BY E. C. ANDREWS. 165 



platforms exist with numerous loose and blackened corals scattered 

 over them. 



In these islands, however, this recent uplift represents the 

 final stage in a series of repeated slight elevatory movements, 

 alternating with periods of stable equilibrium, evidenced by 

 ** terraces " of coral growths and successive lines of marine erosion. 

 Australia appears to have participated in the most recent one 

 only. Had elevation proceeded in Eastern Australia along similar 

 lines to those pursued in the mid-Pacific, we should have elevated 

 coral islands along the site of the Great Barrier Reef in much the 

 same relation to the Queensland coast as the Loyalties (raised 

 coral) are to New Caledonia, the Lau Group to main Fiji (Viti and 

 Vanua Levu), or the smaller coralline islands immediately east of 

 the largest Solomon and New Hebridean Islands to these same 

 land masses. 



In certain groups, as in Fiji, coral reefs and atolls were formed 

 during these movements of elevation, which followed a period of 

 great subsidence in Tertiary times, and during which period 

 immense beds of limestone, volcanic conglomerates and Fiji 

 " soapstones " had been laid down to constitute, during the 

 succeeding elevations, a base for the later (recent) "raised reefs." 

 In the New Hebrides, the Solomons,"^ Fiji,t Tonga, | New Guineai^ 

 and elsewhere traces of elevated coral reefs are found from high 

 water mark to a height of 2,000 feet above the same datum line. 



The participation by Australia (as regards the Queensland and 

 New South Wales coasts) in the most recent only of these uplifts 

 is very interesting. Hedley|[ has conclusively shown frofn biolo- 



* Guppy, The Solomon Islands : their Geology, &c., pp. 102, 113. 

 t Agassiz, Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool. Harv. Coll. xxviii., pp. 132-133; 

 Andrews, ihid., xxxviii. , p. 27. 



It: Lister, "Notes on the Geology of the Tonga Islands," Quart. Journ 

 Geol. Soc, Vol. 47, 1891, pp. 590-616. 



§ Maitland, Geological Observations in New Guinea, 1891, p. 10. 

 11 C. Hedley, " A Zoogeographic Scheme for the Mid Pacific," Proc. Linn. 

 Soc. N.S. Wales, 1899, pp. 391-417. See also references in same paper. 



