I02 THE GREAT BARRIER REEE. 



yards across, completely encircled the island, which was not a quarter of a mile in diameter. 

 Inside this regular ridge were some scattered heaps of the same stuff, the whole encircling a 

 small sandy plain. The encircling ridge was occupied by a belt of small trees, while on the plain 

 grew only a short scrubby vegetation, a foot or two high. The materials of the encircling ridge 

 were quite low, and thinly covered with vegetable soil among the trees ; but the sand of the 

 central plain, which was dark brown, was sufficiently compact to be taken up in lumps, and a little 

 underneath the surface it formed a kind of soft stone, with embedded fragments of coral. Some 

 vegetable soil also was found, a few inches in thickness in some places, the result of the 

 decomposition of vegetable matter and birds' dung. 



"On the lee, or north-west side of the island, was a coral shoal or bank, slopmg gradually off, 

 from low-water mark for about a quarter of a mile, when it was two or three fathoms under 

 water. Immediately beyond this was a depth of fifteen fathoms. On the south-east, or weather 

 side of the island, was a coral-reef about two miles in diameter, having the form of a circle of 

 breakers, including a shallow lagoon. Among the breakers, on the external edge of the reef 

 some large black rocks showed themselves above water here and there all around. The lagoon 

 inside was shoal, having two or three fathoms' water occasionally over spaces of white sand, 

 the rest being occupied by flats of dead and living coral, of which the former was left dry 

 at low water. In this lagoon we saw both sharks and turtle swimming about, and there were 

 upwards of thirt}' fine turtle ' turned ' when the boats first landed. One island was well- 

 stocked with birds, of which black noddies and shearwaters were the most abundant; the ne.xt in 

 number being terns, gulls, white herons or egrets, oyster-catchers, and curlews. The trees 

 were loaded with the nests of the noddies, each of which was a small platform of seaweed 

 and earth, fixed in the fork of a branch. They had one rather elongated lightish brown egg, 

 rather less than a hen's egg. The shearwaters burrowed in the ground two or three feet ; 

 their eggs were larger, rather pointed and speckled, and streaked with black. 



" On the south side of the island, on the beach, were exposed some beds of pretty hard rock, 

 formed of fragments of corals and shells, compacted together in a matrix of still smaller grains of 

 the same material. The beds were thin and slab-like, and rose from the lagoon at an angle of about 

 8° to a height of six or eight feet above high-water mark. Some of the finer slabs reminded me 

 very much in general appearance of the slabs of the Dudley limestone. The colour of the rock 

 was dark brown, hard externally, but the inside was white and much softer." 



To the foregoing description of the physical features of Lady Elliot Island, given b}' Mr. 

 Jukes, the author is in a position to add some data concerning its marine fauna, supplemented 

 with a photographic illustration of the lagoon reef on the weather side of the island as 

 exposed to view at extreme low tide. This illustration, Plate XXXI II. b, has been briefly 

 referred to at page 55, with reference, more particularly, to the Beche-de-mer, Holotliurin 

 atra (accidentally misspelt " nigra"), extended in the foreground. The considerable extent of 



