MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 149 



furrowed and torn by the raiu waters, and either cemented or disinte- 

 grated into the shape they now present. 



Dana has given sf figure ^ of one of the best examples of such drift 

 sand rock, which is found near Kahuku Point, at an elevation of abont 

 seventy-five feet above the level of the sea. As he states, the island of 

 Oahu has undergone an elevation of somewhat more than twenty feet, 

 since these sandstone bluffs were formed, and this bluff before its elevation 

 undoubtedly occupied the same relation to the fringing reef which now 

 forms the elevated plain back of Kahuku Point as the sandstone rocky 

 bluff of Laie Point holds to the present edge of the shore. Organic 

 remains are very rarely found in these coral sandstones, although an 

 occasional shell left by a hermit crab, or a thin fragment of coral or of 

 a Lamellibranch may sometimes be rolled up into the sand drift and 

 cemented in it. A walk on the long steep coral sea-beach extending 

 from Kahuku Point to Laie shows at once where the material for these 

 coral sandstone bluffs must have come from. 



On Maui we also have a long coral sand beach stretching from Kahu- 

 lui Bay to Paia (Plate III.), from which drifts have been blown, form- 

 ing extensive coral limestone deposits on the base of the eastern slope of 

 Western Maui, near Wailuku. The drifts have in some cases formed 

 large heaps of considerable height, which have accumulated on the 

 mountain sides for nearly the whole length of the line of separation be- 

 tween Eastern and Western Maui. These accumulations of limestone 

 vary in thickness from a few thin layers, scarcely concealing the undula- 

 tions of the ground beneath and forming a thin veneer, to drifts of con- 

 siderable magnitude, with rounded tops, more or less disintegrated, and 

 showing plainly in section the successive layers which have formed them. 

 Through the thinner layers frequently crop out the grasses and planta 

 •which have been partially covered by the drifting coral sand, while in 

 the thicker deposits the vegetable matter is found in all possible stages 

 of decomposition, finally leaving tubular spaces, which have been attrib- 

 uted to annelids by some observers, and supposed thus to prove a very 

 considerable elevation of certain parts of the Sandwich Islands, as at 

 Wailuku, where Captain Button ^ mentions this drift coral sandstone as 

 fragments of an elevated coral reef 



The low plain which separates Eastern and Western Maui (Plate III.), 

 extending from the landing at Maalaea to Kahului Bay, the harbor of 

 Wailuku, on the north, is the top of an old coral reef, which flourished 



1 Geolopry of U. S. Exploring Expedition" p. 46. 



2 Report of Director of U. S. Geological Survey, 1883, p. 201. 



