a dit ou cru observer jusqu’à ce jour relativement aux immenses travaux qu’il sont susceptibles d’exécuter, est le plus souvent inexact et toujours excessivement exagéré. Nous pensons que les coraux, loin d’élever des profondeurs de l’océan des murs perpendiculaires, ne forment que des couches ou des encroûtemens de quelques toises d’èpaisseur.” Quoy and Gaimard also propounded (p. 289) the conjecture that the Atolls, (coral walls enclosing a lagoon), probably owed their origin to submarine volcanic craters. Their estimate of the depth below the surface of the sea at which the animals which form the coral reefs (the species of Astræa, for example) could live, was doubtless too small, being at the utmost from 25 to 30 feet (26½ to 32 E.) An investigator and lover of nature who has added to his own many and valuable observations a comparison with those of others in all parts of the globe, Charles Darwin, places with greater certainty the depth of the region of living corals at 20 to 30 fathoms. (Darwin, Journal, 1845, p. 467; and the same writer’s Structure of Coral Reefs, p. 84-87; and Sir Robert Schomburgk, Hist. of Barbadoes, 1848, p. 636.) This is also the depth at which Professor Edward Forbes found the greatest number of corals in the Egean Sea: it is his “fourth region” of marine animals in his very ingenious memoir on the “Provinces of Depth” and the geographical distribution of Mollusca at vertical distances from the surface. (Report on Ægean Invertebrata in the Report of the 13th Meeting of the British Association, held at Cork in 1843, pp. 151 and 161.) The depths at which corals live would seem, however, to be very different in different species, and especially in the more delicate ones which do not form such large masses.
Sir James Ross, in his Antarctic Expedition, brought up corals with the sounding lead from great depths, and entrusted them to Mr. Stokes and Professor Forbes for more thorough examination. On the west of Victoria Land, near Coulman Island, in S. lat. 72° 31´, at a depth of 270 fathoms, Retepora cellulosa, a species of Hornera, and Prymnoa Rossii, were found quite fresh and living. Prymnoa Rossii is very analogous to a species found on the coast of Norway. (See Ross, Voyage of Discovery in the Southern and Antarctic Regions, vol. i. pp. 334 and 337.) In a similar manner in the high northern regions the whalers have brought up Umbellaria grænlandica, living, from depths of 236 fathoms. (Ehrenberg, in the Abhandl. der Berl. Akad. aus dem J. 1832, S. 430.) We find similar relations of species and situation among sponges, which, indeed, are now considered to belong rather to plants than to zoophytes. On the coasts of Asia Minor the common sponge is found by those engaged in the fishery at depths varying from 5 to 30 fathoms; whereas a very small species of the same genus is not found at a less depth than 180 fathoms. (Forbes and Spratt, Travels in Lycia, 1847, Vol. ii. p. 124.) It is difficult to divine the reason which prevents Madrepores, Meandrina, Astræa, and the entire group of tropical Phyto-corals which raise large cellular calcareous structures, from living in strata of water at a considerable depth below the surface of the sea. The diminution of temperature in descending takes place but slowly; that of light almost equally so; and the existence of numerous Infusoria at great depths shews that the polypifers would not want for food.
In opposition to the hitherto generally received opinion of the entire absence of organic life in the Dead Sea, it is deserving of notice that my friend and fellow labourer, M. Valenciennes, has received through the Marquis Charles de l’Escalopier, and also the French consul Botta, fine specimens of Porites elongata from the Dead Sea. This fact is the more interesting because this species is not found in the Mediterranean, but belongs to the Red Sea, which, according to Valenciennes, has but few organic forms in common with the Mediterranean. I have before remarked that in France a sea fish, a species of Pleuronectes, advances far up the rivers into the interior of the country, thus becoming accustomed to gill-respiration in fresh water; so we find that the coral-animal above spoken of, the Porites elongata of Lamarck, has a not less remarkable flexibility of organisation, since it lives in the Dead Sea, which is over-saturated with salt, and in the open ocean near the Seychelle Islands. (See my Asie Centrale, T. ii. p. 517.)
According to the most recent chemical analyses made by the younger Silliman, the genus Porites, as well as many other cellular polypifers, (Madrepores, Andræas, and Meandrinas of Ceylon and the Bermudas), contain, besides 92-95 per cent. of carbonate of lime and magnesia, some fluoric and phosphoric acids. (See p. 124-131 of “Structure and Classification of Zoophytes,” by James Dana, Geologist of the United States’ Exploring Expedition, under the command of Captain Wilkes.) The presence of fluorine in the solid parts of polypifers reminds us of the fluorate of lime in the bones of fishes, according to the experiments of Morechini and Gay Lussac at Rome. Silex is only found mixed in very small quantity with fluorate and phosphate of lime in coral stocks; but a coral-animal allied to the Horn-coral, Gray’s Hyalonema, has an axis of pure fibres of silex resembling a queue or braided tress of hair. Professor Forchhammer, who has been lately engaged in a thorough analysis of the sea-water from the most different parts of the globe, finds the quantity of lime in the Caribbean Sea remarkably small, being only 247 parts in ten thousand, while in the Categat it amounts to 371 parts in ten thousand. He is disposed to attribute this difference to the many coral-banks among the West Indian Islands, which appropriate the lime, and lower the per centage remaining in the sea-water. (Report of the 16th Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held in 1846, p. 91.)
Charles Darwin has developed in a very ingenious manner the probable genetic connection between fringing or shore-reefs, island-encircling reefs, and lagoon-islands, i. e., narrow ring-shaped reefs enclosing interior lagoons. According to his views these three varieties of form are dependent on the oscillating condition of the bottom of the sea, or on periodic elevations and subsidences. The hypothesis which has been several times put forward, according to which the closed ring or annular form of the coral-reefs in Atolls or Lagoon Islands marks the configuration of a submarine volcano, the structure having been raised on the margin of the crater, is opposed by their great dimensions, the diameters of many of them being 30, 40, and sometimes even 60 geographical miles. Our fire-emitting mountains have no such craters; and if we would compare the lagoon, with its submerged interior and narrow enclosing reef, to one of the annular mountains of the moon, we must not forget that those lunar mountains are not volcanoes, but wall-surrounded districts. According to Darwin, the process of formation is the following:—He supposes a mountainous island surrounded by a coral-reef, (a “fringing reef” attached to the shore), to undergo subsidence: the “fringing reef” which subsides with the island is continually restored to its level by the tendency of the coral-animals to regain the surface of the sea, and becomes thus, as the island gradually sinks and is reduced in size, first an “encircling reef” at some distance from the included islet, and subsequently, when the latter has entirely disappeared, an atoll. According to this view, in which islands are regarded as the culminating points of a submerged land, the relative positions of the different coral islands would disclose to us that which we could hardly learn by the sounding line, concerning the configuration of the land which was above the surface of the sea at an earlier epoch. The entire elucidation of this attractive subject, (to the connection of which with the migrations of plants and the diffusion of races of men attention was called at the commencement of the present note), can only be hoped for when inquirers shall have succeeded in obtaining greater knowledge than is now possessed of the depth and the nature of the rocks on which the lowest strata of the dead corals rest.