The language of the natives indicates their poverty, as well as the limited productions and unvarying features of the land. All words, like those for mountain, hill, river, and many of the implements of their ancestors, as well as the trees and other vegetation of the land from which they are derived, are lost to them; and as words are but signs for ideas, they have fallen off in general intelligence. It would be an interesting inquiry for the philosopher, to what extent a race of men, placed in such circumstances, are capable of mental improvement. Perhaps the query might be best answered by another: How many of the various arts of civilized life could exist in a land where shells are the only cutting instruments? The plants, in all but twenty-nine in number,--but a single mineral,--quadrupeds, none, with the exception of foreign mice,--fresh water barely enough for household purposes,--no streams, nor mountains, nor hills! How much of the poetry or literature of Europe would be intelligible to persons whose ideas had expanded only to the limits of a coral island,--who had never conceived of a surface of land above half a mile in breadth, of a slope higher than a beach, of a change of seasons beyond a variation in the prevalence of rains? What elevation in morals should be expected upon a contracted islet, so readily overpeopled that threatened starvation drives to infanticide, and tends to cultivate the extremest selfishness? Assuredly, there is not a more unfavourable spot for moral or intellectual development in the wide world than the Coral Island, with all its beauty of grove and lake. These islands are exposed to earthquakes and storms, like the continents, and occasionally a devastating wave sweeps across the land. During the heavier gales the natives sometimes secure their houses by tying them to the cocoa-nut trees, or to a stake planted for the purpose. A height of ten or twelve feet, the elevation of their land, is easily overtopped by the more violent seas; and great damage is sometimes experienced. The still more extensive earthquake waves, such as those which have swept up the coast of Spain, Peru, and the Sandwich Islands, would produce a complete deluge over these islands.--(_United States' Exploring Expedition.--Geology._--_By James Dana_, p. 75.) _Biographical Notice of Leopold Pilla, the Geologist._ By H. COQUAND.[31] Communicated by the Author. Footnote 31: Read to the Geological Society of France, at their meeting on the 16th of April 1849.