In Egypt, At San Domingo And In The Lakes Of The Valley Of Mexico, The Method Practised For Catching Ducks Was As Follows:

Men, whose heads were covered with great calabashes pierced with holes, hid themselves in the water, and seized the birds by the feet.

The Chinese, from the remotest antiquity, have employed the cormorant, a bird of the pelican family, for fishing on the coast: rings are fixed round the bird's neck to prevent him from swallowing his prey and fishing for himself. In the lowest degree of civilization, the sagacity of man is displayed in the stratagems of hunting and fishing: nations who probably never had any communication with each other furnish the most striking analogies in the means they employ in exercising their empire over animals.

Three days elapsed before we could emerge from the labyrinth of Jardines and Jardinillos. At night we lay at anchor; and in the day we visited those islands or chains of rocks which were most easily accessible. As we advanced eastward the sea became less calm and the position of the shoals was marked by water of a milky colour. On the boundary of a sort of gulf between Cayo Flamenco and Cayo de Piedras we found that the temperature of the sea, at its surface, augmented suddenly from 23.5 to 25.8 degrees centigrade. The geologic constitution of the rocky islets that rise around the island of Pinos fixed my attention the more earnestly as I had always rather doubted of the existence of those huge masses of coral which are said to rise from the abyss of the Pacific to the surface of the water. It appeared to me more probable that these enormous masses had some primitive or volcanic rock for a basis, to which they adhered at small depths. The formation, partly compact and lithographic, partly bulbous, of the limestone of Guines, had followed us as far as Batabano. It is somewhat analogous to Jura limestone; and, judging from their external aspect, the Cayman Islands are composed of the same rock. If the mountains of the island of Pinos, which present at the same time (as it is said by the first historians of the conquest) the pineta and palmeta, be visible at the distance of twenty sea leagues, they must attain a height of more than five hundred toises: I have been assured that they also are formed of a limestone altogether similar to that of Guines. From these facts I expected to find the same rock (Jura limestone) in the Jardinillos: but I saw, in the chain of rocks that rises generally five to six inches above the surface of the water, only a fragmentary rock, in which angular pieces of madrepores are cemented by quartzose sand. Sometimes the fragments form a mass of from one to two cubic feet and the grains of quartz so disappear that in several layers one might imagine that the polypi have remained on the spot. The total mass of this chain of rocks appears to me a limestone agglomerate, somewhat analogous to the earthy limestone of the peninsula of Araya, near Cumana, but of much more recent formation.

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