to powder, thereby
producing the lime with which the betelnut is mixed for chewing, as
well as employing it in the mortar used for building purposes. Among
these coral reefs one may see at any stage of the tide, when the sea
is calm, a similar display to that which delights the visitor at
Nassau, in the Bahamas,--submarine gardens, where various colored
animate and inanimate objects (if we may thus signify the difference
between animal and vegetable life), such as curiously shaped fish,
shells, and rainbow-hued anemone, form beneath the sea kaleidoscopic
pictures. Conspicuous among other varieties one sees the blue medusa,
twelve inches and more in diameter. Here also is the curious
globefish, with its balloon-like body and prickly hide. The clear
waters of the Indian Ocean show the bottom, lying four or five fathoms
below the surface, in charming colors and forms, like a well-arranged
flower garden, hedged about by strange water plants. The floor of the
sea, so to speak, is here studded with highly colored coralines and
zoophytes. The observer will see swimming near the surface the queer
"flower parrot," so called, a fish having horizontal bands of silver,
blue, carmine, and green, with patches here and there of vivid yellow.
Verily, these Ceylon fishes display an oriental love of color. So
strong was the light from above that the hull of our small rowboat
cast its dark shadow fathoms deep upon the clear, white, sandy bottom.

These attractive marine spots where orange-yellow and emerald-green
mingle with ruby-red, and which are called coral gardens, we have
never seen surpassed, and only equaled in beauty of effect at Nassau.
The enchanting marine fauna and flora of the Indian Ocean are indeed
marvelous to one accustomed only to the cold, sandy ocean-bed of
northern latitudes. About three fourths of all kinds of seaweed are
now classed as animal, like the sponge, the coral, and the
sea-anemones; only one fourth are vegetable. Professor Rene Bache
tells us that the most thickly populated tropical jungle does not
compare in wealth of animal and vegetable life with a coral reef. On
the continental slopes, long stretches of bottom are actually carpeted
with brilliantly colored creatures closely packed together amid
forests of seaweeds.

There is so slight a rise and fall of the tide on the coast of Ceylon
that it is scarcely perceptible, never exceeding four feet and rarely
over three, but there are certain strong curr