DEPARTMENT OF MARINE BIOLOGY. 187 



the decline in productivity of the vanilla plant has compelled a return of the 

 native to his primitive foodstuffs. Of smaller plants, I have sought Car- 

 damine sarmentosa and Lepidium piscidium in vain where once they were 

 presumably abundant. The purau (Hibiscus tiliaceus), however, seems on 

 the increase and is advancing up the valleys to the exclusion of other native 

 plants. Freycinetia victoriperrea Solms is increasing in the fehi formations 

 and is crowding out this valuable native food-plant. Typha latifolia has 

 seemingly invaded tide flats and wet marshes in many localities, and the 

 water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) forms floating masses in many tidal 

 streams. 



Studies of Fossils from Walu Bay, Fiji; corals and Bottom Samples from Pago 



Pago Harbor, Samoa; and Bottom Samples from the Bahamas 



and Florida, by Thomas Wayland Vaughan. 



Dr. Mayor referred to me for study and report three sets of collections 

 made by him in the course of his investigations in the Fiji and Samoan Islands, 

 as follows: Fossils from Walu Bay, Viti Levu, Fiji Islands; corals from Pago 

 Pago Harbor, Samoa; and bottom samples from Pago Pago Harbor, Samoa. 

 Besides the studies on these collections, much additional work has recently 

 been done on the bottom samples collected in the Bahamas and Florida as 

 part of the investigations I undertook in connection with the Department of 

 Marine Biology. The present report gives a brief statement of the status of 

 the investigation of the collections above mentioned. 



Fossils from Walu Bay, Viti Levu, Fiji Islands. 



The rather small, but important, collections made in the quarries on Walu 

 Bay by Doctor Mayor and Mr. Coleman C. Wall, and an earlier collection 

 made by the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries steamer Albatross, have been studied 

 by Mr. W. C. Mansfield, palaeontologist of the U. S. Geological Survey, who 

 has written a report on them and an annotated bibliography of the geology 

 of the Fiji Islands. I have in preparation an article on the stratigraphic 

 succession and probable age of the sedimentary formations of the Fiji Islands, 

 which is intended to accompany Mr. Mansfield's report. 



It may be remarked that the existence of deposits of Miocene age on the 

 island of Mango is indicated by the presence there of a species of Lepidocyclina 

 identified by F. Chapman as L. sumatrensis (Brady). It is interesting to 

 compare this determination with the recently reported occurrence of a species 

 of Lepidocyclina, which belongs in the group of L. morgani Lem. and R. 

 Douville, in the reef conglomerate of Jaluit, Marshall Islands. 1 The presence 

 of teeth of the shark Charcharodon megalodon Agassiz, as well as the fossil 

 mollusks, in the quarries at Walu Bay, Viti Levu, indicates that the rocks 

 there exposed are probably of late Miocene, possibly Pliocene, age. The 

 "soapstone" which underlies these deposits, but grades into them, would, 

 therefore, be a little older, notwithstanding H. B. Brady's opinion that 

 "there need not be * * * the slightest hesitation in assuming the Post- 

 Tertiary origin of the deposits." 2 



i H. Yabe, and R Aoki: Reef conglomerate with small pellets of Lepidocyclina limestone found 

 on the Atoll Jaluit. Japanese Jour. Geol. and Geograph., vol. 1, pp. 39-43, pi. 4, 1922. 



* H. B. Brady, Note on the so-called "soapstone" of Fiji. Geol. Soc. London Quart. Jour., vol. 

 44, pp. 1-10. pi.. 1888. 



