Page:Aspects of nature in different lands and different climates; with scientific elucidations (IA b29329668 0002).pdf/80

 *[Footnote: *sons, T. i. p. 55.) The same necessities combine with a knowledge of the habits of animals to induce the same artifices and modes of capture among nations who are entirely unconnected with each other.

Although, as we have already remarked, the zone included between 22 or 24 degrees of latitude on either side of the equator, appears to be the true region of the calcareous saxigenous lithophytes which raise wall-like structures, yet coral reefs are also found, favoured it is supposed by the warm current of the Gulf-stream, in lat. 32° 23´, at the Bermudas, where they have been extremely well described by Lieutenant Nelson. (Transactions of the Geological Society, 2d Series, 1837, Vol. V. Pt. i. p. 103.) In the southern hemisphere, corals, (Millepores and Cellepores), are found singly as far south as Chiloe, the Archipelago of Chonos, and Tierra de Fuego, in 53° lat.; and Retepores are even found in lat. 72-1/2°.

Since the second voyage of Captain Cook there have been many defenders of the hypothesis put forward by him as well as by Reinhold and George Forster, according to which the low coral islands of the Pacific have been built up by living creatures from the depths of the bottom of the sea. The distinguished investigators of nature, Quoy and Gaimard, who accompanied Captain Freycinet in his voyage round the world in the frigate Uranie, were the first who ventured, in 1823, to express themselves with great boldness and freedom in opposition to the views of the two Forsters (father and son), of Flinders, and of Péron. (Annales des Sciences Naturelles, T. vi., 1825, p. 273.)]*