ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF CORAL-REEFS WITH REFERENCE TO THE THEORY OF THEIR FORMATION

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Description of the coloured map.—Proximity of atolls and barrier-reefs.— Relation in form and position of atolls with ordinary islands.—Direct evidence of subsidence difficult to be detected.—Proofs of recent elevation where fringing-reefs occur.—Oscillations of level.—Absence of active volcanoes in the areas of subsidence.—Immensity of the areas which have been elevated and have subsided.—Their relation to the present distribution of the land.—Areas of subsidence elongated, their intersection and alternation with those of elevation.—Amount and slow rate of the subsidence.—Recapitulation. It will be convenient to give here a short account of the appended map (Plate III.) [Inasmuch as the coloured map would have proved too costly to be given in this series, the indications of colour have been replaced by numbers referring to the dotted groups of reefs, etc. The author’s original wording, however, is retained in full, as it will be easy to refer to the map by the numbers, and thus the flow of the narrative is undisturbed.]: a fuller one, with the data for colouring each spot, is reserved for the Appendix; and every place there referred to may be found in the Index. A larger chart would have been desirable; but, small as the adjoined one is, it is the result of many months’ labour. I have consulted, as far as I was able, every original voyage and map; and the colours were first laid down on charts on a larger scale. The same blue colour, with merely a difference in the depth of tint, is used for atolls or lagoon-islands, and barrier-reefs, for we have seen, that as far as the actual coral-formation is concerned, they have no distinguishing character. Fringing-reefs have been coloured red, for between them on the one hand, and barrier-reefs and atolls on the other, there is an important distinction with respect to the depth beneath the surface, at which we are compelled to believe their foundations lie. The two distinct colours, therefore, mark two great types of structure.