262 Mr. John Murray on Coral Beefs, dec. [March 16, 



slowly sinks the corals meanwhile grow upwards to the surface of 

 the sea, and a water space — the lagoon channel — is formed between 

 the shore of the island and the encircling reef, the fringing being 

 thus converted into a barrier reef. Eventually the central island 

 sinks altogether from sight and the barrier reef is converted into an 

 atoll, the lagoon marking the place where the volcanic or other land 

 once existed. Encircling reefs and atolls are represented as becoming 

 smaller and smaller as the sinking goes on, and the final stage of the 

 atoll is a small coral islet, less than two miles in diameter, with the 

 lagoon filled up and covered with deposits of sea-salts and guano. 



It is at once evident that the views now advocated are in almost 

 all respects the reverse of those demanded by Mr. Darwin's theory. 



The recent deep-sea investigations do not appear in any way to 

 support the view that large or small islands once filled the spaces 

 now occupied by the lagoon waters, and that the reefs show approxi- 

 mately the position of the shores of a subsided island. The struc- 

 ture of the upraised coral islands, so far as yet examined, appears to 

 lend no support to the Darwinian theory of formation. When we 

 remember that the great growing surface of existing reefs is the sea- 

 ward face from the sea surface down to twenty or forty fathoms, that 

 large quantities of coral debris must be annually removed from 

 lagoons in suspension and solution, that reefs expand laterally and 

 remain always but a few hundred yards in width, that the lagoons of 

 finished atolls are deepest in the centre, and are relatively shallow 

 compared with the depth off the outer reefs, then it seems impossible 

 with our present knowledge to admit that atolls or barrier reefs have 

 ever been developed after the manner indicated by Mr. Darwin's 

 simple and beautiful theory of coral reefs. 



[J. M.] 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 

 Friday, March 23, 1888. 



William Huggins, Esq. D.C.L. LL.D. F.E.S. Vice-President, in the 



Chair. 



Sir Frederick Bramwell, D.C.L. F.E.S. Hon. Sec. and V.P. BJ. 



A Lecture with, — and without, — jyoint. 



[The discourse mainly consisted of a demonstration of the serious 

 inconveniences attending the adoption in ordinary life of the Decimal 

 and Metrical Systems.] 



(Abstract deferred.) 



