The island has no domestic quadruped, excepting the pig, and the main vegetable production is the cocoanut. On the cocoanut, also, the pigs, which are loaded with fat, almost entirely subsist, as do the ducks and poultry. Even a huge landcrab is furnished by nature with the means to open and feed on this most useful production. The ringformed reef of the lagoonisland is surmounted in the greater part of its length by linear islets. On the northern or leeward side, there is an opening through which vessels can pass to the anchorage within. The shallow, clear, and still water of the lagoon, resting in its greater part on white sand, is, when illumined by a vertical sun, of the most vivid green. This brilliant expanse, several miles in width, is on all sides divided, either by a line of snowwhite breakers from the dark heaving waters of the ocean, or from the blue vault of heaven by the strips of land, crowned by the level tops of the cocoanut trees. As a white cloud here and there affords a pleasing contrast with the azure sky, so in the lagoon, bands of living coral darken the emerald green water. Excepting near the lagoon, where there is some sand, the land is entirely composed of rounded fragments of coral. In such a loose, dry, stony soil, the climate of the intertropical regions alone could produce a vigorous vegetation. A beach of glittering white sand formed a border to these fairy spots. I will now give a sketch of the natural history of these islands, which, from its very paucity, possesses a peculiar interest. Besides the trees, the number of plants is exceedingly limited, and consists of insignificant weeds. The latter is a solitary tree of its kind, and grows near the beach, where, without doubt, the one seed was thrown up by the waves. I do not include in the above list the sugarcane, banana, some other vegetables, fruittrees, and imported grasses. As the islands consist entirely of coral, and at one time must have existed as mere waterwashed reefs, all their terrestrial productions must have been transported here by the waves of the sea. Keating, who resided twelve months on these islands, of the various seeds and other bodies which have been known to have been washed on shore. All the hardy seeds, such as creepers, retain their germinating power, but the softer kinds, among which is the mangostin, are destroyed in the passage. From the direction, however, of the winds and currents, it seems scarcely possible that they could have come here in a direct line.