in the more solid parts raised to the height of one hundred and sixty or one hundred and seventy feet, has any appearance of lava been detected. In the smell of the vapour or steam thrown out, one of the bystanders observes, there was not even the slightest symptom of its being impregnated with sulphur, and the white steam was charged only with carburetted hydrogen gas. Mr. Osborne, the surgeon of the Ganges, who was on shore, states the substance of the island to be chiefly ashes, the pulverized remains of coal, deprived of its bitumen, iron, scoriæ, and a kind of ferruginous clay -no trace whatever of lava, no terra puzzolana, no pumice stone, no shells or other marine remains, usually found at Etna and Vesuvius. A short account of this new island is inserted in the miscellaneous matter of the Journal,' and a very striking lithographic view, taken at the height of the eruption. While noticing this island, it may be mentioned as a remarkable circumstance, that on the 28th June, about a fortnight before the new island burst forth, Admiral Sir Pulteney Malcolm, in the Britannia, passed over the position nearly which it now occupies, and experienced several shocks as if the ship had struck on a sandbank; and it is further observed in the short account given in the Geographical Journal,' that a tradition is current at Malta, that a volcano burst out on the same spot about the commencement of the last century. In a chart of the Mediterranean, published some time ago, by Faden, is laid down a shoal, with only four fathoms on it, named 'Larmour's Breakers,' within a mile of the spot occupied by the present volcanic island. It is part of this shoal lifted up, but no melted matter had been ejected by the latest accounts. It is only, perhaps, one of the vents or safety-valves of that subterranean furnace, which heaves out its melted lava through the great chimnies of Ætna and Vesuvius. We have not heard whether either or both of these were in a state of activity at the time.

Volcanoes are undoubtedly among the most powerful instruments by which changes of the earth's surface have been effected; but none of these changes are more remarkable, and, until of late years, less regarded, than those portions of the ocean which have been raised to the surface, or just below the surface, as we have assumed, by volcanic action, and subsequently converted into productive land, by the creative powers of animals so minute and so insignificant, as scarcely to occupy a place in the classification of the great system of Nature. We know but little of their physical economy, or of the means they employ in fabricating their gigantic piles, an operation which, for want of a better word, we designate as instinct, or, as John Hunter more forcibly expressed it, the stimulus of necessity;' by their works only we know them. That these minute gelatinous worms should

6

should have created thousands of islands and millions of acres of land, in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, especially in the two latter, would seem almost incredible, were it not that they may at any time, and at all times, be, and frequently have been, caught in the fact of creating and continually adding to those innumerable islands and reefs that are strewed over these seas. When it is known that these fine tubes of calcareous matter, that constitute coral rock in all its varied shapes and modifications, can at any time be drawn up from below the surface in a state of imperfect induration, and so soft, indeed, as to be flexible, and that they are hardened into stone as life in these little animals becomes extinct, there is no ground left for doubting what their occupations were while alive. As little reason is there to doubt that coral reefs and islands are incessantly increasing in number and extent; but the progress is necessarily so slow, the observations that have been made are so few, and of such recent date, and it is so rare that the same observer has an opportunity, after a long interval, of repeating his observations, that few facts have yet been procured to establish this point. It is generally believed, however, that the immense beds of coral that surround the Bermudas have considerably approached the surface of the sea within the memory of man.

