'white horse,' as they calls the carcase along of the white skin of his under parts.

"So, as it seemed we wasn't over lucky, which more nor one of the crew set down all along of striking our first fish of a Friday, our skipper made all taut, and set sail again for Hobart Town, which we reached in due time with no more adventures. We made some pretty tidy pickings out of that there cruise with they lot of whales, and lived ashore very comfortable while our money lasted, which I made go further nor most on 'em, as I were never much given to drinking and such like, whereby a sailor's hard-earned money goes too free. I married a quiet, tidy sort of woman, and rigged up a nice little state cabin ashore for her, where we lived very cosy as long as the money lasted; and when that were out I went to sea again, as most sailors do, for she were able to get along well enough till I come back again,'

'Here, too, were living flowers,
Which, like a bud compacted,
Their purple cups contracted,

And now in open blossoms spread,

Stretched like green anthers many a seeking head.
And arborets of jointed stone were there,

And plants of fibres, fine as silkworm's thread,
Yea, beautiful as mermaids' golden hair

Upon the waves dispread;

Others that, like the long banana growing,

Raised their long wrinkled leaves of purple hue,
Like streamers wide outflowing.

Trees of the deep, and shrubs, and fruits, and flowers,
As fair as ours!'

SOUTHEY.

AM now going to speak of coral fishing,' said the shell, and will repeat the narrative of Toniotto, a Sicilian sailor, who formed one of your Uncle David's crew at the time I am speaking of, and filled the post of sailmaker,

in which art he was a neat adept. His early life was spent in his native island as a coral fisher, and he only left it when the restless desire of moving, so common to all men, seized him and made him a wanderer on distant seas.

'Before I relate his story, however, I must try and tell you a little about the corals of the Pacific, my own part of the world. I only wish I could show you the living glory of a coral reef, such as my native home, for words are but feeble to describe it. The corals, as you call them-the pretty white tubes and frills, that look like the contents of a laundress's basket turned suddenly to stone-are but the dead, dull cases of the living blossoms that once inhabited them, and to me they are but wretched skeletons of the dead past. And yet you are right to admire them, for their organ-like pipes and graceful branches are very beautiful, and mimic the trees, shrubs, and plants of the earth as faithfully as the frost on the window-panes, except that the corals endure. And these elegant sprays are all the work of the small coral polyp—a minute creature, that first floats at random in the stormy billows of the Pacific Sea-a living, free atom, that finally settles down to its work-tiny as to the individual, but gigantic as to the species, for these little builders raise inch by inch their strong erections to the surface of the

sea. Inch by inch they lay their foundations in the midst of the restless ocean, until they form shore reefs, which are natural breakwaters against the long oceanic rollers, or barrier reefs, which are like stone girdles round the beautiful palm - fringed islands they enclose, or atolls or lagoon islands. These last are the production of these tiny creatures themselves, when they form an irregularly shaped ring of coral; then the vegetation increases from stray seeds wafted by the winds or birds, and the centre, guarded by its encircling coral reef and green palm fringes, becomes a pellucid lake. Such are the results of these small architects as seen by the human eye; and beautiful they are.

'But if you could dive, as I used to do when my master drew in his sails and oars, and sank down to our coral reef, you would indeed say as I do, that the blossoms of earth are rivalled, and outrivalled sometimes, by the flowers of the deep sea. Then you would behold these pale, stony skeletons clothed in their glowing, living flesh, of all imaginable hues and shades-the very tints of the rainbow-with their plumed anthers and feathery fringes waving gracefully, as if an incessant breeze pervaded the still blue depths of their ocean home. Starry flowers, numberless, of different colours, blossom from every tiny orifice of the white calcareous branches, in as

great profusion as do the unheeded daisies and gold-cups of a meadow. And as the blooms of earth have their winged visitors and robbers, in bird, butterfly, and bee, so do our sea flowers possess their wooers and marauders in the uncounted hosts of fishes that, borne on delicate gauzy fins, cleave the clear, bright waters as rapidly and dexterously as their feathered likenesses do the air, and shine in equally varied hues, enhanced by the brilliant metallic lustre of their shining scales.

'Some of them-for instance, the tribe of parrotfish-being armed with a beak, are enabled to feed easily on the young crisp sea buds and brittle branchlets, as their namesakes of earth do on the tender sprouts of the trees and shrubs. The humble, crawling beetles and spiders of the land find their counterparts in the sea-urchins, sea-stars, and varied crustaceans that crawl about among the delicate alabaster pinnacles and spires of the coral workers.

'The corals of the Pacific are not sought after as articles of commerce, being mostly valued as specimens and curiosities, and very rarely fashioned into ornaments, like the rosy productions of the Mediterranean. The savage natives of the Pacific Isles use them principally as rough substitutes for files and rasps, to supply the place of iron, to which, of course, they are greatly inferior. A very fine and