64 bulletin: museum of compakative zoology. 



by two miles wide, leaving the basin studded with.inuumerable islets 

 and rocks (Plates 83, 84) such as I have already mentioned. These 

 islands have usually vertical faces; many of them are conical, dome- 

 shaped, or mushroom-shaped, like the islands and islets inside of the 

 interior basin. A similar process has been going on off the northern 

 point of Fulanga, south of Quoin Hill, where the conical and dome- 

 shaped and mushroom-shaped islands and islets and rocks are seen to 

 pass gradually from conical or dome-shaped bluffs along the shoi-e line 

 into the negro-heads of the outer reef flat off that point. This process 

 of disintegration must have been similar in every i-espect to that which 

 has formed the sounds in the Bermudas, eating small bays into the 

 faces of bluffs inland, these becoming circular with time, vrith only a 

 narrow opening, and finally leaving merely a narrow ridge or parts of 

 ridges surrounding a central basin resembling an atoll. 



FCLANGA SOUTH OF QCOIX HILL. 



If the process which has been shaping Fulanga had been goirg on 

 longer the result would have been a low ridge on the southwestern face 

 of an elliptical outer reef flat, with an enclosed lagoon full of islets or 

 rocks or heads, and here and there perhaps an island or islet indicating 

 the former existence of the elevated coralliferous limestone ridge ; there 

 being a passage into the lagoon where it now exists, the lagoon as en- 

 larged including the true lagoon and the " Sound " basin, — a condition 

 of things very similar to that found on Oneata, Xgele Levu, Yangasa, 

 Xanuku, and on Yanua Mbalavu. On the faces of the islands and islets 

 forming the eastern ridge of the basin of Fulanga rise vertical cliffs 

 deeply undercut and weathered. The reef flats are full of negro-heads, 

 some of which are of considerable size. The reef flats are everywhere 

 covered with extensive stretches of flourishing coi-als. 



This atoll-like basin has thus in reality been formed by the wearing 

 action of the sea, and subsidence has played no part in its formation; on 

 the contrarv, the coralliferous limestone flat covering the basin has been 