It would be well worth the trouble of the Geographical Society to draw up a set of questions to be distributed to navigators, especially those who are in the habit of visiting the Indian seas, and to request them to procure specimens of the various kinds of coral formations, as also, as far as this may be practicable, of the substrata on which these rest. There is one particular spot, which is, in our opinion, more than any other, worthy of being minutely examined ;-this is the immense groupe of the Maldive islands; in point of extent and number congregated into one cluster, they are, perhaps, among these wonderful fabrics, the most wonderful. The old Mahometan traveller, Batoota, who visited them in the thirteenth century, and calls them Zobyt-elMahal, says they constitute one of the wonders of the world; that their number is about two thousand, about one hundred of which are so close to each other as to form a sort of ring. The two Mahomedan travellers, who visited China in the ninth century, estimate them at one thousand nine hundred. Marco Polo was told that their number was not less than twelve thousand seven hundred; Linschoten, the Dutch navigator, calls them eleven thousand. Davis, the distinguished navigator, who so often attempted the discovery of the north-west passage, saw them in 1598, and was quite unable to count them, so great was their number, but he was told they were reckoned at eleven thousand. A Frenchman

A Frenchman of the name of Peyrard de Laval, who was shipwrecked upon them in 1602, and kept a prisoner there for five years, says, that they were governed by Sultan Ibrahim, who styled himself Sovereign of the thirteen provinces or atolls, and the twelve thousand islands.'

These provinces are so many groups or systems, with deep channels between them, and are composed of reefs and islets, with circular or oval lagoons in their centres, each communicating by a single opening with the sea. The whole of this immense field of coral extends from lat. 1° S., to 74° N., being nearly six hundred English miles, with a breadth of about seventy or eighty. They are almost wholly covered with cocoa-nut trees, which afford the means of supporting a large population with every necessary of life. We know of no subject to which the Geographical Society could better appropriate the king's premium, than for the best Essay on the formation of coral reefs, and the natural history of the animals that construct them.

The next paper we shall notice is a Memoir on the Voyage of His Majesty's Ship Blonde in the Black Sea, by the Rev. Edmund Goodenough, Dean of Wells.' The doctor observes, that of all the waters of the deep which have been penetrated by the enterprise of British sailors, there are none so little known to us, by actual observation, as the Black Sea.' In the times of Queen Elizabeth and Charles II., British merchantmen were permitted to navigate the Euxine for the purposes of commerce, yet the most copious naval histories of our country do not afford a single instance of a ship of war, antecedent to the short excursion made by his Majesty's ship Blonde, in November, 1829, having been permitted to navigate the Euxine.' This little expedition must therefore be considered at least as curious; and though, as Dr. Goodenough says, the facts of the voyage may be few, yet simple as they are, they form a feature in our naval history which we cannot elsewhere find throughout its range;' in the paucity of our information, relative to the actual state of the shores of the Black Sea, they are worth recording; and taken in connexion with the different periods of the Greek and Roman settlements in this sea, they cannot but possess a very considerable interest for the geographer.'

To inquire into the state of this sea, as recorded by ancient writers, and compare it, as we now find it, with their accounts, is one principal object of Doctor Goodenough's paper. He commences with a brief notice of some of the transactions and settlements of the ancients on the shores of this sea, which however small its importance in modern European history, was to them a place of much resort, the scene of some of the earliest

adventures

adventures of their poetical history, an ample field for their favou rite practice of colonization, and the emporium from which they procured many of the luxuries and necessaries of life.'

