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Show 1887.] COLLECTION FROM CHRISTMAS ISLAND. 509 The shore cliffs are almost continuous, making the island inaccessible except at a few places. These cliffs are split by deep fissures, extending several feet below water ; where these have become enlarged and the adjacent cliffs have fallen in, a small white beach of fragmentary rock is thrown up, and at such places on the lee side landing can be effected. From the blown direction of the trees on the south side, and from the weather-worn aspect of rocks exposed to the southward, it is manifest that the south-eastern is by far the most prevailing wind. The north side of the island forms a large bight in which the water is quite smooth, so that a boat can go close up to the cliffs, but on the southern and eastern sides a heavy sea dashes against the rocks. The ' Flying-Fish ' steamed close round the island looking for anchorage, but found none except in a small cove two miles to the westward of the north point of the island ; this has been named ' Flying-Fish ' cove; here she anchored in 22 fathoms, with her stern secured by hawser to the trees to prevent her slipping off the bank. The hill rises nearly perpendicularly at the head of the cove iu the form of a horseshoe, and slopes gradually down to the two arms forming the cove. The bare beach is not more than 20 yards wide, and from the look of the fragments that compose it must be thrown up in northerly gales; the upper part of the beach to the foot of the hill, a distance of some hundred yards, is of just the same material, viz. fragments of coral-rock and coral-limestone, but it has a covering of mould from fallen leaves, and is thickly wooded, many of the trees on it being forest trees of 12 feet girth and 300 feet high, apparently hundreds of years of age, showing that a very long time must have elapsed since that beach was raised from the water. One very large tree had something like the letters W W cut inside a scroll, and nearly illegible from time ; this was the only sign of the island having been visited before. One of our officers beard at Batavia that a Dutch vessel was wrecked on the south-east point of the island in a calm about fifteen years ago, and that the crew escaped and lived many mouths on the island before they were taken off, but I have no other details about the affair. No running water was seen, but the droppings from the leaves during rain and dew must be great, as holes in the rocks and cup-shaped leaves were filled with water. As it was raining over some part of the island (generally the western) during a great part of the time the 'Flying-Fish' was in the neighbourhood, and clouds were continually being formed over the island from the moist air driven up the side by the south-east wind, a great deal of water must be deposited, and probably be absorbed by the soil. At the eastern end of the cove among the trees, where had seemed at first the most likely place for a water-course, a few volcanic stones were found ; but everywhere else the only rock seen was coral-limestone, the cliffs above, from which detached pieces had fallen to the beach, were the same ; the soil under the trees was a rich moist mould, apparently formed from decaying vegetation. PROC. ZOOL. Soc.-1887, No. XXXIV. 34 |