FUNAFUTI. 219 



waves, or fragments of outliers of old buttresses or of a higher older reef 

 platform. These various kinds of fragments, found either on the lagoon 

 side or on the outer beach, form what is called the coral breccia or con- 

 glomerate of the seaward side (Pis. 132, fig. 2 ; 133, fig. 2 ; 134, fig. 2 ; 135, 

 136). There its composition can be more easily studied than on the lagoon 

 side, where its extension has been overwhelmed in so many places by the fine 

 sand thrown up on the inner beaches by the waves of the lagoon. On all 

 the islands with rock exposures, we came upon the hammer marks of 

 Messrs. Sollas and David. The low gap to the north of the village of 

 Fongafale is perhaps 60 to 75 feet wide ; it has been formed across 

 the lagoon shingle beach ; coarse coral sand is found in the middle of the 

 land rim, and breccia and conglomerate boulders are found on the sea face. 



We examined the northern end of the island of Amatuku at a point where 

 the cliffs are marked on the chart as "five feet high" (PI. 133, fig. 1); 

 they consist of elevated conglomerate or breccia dipping towards the lagoon. 

 This gives us the key of the origin of the mass of material which lines the 

 beaches, the lagoon, the sea faces, and the summit of the land rim, all of which 

 has been so much disintegrated and decomposed that where no outcrop is 

 visible it is difficult to understand whence the mass of material which com- 

 poses the island, the sea faces, the sea beaches, and the land rim itself has 

 been derived (Pis. 134 ; 135, fig. 1 ; 136, fig. 2). The shallows and the 

 banks within the lagoon are merely remnants of the great stretch of coral 

 conglomerate or breccia which once must have covered, at a greater eleva- 

 tion, nearly the whole area of the atoll of Funafuti. An extraordinary 

 mass of coar.se broken coral shingle conglomerate and breccia forms the 

 northern point of Tengako (Pis. 135, fig. 1 ; 136, fig. 2) ; it is flanked by 

 sand bars on the lagoon side, running at right angles to the line of the 

 low land rim. 



A section across the southern part of Funafuti does not differ from that 

 across the east point, back of Fongafale, and which is typical for the whole 

 island, only according to the width of the island, the sink between the outer 

 beach and the lagoon beach is more or less wide, and the dam on the lagoon 

 side is often a broad, white flat ridge supporting a luxuriant growth of 

 cocoanut trees and pisonias. The seaward ridge may be wide or narrow ; 