Neither the barbarians of the western or northern shores, nor the Asiatic potentates on its southern and eastern banks, could exercise dominion over the Euxine; yet they who have held Constantinople and its canal have at all times, from their geographical position, possessed the greatest influence over its navigation and commerce; and although this very position, and the facility which it afforded of exacting tribute from foreign merchants, have sometimes exposed the city to hostile attacks, yet it has much more frequently, from the same cause, been the object of courteous attention on the part of foreign powers, even when, as at present, the military character of its inhabitants may have sunk below mediocrity. Byzantium, says Polybius, writing about one hundred and fifty years before Christ, occupies a position as remarkable for its excellence in regard to the sea, as for its badness in respect to the land; and without her will no merchant can sail either to or from the Euxine. The Byzantines are therefore masters of that branch of commerce; and it is through them that the articles, for the supply of which the Euxine is celebrated, are brought into the markets of the Mediterranean; and these he states to be cattle and slaves of the best description, honey, wax, and salt fish. The trade in corn does not appear to have been then, as now, one exclusively of export from the Black Sea; but alternately of import and export, according, no doubt, to the seasons, and the state of demand under the various latitudes. In a fragment of Polybius, quoted by Athenæus (lib. vi. cap. 21.), we find mention again made of the export of salt fish from the Euxine. It was one of the foreign luxuries introduced at Rome which drew down the indignation of Cato the censor, who complained that the Roman citizens would purchase a jar or small barrel of the salted or pickled fish of the Euxine, perhaps our caviare among the rest, at the price of three hundred drachms (something under 107.), and comely youths for slaves at a cost greater than that of an estate. Many anecdotes, indeed, that rival the wit and goût even of the celebrated Almanach des Gourmands, may be found in Athenæus, with regard to the salt fish and the tunny of the Euxine; where Archestratus, who made a gastronomic tour of the world, is made to tell his brother epicures, in the Homeric vein, that, dressed after a particular fashion, they are

ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσι φυὴν τε καὶ εἶδος ὁμοῖαι·

And, to be serious, the constant recurrence of the figure of a fish on the coins of the Greek cities on this sea, as well as of a fish-hook on those of Byzantium, is sufficient to show us what a value was set upon this source of wealth.'-pp. 103, 104.

The excursion of the Blonde tends to prove that the Euxine has not materially, if at all, diminished in depth; though such an effect might very naturally have been looked for, in consequence

of

of the great quantities of mud and silt which, for ages, have constantly been carried down by the numerous large streams that empty themselves into the Euxine and the Palus Mæotis or Sea of Azof,-the Boristhenes or Dneiper, the Dniester, the Danube, the Sakarin, the Kizêlermak, the Phasis, the Kouban, and the Don.

The ancients did not overlook the probable consequences of this perpetual accession of mud into this great inland sea; and Polybius in particular reasoned very logically on the subject. Dr. Goodenough observes,

It is remarkable that Polybius, an historian and geographer of no small experience and ability, and one who prided himself upon taking his facts from actual observation rather than from report, hazards the prediction that the Euxine was destined to be choked up, and to become unfit for navigation, if not absolutely dry land; and that too not at a remote or indefinite period, but speedily (raxis) after the time at which he wrote. The manner at which he arrives at this conclusion is sufficiently curious. Whenever, he says, an infinite cause operates upon a finite object, however small may be the action of the cause, it must at last prevail. Now, the basin of the Black Sea is finite, while the time during which the rivers flow into it, either directly or through the Sea of Azof, bringing with them their alluvial deposit, is infinite; and should it only, therefore, be a little that they bring, the result described must ultimately come to pass. But when we consider how great the accumulation is from the numerous streams that empty themselves into this basin-that is, how powerful and active is the operation of the cause-then it is manifest that not only at some indefinite time, but speedily, what has been said will come to pass. He then strengthens his position so assumed, by

stating, that according to all tradition, the Palus Mæotis, having been formerly a salt sea, conjoined, as it were, in the same basin (uppous) with the Euxine, had then become a fresh water lake, of no greater depth of water than from five to seven fathoms, and no longer therefore navigable for large ships without the assistance of a pilot; and he further instances, as an evidence of the progress of his cause, the great bank (rawia) which appears in his time to have existed off the mouths of the Danube, of which we shall afterwards have occasion to speak.

Now, without going back to the question of the flood of Deucalion, or the supposed bursting of the waters through the canal of Constantinople, and the consequent lowering of all above it, we may remark, that with regard to the Palus Mæotis, or Sea of Azof, it certainly appears from the statement of Captain Jones of the Royal Navy, who was at Taganrog in 1823, that in the neighbourhood of that placethat is, near the mouth of the Don-the water is exceedingly shallow, varying from ten to three feet, according to the direction of the wind; and that although in south-west winds, when the water is highest, it

becomes