84 FOYE. 



GENERAL REVIEW OF THE GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF 



FIJI. 



The v'arious events in the geological history of Fiji, having been set 

 down in tabular form in their appropriate places, need not be fully 

 re-stated. A comparison of the tables will give the best general 

 review of the history of the islands. There have been four periods 

 of volcanism: a rhyolitic period, either contemporaneous with, or 

 followed almost immediately by, an andesitic period; after a long 

 interval, another andesitic period; and a recent period of basaltic 

 eruptivity. 



The relations of erosion, volcanism, and earth movements may be 

 expressed briefly as follows : — 



Batholithic intrusion, erosion, volcanism, brief erosion, subsidence, 

 uplift, erosion, volcanism, subsidence, uplift, erosion, volcanism, 

 submergence. 



Little is known concerning the geological dates of these events. 

 The fauna of the South Sea Islands has not been sufficiently correlated 

 to fix the age, or ages, of the elevated limestones. Dall (1898, p. 168) 

 states concerning the fossil moUusks, collected by Alexander Agassiz 

 from the coastal-plain series, "None of the genera are extinct. The 

 rock, however, looks decidedly too old for Pleistocene. I should say 

 the fossils were younger than Eocene and might be either Miocene or 

 Pliocene." 



Skeats found in the upraised limestones of Mango a species of 

 foraminifera, Orbitoides sumatrensis, which is similar to a Miocene 

 form described by C. W. Andrews from Christmas Island, Indian 

 Ocean, (Skeats, 1903, p. 120.) 



Woolnough (1903, p. 4G4) states that the elevated reef near Suva 

 "has yielded a considerable number of fossils of various kinds, the 

 assemblage of which appears to intlicate that the bed is not newer 

 than Pliocene. Conspicuous among these fossils is a tooth of a large 

 Carcharodon." 



In contradiction to this, Brady (1888, pp. 1-10) finds that the marls 

 associated with the coralliferous limestones of Suva are, without the 

 "slightest hesitation," post-Tertiary. He states, "of the ninety-two 

 species of Foraminifera which have been identified, eighty-seven are 

 forms still living in the neighborhood of the Pacific Islands." 



