160 J. STANLEY GARDINER. 
1} miles long by + broad, and lies practically due east and west. It has two bays, one on 
each side behind the rocky area, which hence is connected by a neck with the rest. The 
foundation reef round the whole is roughly a narrow oval bluntly pointed at either end. 
In a section of the east end the reef may be seen to consist of a flat about 26 yards 
broad, outside which the reef-platform may be distinguished for an additional 150 yards, a 
very marked point of shallow water extending out seawards. The reef-flat has a very 
well-defined edge, a broken area with fissures extending in for half its breadth succeeded 
by an area covered with pinnacles and masses of recent coral limestone, most of which are 
completely washed by the waves at high tide. The beach behind is steep and reaches a 
height of about 18 feet above the flat. It is covered with rough masses of coral, which 
have evidently been separated out on the washing away of the coral rock on the flat 
outside, recently living coral blocks being practically absent. Limestone masses crop out to 
a height of 8 or 9 feet, but so far as could be seen all rock above this owed its formation 
to piling up by the waves. Indeed the latter have built up a ridge right round the east 
head to a height of 13 or 14 feet, the central part showing a level of 8 to 9 feet. The 
latter is formed entirely of rock, the surface of which may be quite smooth or covered 
with jagged coral masses, that have been worn out of the rock beneath by the erosive 
action of the rai. The reef broadens round both the north and south sides of the head 
to 40 or 50 yards, and then continues as a well-defined broad flat round the island. The 
masses and pinnacles are found right round the rocky area, and then continue along the 
reef-flats on both sides of the land. Round the south side they may be traced for half 
the length of the island, but on the north the rocks are fewer and do not extend for 
more than 200 yards west of the rocky area. Where masses are found on the reef at the 
present day land in all probability formerly existed. According to this view the original 
island of Kenurus would have been U-shaped, broader at the open base to the west but 
rounded off and solid at the point to the east. 
The coral rock can be seen just as 
decidedly as at Minikoi to have owed its position to a change of level, so that there 
must have been here a U-shaped reef open to the west. Perhaps the inner part of the 
U may have been filled in with a sand-flat before elevation, but after the latter change 
there was a considerable piling up of sand, which extended the land for some distance beyond 
the open mouth of the original reef. Indeed the west end of the present island of Kenurus 
is even now growing out into the lagoon by the same means, an eddy due to the meeting 
of the currents on either side of the reef washing up the sand. The whole beach round 
the rocky area is washing away, the process being most rapid along its north and south 
sides. Two lines of beach sand-rock, running out into the water on the south side of the 
neck, show that the sand once continued out as far as the reef and that the bays were 
formed on its washing away. Along the rest of the north and south shores there is little 
or no change, the only washing away being to the south-west. Even there it appeared to 
be a temporary effect, due to the last south-west monsoon, and seemed on Dec. 2 to be 
beimg obliterated by the north-east. 
The other islands of the east rim usually have traces at least of the rocky area at 
their seaward ends in pinnacles and masses of limestone, but whether there is a definite 
rocky area of the land depends on how far the island is distant from the seaward edge 
of its reef. Fainu for instance has no rocky area at all, the edge of the reef being about 
250 yards from the beach. A zone of pinnacles on the reef to the east and north-east 
alone shows the former rocky area. The island, however, has at first sight the appearance 
