90 B. KOTO : THE GEOLOGIC STRUCTURE OF 



out the East Indies, belong to the Neogene Tertiary. At many 

 localities, he says, the porous limestone is covered with marls of 

 the character of lagoon deposits, and containing Foraminifers 

 such as have been studied by the late C. Schwager^^^ in the marls 

 from Kar Nicobar, and in the marls from Luzon by F, Karrer.^*^^ 

 Both writers class the respective bed as belonging to the Young 

 Tertiary. 



It may here be pointed out that A. Agassiz^'^ also mentions 

 raised coral-reefs which form terraces of considerable height in 

 the Viti group, as in nearly all other islands of the South Pacific, 

 and he repeatedly speaks of the Neocene age of these limestones 

 but only in order to discriminate them from modern reefs which 

 have not thickness enough to give any support to the Darwin- 

 Dana's depression theory of coral islands. 



The discussions about the age of these coral-reef limestones 

 possess special interest for us, because the same formation recurs 

 in great extent in Taiwan and the Riukiu islands, and the study 

 of these organogenic rocks in Japan has scarcely yet begun. 



With Lombleri ana Panter we come to the end of the great 

 Malayan arc, and now enter into a difficult but very interesting 

 part of our theme. It is generally asserted that the * girdle of 

 fire ' in the west Pacific starts from the Aleutian Islands and 

 Kamtschatka through Japan and the Philippines to the great arc 

 of the Malay Archipelago, and that a line branches off from the 

 volcano, Dampier,^^^ at the western extremity of New Guinea, to 

 the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomons up to New Zealand, 



15) 'Reise der Fregatte Novara', Geologischer Tlieil, Bd. II, p. \'?ü et seq. 



16) V. Dräsche, ' Fragmente zu einer Geologie der Insel Luzon ', p. 79. 



17) Amer. Jour. Sei., February number, 1898. 



18) Naumann, 'Geognosie', I, 1858, p. 92. 



