Our great authority on all questions of natural history is Mr Layard (brother of Nineveh Layard), who, before annexation, held the office of British Consul in this place. He and his son have a special talent for capturing strange monsters of the deep, and I never call on Mrs Layard without her showing me some new object of interest. They live in a large old wooden house, built on the very edge of the water; in fact, the sea washes up underneath the verandah, which opens on to a long wooden pier in the last stages of decay. I should think the position most unsafe, in view of possible tidal waves, especially as a small mountain stream (which occasionally becomes a torrent) washes one side of the house,—so that from one window the inmates can have fresh-water fishing, and from the other salt. That old pier has been a source of infinite pleasure to many. It enables Mrs Layard to have a little fresh air, and a small walk, without venturing among the broken bottles and mud which form the beach; and her husband and son thence capture many strange creatures when they have not time to row off to the reef, which is, of course, the very ideal of a naturalist’s happy hunting-grounds, and there they took me this afternoon. You really cannot imagine anything more lovely than it was. The first essential is to go in a boat which draws very little water, and which has no new paint to be considered. Then when the tide is low, and the sea without a ripple, you float idly over the coral-beds, suffering your boat to lie at rest or drift with the current, as a stroke of the oars would disturb the clear surface of the water, beneath which lie such inexhaustible stores of loveliness. Every sort and kind of coral grow together there, from the outstretched branches, which look like garden shrubs, to the great tables of solid coral, on which lie strewn shells and sponges, and heaps of brain and mushroom corals. These living shrubs assume every shade of colour: some are delicate pink or blue; others of a brilliant mauve; some pale primrose. But vain is the attempt to carry home these beautiful flowers of the sea; their colour is their life. It is, in fact, simply a gelatinous slime, which drips away, as the living creatures melt away and die, when exposed to the upper air. So the corals we know in England are merely skeletons, and very poor substitutes for the lovely objects we see and covet in their native condition.