80 bulletin: museum of compakative zoology. 



On the coutraiy, judging from Fiji analogy, the section indicates the 

 elevation of a submarine bank of coralliferous limestone and its subse- 

 quent denudation, and the forming of an enveloping reef on its summit 

 having no relation with the nature of the deeper sea slope. 



We collected a number of corals from the elevated limestone rock at 

 several localities along the south and west coast of Viti Levu, at Suva, 

 Ngele Levu, Kambara, Ongea, Ngillangillah, and Oneata. I found it 

 impossible to determine whether the corals were in situ, or had been 

 rolled or dropped along the sea face to form a talus. The difficulty of 

 determining this without very considerable blasting at the base, the 

 face, and along the exposed slopes of the elevated coralliferous lime- 

 stones, is verv great. 



The collecting of corals from the exposed faces of the cliff was almost 

 hopeless with our appliances. The faces have become extremely hard, 

 a hammer produces no impression, and the corals are so well embedded 

 as to make it impossible to cut them out. 



It seems impracticable, except where one can actually see the corals 

 grow along a slope, or on a patch or the sides of a head, to determine in 

 the elevated reef rock if they are still in their natural attitudes. Madre- 

 pores and Pocillopores grow in all kinds of 2:)osition ; so do the heads of 

 Astrseans, Mseandrinas, and other massive corals. Furthermore, the 

 spaces between coral patches and heads and individual masses of coral 

 reef are filled either with sand, corallines, or fragments of dead corals. 

 We can easily see the difficulty of recognizing the former condition of 

 corals now embedded in a homogeneous mass of hard ringing limestone, 

 in which the corals often exist as more or less indistinct solidified masses, 

 barely indicating the genus to which they belong. The coral and coral- 

 line sand have become solidified into a close limestone ringing to the 

 hammer. Large spaces have become impregnated with the red earth, 

 characteristic of coi'al limestone formations, and the masses of coral 

 fragments form a breccia or puddingstone of corals of the species which 

 once flourished on the reef. Masses of Nullipores and Orbitolites are 

 similarly cemented, or form the connection between the individual 

 masses. The whole again is more or less cavernous, representing either 

 spaces originally existing on the reef, or cavities which have been formed 

 by the percolation of water through the mass. As far as I have exam- 

 ined the corals collected from the elevated limestones, they appear to 

 belong to the same genera as those now living. 



A careful and extended examination of one of the elevated coralliferous 

 limestone reefs, as at Vanua Mbalavu or Kambara or Mango, for instance, 



