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Show ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 273 the Cayo de Piedras I saw such embedded pieces of coral measuring as much as three cubic feet. Several of the small West Indian coral islands have fresh water, a phenomenon which, wherever it presents it elf (for example, at Radak in the Pacific; see Chamisso in Kotzebue's Entdeckungs-Reise, bd. iii. s. 108), is deserving of examination, as it has sometimes been ascribed to hydrostatic pressure operating from a distant coast (as at Venice, and the Bay of Xagua east of Batabano), and sometimes to the filtration of rain water. (See my Essai politique sur l'Ile de Cuba, t. ii. p. 137.) The living gelatinous investment of the stony calcareous part of the coral attracts fish, and even turtles, who seek it as food. In the time of Columbus, the now unfrequented locality of the J ardines del Rey was enlivened by a singular kind of fishery, in which the inhabitants of the coasts of the Island of Cuba engaged, and in which they availed themselves of the services of small fish. They employed in the capture of turtle the Remora, once said to detain ships (probably Echeneis Naucrates), called in Spanish "Reves," or reversed, because at first sight his back and abdomen are mistaken for each other. The Remora attaches itselfto the turtle by suction through the interstices of the indented and movable cartilaginous plates which cover the head of the latter, and" would rather," says Columbus, " allow itself to be cut in pieces than loose its hold." The natives, therefore, attach a line, formed of palm fibres, to the tail of the little fish, and after it has fastened itself to the turtle draw both out of the water together. Martin Anghiera, the learned secretary of Charles V., says "Nostrates piscem reversum appellant, quod versus venatur. Non aliter ac nos canibus gallicis per requora campi lepores insectamur, illi (incolre Oubre insulre) venatorio pisce pisces alios capiebant." (Petr. Martyr, Oceanica, 1532, dec. i. p. 9 j Gomara, Hist. de las Indias, 1553, fol. xiv.) We learn by Dampier and Commerson that this piscatorial artifice, the employing a sucking fish to catch other inhabitants of the water, is much practised on the East Coast of Africa, at Cape Natal and on the Mozambique Channel, and also in the Island of Madagascar. (Lacepede, Hist. nat. des. Poissons, t. i. p. 55.) The same necessities combine with a knowledge of the habits of animals to induce the |