rres Straits. They remained thus occupied till
the beginning of 1845, when they sailed for Europe, and anchored at
Spithead in June 1845, after an absence of three years.

The result of those investigations was, a large accession to our
previous knowledge of the sea to the eastward of Australia, now become
important from our settlements; and a survey of five hundred miles of
the great chain of coral reefs which act as the breakwater against the
ocean.

We have heard much of coral islands, certainly the most curious means
of increasing the habitable part of the world; in fact, a new insect
manufacture of islands. They are of all sizes. We give the description
of a small one of this order in the Capricorn Group, an assemblage of
islands and reefs on the north-east coast of Australia, so called from
the parallel of the Tropic of Capricorn passing through them.

"The beach was composed of coarse fragments of worn corals and
shells bleached by the weather. At the back of it, a ridge of the
same materials four or five feet high, and as many yards across,
completely encircled the Island, which was not a quarter of a mile
in diameter. Inside this regular ridge was a small sandy plain.
The encircling ridge was occupied by a belt of small trees, while
on the plain grew only a short scrubby vegetation, a foot or two
in height. Some vegetable soil was found, a few inches in
thickness, the result of the decomposition of vegetable matter and
birds' dung. On the weather side of the island was a coral reef of
two miles in diameter, enclosing a shallow lagoon. In this lagoon
were both sharks and turtles swimming about. The island was
stocked with sea-fowl, and the trees were loaded with their
nests."

It was a sort of bird-paradise, into which the foot of man, the
destroyer, had probably never entered before.

There is considerable beauty in a small coral reef, when seen from a
ship's mast-head, at a short distance, in clear weather. A small
island with a white sand-beach and a tuft of trees, is surrounded by a
symmetrically oval space of shallow water, of a bright grass-green
colour, enclosed by a ring of glittering surf as white as snow;
immediately outside of which is the rich dark blue of deep water. All
the sea is perfectly clear from any mixture of sand or mud. It is this
perfect clearness of the water which renders navigation among coral
reefs at all practicable; as a