March 12, I860.] NEW HARBOUR ON THE N.E. COAST OF AUSTRALIA. 85 



was abundance of good land extending from the 29tli degree, the sonthcrn 

 boundary of the new Queensland, up to the 15th or the 16th degree. Beyond 

 that we did not expect much good land. God protect them from going to the 

 Gulf of Carpentaria, although eulogised by some of our Fellows ! We had tried 

 it and found it wanting, but for the rest he had no doubt it would be an 

 excellent place for all tropical products, such as the sugar-cane, the coffee 

 plant, and, best of all things, cotton ; and, moreover, they could obtain plenty 

 of labour from the Chinese, whose industry was proverbial, and who would 

 labour in any climates from the Equator to the 50'^ of latitude. 



Sir E. T. Belcher, r.n., f.r.g.s., was delighted to hear that Professor 

 Jukes had found out that these coral islands did not exactly spring from the 

 bottom. He had studied the subject himself with great attention for many 

 years. He was instructed, when commanding H. M. S. Sulphur, in the 

 Pacific, to bore through one of these coral islands, and endeavour to determine 

 whether it was based on the lips of a submerged volcano. Selecting Bow 

 Island, he cut about 9 feet through the coral, and he then came to mud, a kind 

 of pipe-clay. He continued cutting down until he reached 46 feet : there it 

 was found so fluid that it was pumped out with a ship's engine ! He after- 

 wards carried out a line of soundings from Bow Island entrance, beginning at 

 3 fathoms and going down to 1600 and odd fathoms (9600 feet). He found 

 the coral terminated abruptl}^ at about 900 fathoms, all beyond that depth being 

 sandy coralline debris. Mr. Jukes had not exactly explained the constitution 

 of the coral that is between living corallines and coral rock, or the component 

 parts of the solid coral which he had found. All recent corallines had very 

 porous cells, but none of the solid coral exhibited any trace of porosity. It 

 was formed apparently of the very fine debris agglutinated together, and it 

 came to us pretty nearly in the same condition as the fossil corallines, with a 

 surface which was capable of high polish. He believed Mr. Jukes was also 

 quite right as to the depression of the coral, but he did not believe that the 

 main land had ever shrunk an inch. He formed that opinion in 1825, after 

 three years' constant examination of the Bermuda Eeefs. When he went 

 out in 1825, in H.M.S. Blossom, he examined the Dolphin Reef, on which the 

 Dolphin struck when the island was first discovered. He made a very minute 

 survey of it, because he then had an opinion that the coral reefs never rose 

 from below. He did not find a living coralline on the reef, nor were any found 

 at Loo Choo, of which Basil Hall gave such a glowing description. At that 

 time the coral barrier round the island of Tahiti was so high that the Blossom, 

 drawing but 16 feet, could only be forced into the harbour of Oututu Tuane 

 by hand through a side opening in the barrier, and a boat could scarcely pass 

 to Papite. But when he returned to the same place, in 1840, in H.M.S. 

 Sulphur, the Artemise, a sixty-gun frigate, had passed freely through the same 

 opening on to Papite ; and a tree beside the spot where the Consul's house 

 formerly stood, and to which the Blossom*s cable was shackled, had ^Aree 

 fathoms of water under it: consequently the whole of the coralline had been worn 

 away, or possibly gone down, but the main land had not altered in the least. 

 The American Expedition left a datum mark on Point Venus, so that the fact 

 may be determined. To return to Bow Island : he examined and sounded it 

 originally in 1825, with a thorough conviction that some day or other it would 

 be his lot to return to the Pacific; and when he was instructed to make the 

 borings alluded to, he fixed upon that island, having made such minute 

 observations upon it in the first instance. There was one little islet within 

 the lagoon on which he was accustomed to bleach his corals ; that islet had 

 disappeared altogether, and was not to be found in the new survey ! When 

 he first went there the whole island was belted with a continuous line of cocoa- 

 nut trees ; but at his last visit, after 15 years' interval, a small boat might 

 have passed through some of the worn coralline chaimels. His belief was this: 

 that these corallines were constantly working upon the edge of these lands j 



