232 



ANNUAL KEPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1911. 



of minor and usually of negligible importance. The accompanying 

 map shows the location of the Oligocene and Miocene reefs and reef 

 corals of Florida and Georgia with reference to the plateau surface. 

 The evidence of these fossil reefs is the same as that, of the living 

 Australian, Floridian, and Central American reefs. But this is 

 not all. There are off the eastern shores of North America three 

 banks at such a depth that coral reefs might grow on them were 

 they within the proper climatic zone. These banks are Georges 



Fig. 13. — Florida, Ocala limestone plateau with superposed Oligocene and 

 Miocene coral reefs and reef corals, oc. ls.=Ocala limestone; the fig- 

 ures ARE FOR THE DEPTHS OF ITS UPPER SURFACE BELOW SEA LEVEL. CH.= 



Chattahoochee and Tampa Oligocene formations. Al. B.=Alum Bluff 



Miocene formation. 



Bank off Nantucket, the banks off the coast of Nova Scotia, and the 

 Grand Banks of Newfoundland. Such banks are not confined to 

 the coral reef zone. 



Text figure 11, page 228, of this article shows solution wells through 

 the oolite between the shore and the barrier reef off the east side of 

 Andros Island, Bahamas. The flat between the reef and the shore 

 must have existed before the present reef formed in order that those 

 holes, now submerged, might be made in it. In the West Indies in 



