80 bulletin: museum of COMPAKATIVE ZOOLOfJY. 



Whale Cay Channel and the Eastern Face of the Little 



Bahama Bank. 



Plate X. Fig. 1 ; Plate XI. Fig. 7. 



Passing out through the channel and crossing the opening left in 

 the reef through the breakers, we had a fine exhibition of the skill and 

 coolness of the pilot as he steered the " Wild Duck " into deep water. 



Whale Cay Channel Rock is but a small outlier of a sunken patch. 

 Whale Cay, as seen end on, shows the seolian hills to have their longest 

 slope on the east face, and the same structure is admirably shown for 

 Great Abaco. Great Guana Cay displays the same feature, though here 

 and there short stretches of the base of the shore hills are eaten away 

 into low vertical cliffs, probably opposite smaller or greater gaps in the 

 belt of coral heads protecting the outer islands from the terrific pounding 

 of the trade wind swell. Where not cut away the lower part of the 

 shore hills is pretty well covered with coral sand torn off from the reef 

 and thrown up on the shore. Great Guana Cay is covered by a most 

 scanty vegetation near the shore, but is a little better wooded on the 

 hill face near the summit. 



Between Great Guana and Elbow Cays is a series of low cays, rocky 

 or sandy, with very little vegetation near the summit ridge. The line 

 of breakers forms a continuous wall with the islets whenever there is a 

 heavy swell rurning, as was the case when we steamed past. 



Man-of-War Cay has the same characteristics as Great Guana Cay. 

 It has a high sandy beach with an occasional rocky outcrop covering the 

 underlying rock, and the usual scanty vegetation just above high-water 

 mark becoming somewhat thicker near the ridge of the island. 



The succession of aeolian hills piled up one by the side of another 

 and sloping up to the westward is clearly seen in the line of Man-of- 

 War Cay and of Elbow Cay. The settlement on Elbow Cay is protected 

 by an outlying line of rocks, a part of the former eastern extension of 

 that island, which now forms an outside line of islets connecting it with 

 Man-of-War Cay. 



As we steamed down towards the south end of Elbow Cay the face of 

 the northern ridge above the settlement was seen to be white seolian rock 

 cropping out between the bushes and scrub vegetation. All the way from 

 Whale Cay we were running parallel with the belts of coral reef and the 

 outer line of rocky cays. Near the south end of one of the small cays, 

 between Tilloo Cay and Lynyard Cay, there is an accumulation of large 



