both decorous and comely. The hasty rage which some foreigners seem to have at once to Europeanize and make court-like the Hawaiian government and dress, is, we cannot help saying, alike unwise and ridiculous. If it does not swamp the nation, annihilate whatever is distinctly Hawaiian, and give paramount ruinous ascendancy to foreign interests and influence, it will be strange.

It is said the Queen was once disciplined in the church for drinking awa. But she alleged, on trial, that she was drinking it to reduce her portly person to the fit of the tight dress prescribed by the tyranny of court-fashion.

Now we say, give strait jackets to maniacs, and leave corsets and small-clothes to the rouged harlots of the Opera; but for the women of Hawaii, both modesty and taste would be less offended to have them resume something like the old heathen costume of the pau and kihei, than to be squeezed into the garb of Paris belles.

The highest authority in America for taste and purity in all that appertains to woman-to woman as she is, and woman as she should be-has said of the fashionable modern habiliments of the sex :

"Your dress has made the form by nature given,
Unlike aught ever seen in earth or heaven.
Where, girl, thy flowing motion, easy sweep,
Like waves that swing, nor break the glassy deep?
All hard, and angular, and cased in steel!

And is it human? Can it breathe and feel?

The bosom, beautiful of mould, alas!

Where, now, thy pillow, youth? (But let it pass.)
And shapes in freedom lovely?—I will bear
Distorted forms, leave minds but free and fair.
"Tis all alike conventional: the mind

Is tortured like the body, cramped, confined:
A thing made up, by rules of art, for life;
Most perfect, when with nature most at strife:
Till the strife ceases, and the thing of art,

Forgetting nature, no more plays a part;
Sees truth in the factitious;-pleasure's slave-
Its drudge, not lord; in trifles only grave.
With etiquette for virtue, heart subdued,
The right betraying, lest you should be rude;
Excusing wrong, lest you be thought precise,
In morals easy, and in manners nice;
To keep in with the world your only end,
And with the world to censure or defend;
To bend to it each passion, thought, desire
With it genteelly cold, or all on fire,

;

What have you left to call your own, I pray ?
You ask, What says the world, and that obey;
Where singularity alone is sin,

Live uncondemned, yet prostrate all within.
You educate the manners, not the heart,
And morals make good breeding and an art.”

R. H. DANA.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CORAL MASONRY AND CORALS OF MOLOKAI AND OTHER

PARTS OF THE ISLAND WORLD OF THE PACIFIC.

Curious work of Zoophytes - Sub-marine gardens described Living specimens exhibited Letting a crab out of prison -How the corals grow Theory for the formation of a coral island - The tumuli of a buried continent Evidence of a re-elevatory process Geological phenomena not accounted for-Observations of Williams, the martyr of Eromanga-Effect of electricity in precipitating the particles of lime in sea-water-Instances adduced-The part it may have in the formation of reefs-Views of Sir David Brewster examined -Mixture of fancy and fact-Experiments of PeyronnelPhilosophical analysis-Secrets of Nature's laboratory-Results of coral architecture-Astonishing amount of matter solidified— Observations of Captain Flinders-Conditions necessary to the perfection of coral-The coral builders watched-Work described Banks reared-World-matter Half-way Island - Coral formations of Rimatara-Honolulu reef-Mediterranean and Red Sea coral-Rate of growth-Effect of light-Agents that reduce it-Indian Ocean coral-Appearance of a reef between the tides -Millions of worms observed-Facts gathered from navigatorsCoral of prose and of poetry-Moss corals by the microscopeZoophytic tribes classified by the Geologist of the U.S. Exploring Squadron-Scientific deductions-Fejee Island reefs described -Vast size of individual specimens-Notices of the Kingsmill group-Vast depth of soundings off the reef-Uses of coralNatural and æsthetic ends served.

THE Island of Molokai is well worth a traveller's visiting, despite the risk of crossing that boisterous channel,

for the curious and beautiful corals he may get there, and and the near view he may have of the living coral-beds, in all their sub-marine luxuriancy. You may go out upon the reef in a canoe, and sail over the gay gardens, and in only a foot or two of water, may gather some of the most exquisite specimens of marine animalculic vegetation ever seen.

The kinds, too, are uncommonly unique and various. In one mass, and disengaged at a single reach and effort of the arm, there will sometimes be five or six different species of this wonderful formation cemented together.

The colours are various, and sometimes exquisite. Now and then you can point out a piece to a native, and he will bring it up all blushing with purple or blue, which you would give anything to preserve in a cabinet with that delicate Tyrian tint. Sometimes it is like coloured confectionery crystallized, with all the hues of the rainbow. But the tints of sunset clouds are not more fading and evanescent than the rosy blush of those beautiful sea-flowers, when once plucked from their aqueous bed.

It is only the coralline forms, or the different ways in which those ingenious little architects make their coral groves to grow, that can be preserved. And then those little radiations and branches are so brittle, and the microscopic finish of the crystalline structure is sometimes so nice, that in washing off the extraneous matters, and packing them up for friends at home, you are almost, sure to break and mar the most perfect specimens.

It is very curious to observe how a family of corals will grow together and intermarry, till you can trace the pedigree from sire to son, through a coral ancestry for many generations. There is a species which the natives call ana, of which one of the missionary boys here has a rare specimen to send to one of his brothers in America.

The ana grows somewhat like the head of a mushroom, on a flower-stalk put forth from the parent stock. If you call it a flower, its petals are innumerable white scales, growing erect, and separate each from its bed like the seeds of a sun-flower. These are of all sizes, from that of a button to the crown of a hat. The specimen referred to is a family tree, the trunk bearing its infant and youthful sprigs, of appropriate sizes through adolescence to maturity, when some of the adult anas are having little miniature grandsons of the third generation.

The theory which avers that corals do not grow vigorously in less water than two or three fathoms, is quite disproved by the growth at Molokai. We have seen and collected some fine living specimens, where the water was not more than two feet deep, and where the reef must be sometimes laid bare in low water.

In a specimen obtained by Mr. Andrews, only a few days ago, there was found snugly inclosed in one of the cups formed by the little branches locking in with each other like locked hands, an interloping crab. There he was, nicely caught and encased by the growing coral, as between the palms of two locked hands, precisely as toads are sometimes found in rocks, or the solid heart of trees. How long he had been imprisoned there by the busy little builders upon those immense reefs, we could not tell; but the boys thought it must have been in some Rip Van Winkle sleep, if such things ever happen in the life of crabs.

Coral is most abundant on the leeward of the Islands, and the larger reefs are only found there. It is said to be ascertained by observation, that a uniform temperature of at least seventy-six degrees is most favourable to their growth. The great thickness of the reefs is supposed to