File:The Cabinet of natural history and American rural sports (1830) (14778706211).jpg

Identifier: cabinetofnatural02phil (find matches)
Title: The Cabinet of natural history and American rural sports
Year: 1830 (1830s)
Authors:
Subjects: Zoology Hunting
Publisher: Philadelphia, John Doughty
Contributing Library: University of Pittsburgh Library System
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Pittsburgh Library System

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e sea, and engulphcd in its waters. In a memoir lately published, a naval ofiicer informs us,that as lie returned from China by the eastern passage, hefell in, among the Moluccas, with several small floatingislands of this kind, covered with mangrove trees, inter-woven with underwood. The trees and shrubs retainedtheir verdure, receiving nourishment from a stratum ofsoil which formed a white beach round the margin of eachraft, where it was exposed to the washing of the waves andthe rays of the sun. The occurrence of soil in such situa-tions, may easily be explained, for all the natural bridgesof timber which occasionally connect the islands of theGanges, Mississippi, and other rivers, with their banks,are exposed to floods of water densely charged with sedi-ment. Captain W. H. Smyth informs us, that when cruizingin the Cornwallis amidst the Philippine Islands, he has morethan once seen, after those dreadful hurricanes called ty-phoens, floating islands of wood, with trees growing upon
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AND AMERICAN RURAL SPORTS. 61 them, and that ships have sometimes been in imminentperil, in consequence of mistaking them for terra-firma. It is highly interesting to trace, in imagination, the ef-fects of the passage of these rafts from the mouth of a largeriver to some archipelago, such as those in the South Paci-fic, raised from the deep in comparatively modern times,by the operations of the volcano and the earthquake, andthe joint labours of coral animals and testacea. If a stormarise, and the frail vessel be wrecked, still many a bird andinsect may succeed in gaining, by flight, some island ofthe newly-formed group, while the seeds and berries ofherbs and shrubs, which fall into the waves, may be thrownupon the strand. But if the surface of the deep be calm,and the rafts are carried along by a current, or wafted bysome slight breath of air fanning the foliage of the greentrees, it may arrive, after a passage of several weeks, atthe bay of an island, into which its plants and anim

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