and the loose ends are led into the shells of the cockle, placed underneath.  By these slips, the rain which runs down the branches and stem of the tree, is conducted into the shells, and fills them at every considerable shower; and as each shell will contain two or three pints, forty or fifty thus placed under different trees will supply a good number of men.  A pair of these cockle shells, bleached in the sun, weighed a hundred and one pounds; but still they were much inferior in size to some I have since seen.

The fruit of the pandanus, as it is used by these Indians and by the natives of Terra Australis, affords very little nourishment.  They suck the bottom part of the drupes, or separated nuts, as we do the leaves of the artichoke; but the quantity of pulp thus obtained, is very small, and to my taste, too astringent to be agreeable.  In the third volume of the Asiatic Researches, the fruit of the pandanus is described as furnishing, under the name of Mellori, an important article of food to the inhabitants of the Nicobar Islands; and in Mauritius, one of these species is planted for its long and fibrous leaves, of which sacks, mats, and bags for coffee and cotton are in a made.

This little island, or rather the surrounding reef, which is three or four miles long, affords shelter from the south-east winds; and being at a moderate day’s run from Murray’s Isles, it forms a convenient anchorage for the night to a ship passing through Torres’ Strait:  I named it Half-way Island.  It is scarcely more than a mile in circumference, but appears to be increasing both in elevation and extent.  At no very distant period of time, it was one of those banks produced by the washing up of sand and broken coral, of which most reefs afford instances, and those of Torres’ Strait a great many.  These banks are in different stages of progress:  some, like this, are become islands, but not yet habitable; some are above high-water mark, but destitute of vegetation; whilst others are overflowed with every returning tide.

It seems to me, that when the animalcules which form the corals at the bottom of the ocean, cease to live, their structures adhere to each other, by virtue either of the glutinous remains within, or of some property in salt water; and the interstices being gradually filled up with sand and broken pieces of coral washed by the sea, which also adhere, a mass of rock is at length formed.  Future races of these animalcules erect their habitations upon the rising bank, and die in their turn to increase, but principally to elevate, this monument of their wonderful labours.  The care taken to work perpendicularly in the early stages, would mark a surprising instinct in these diminutive creatures.  Their wall of coral, for the most part in situations where the winds are constant, being arrived at the surface, affords a shelter, to leeward of which their infant colonies may be safely sent forth; and to this their instinctive foresight it seems to