Shoals of fish, as we advanced, rose up before us like snipe in a bog. These fish were of the monoptera genus, having no other fin than the tail. I recognised the Javanese, a true serpent, about three feet long, which might easily be mistaken for the conger, without the line of gold on his sides. Amongst the stromatas, whose bodies are very compressed and oval-shaped, I observed “parus” of brilliant colours, with scythe-like dorsal fin, an eatable fish, and which, when dried and salted, makes an excellent food called karawade; there were tranquebars that belong to the apsiphoroïdes, the bodies of which are covered with a scaly protection.
Meantime the light increased as the sun rose higher in the heavens. The nature of the ground changed by degrees. A regular causeway succeeded to the fine firm sand, and the stones were clothed with a carpet of molluscs and zoophytes. Amid the specimens of these two branches, I remarked the placones, with thin and unequal shells, a sort of ostracea peculiar to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean; some orange lucinæ with orbicular shells, and many other interesting varieties, panopines, oculines, &c. In the midst of these living plants, and beneath the hydrophytes, lay legions of articulates, chiefly the raniæ dentalæ, the carapace of which make a slightly rounded triangle. A hideous animal, and one I have encountered many times, was the enormous crab observed by Mr. Darwin, on which nature has bestowed the instinct and strength necessary to live upon cocoa-nuts. It ascends the trees on the beach, knocks off the nuts, which are cracked by the fall, and it then “prizes” them open with its powerful claws. Here beneath these transparent waves this animal moves with incredible velocity. Towards seven o’clock we reached, the oyster-beds, on which the pearl-oysters reproduce themselves by
