84 Diirctor's Annual Keport. 



anchorage, though the best is considered to be half a mile off land 

 on the southern side in fourteen fathoms of water. 



The set of the current in these waters is in a northwesterly 

 dire(flion, though the island forms a local current which is exceed- 

 ingly variable and not to be relied upon when close in to the 

 breakers. On the table reef, particularly along the northwest and 

 eastern sides, are to be seen huge blocks of solid coral rocks rising 

 ofttimes eight or ten feet above the water at low tide ; many of 

 these rocks weigh tons and the force required to disengage them 

 from the growing reef and carry them landward cannot be esti- 

 mated, though it should by no means be lost sight of in con- 

 sidering the forces used by nature in this interesting work of island 

 building. 



Scattered at irregular intervals all along the beach, and not 

 infrequently inland quite a distance, were to be found concrete flag 

 stone rocks (Fig. 2) that had been broken loose from where they 

 were formed below the tide line and lifted high and dry on the 

 beach in time of storms. Stones of shingle and sand, all of the 

 most compact charadler, measuring three by five feet on the surface, 

 and some six inches thick, were observed forty and fifty feet above 

 the sea level and several hundred feet inland. When exposed to 

 the wash of the ocean these conglomerate stones are invariably 

 smoothly polished, and, being very compact and overgrown with 

 nullipores, give ver}' little indication of their composite characfler; 

 however, when carried up on the beach and expo.sed to atmos- 

 pheric agencies they tend to disintegrate and were always leached 

 out and roughened, resembling an ordinary pudding stone in 

 stru(5lure. 



The reef varies considerably in width ; it is a. little more than 

 a hundred yards in the narrowest place on the eastern side, while 

 the average width is approximately two hundred yards. On the 

 three main points the reef extends nearly seven hundred yards 

 seaward. Being on the northern limits of the coral belt only the 

 more hardy reef building pontes and pocillopora are here to be com- 

 monly found. Perhaps a clear conception of the form of this bit 

 of land, if indeed we can dignify a mere heap of sand and shells in 

 the midst of the ocean by calling it land, can be had by holding in 

 mind a roughly formed right-angle triangle, the chief angle of 

 which would form the southwest point. By the ordinary aclion of 



