xxvn EMERGENCE OF THE FIJIS 377 



Fairmaire as regarding the Coleoptera as of a continental character ; 

 but no one, that I am aware of, has found any direct evidence of 

 the Pre-Tertiary periods in this group. It is in harmony with the 

 geological characters to assume that these islands made their first 

 appearance during the Tertiary epoch. 



Coming to the subject of the movements whether of land or 

 sea that led to the appearance of these islands, we shall not be 

 begging the question if we speak of their " emergence." There is 

 no doubt as to there having been during and since the Tertiary 

 epoch an emergence of some thousands of feet, allowing for the 

 original depth of the foraminiferous deposits now found at 

 elevations of over 2,000 feet above the sea. In Chapter II. it is 

 shown that there is good ground for the belief that these changes 

 of level have not altogether ceased. Of what nature, we may ask, 

 is this movement. We have before us the grand conception of 

 Suess that the emergence of the land in the different phases of 

 geological time has been produced by the general lowering of the 

 level of the ocean arising from local subsidences of the earth's 

 crust. This view in the case of the recent calcareous formations of 

 the Pacific is applied to the terraces of the Loyalty Islands ; l and 

 it follows that it is also applicable to the elevated calcareous 

 deposits of the islands of the Western Pacific as a whole, as in the 

 case of the Tongan Islands, the New Hebrides, the Solomon Group, 

 &c. Such a general change of level ought to be represented in the 

 large island of Hawaii in the North Pacific, since it could not be 

 confined to one locality in this ocean. There is no evidence of 

 emergence, as far as I know, presented by this island. During my 

 sojourn there, I examined much of its coasts. Now the antiquity 

 of the flora of this group is sufficiently attested by the cir- 

 cumstance that it ranks first among the oceanic groups of the 

 Pacific for the number of endemic plants that it possesses ; and 

 the same conclusions may be drawn from the insects and the birds. 

 There is no evidence in this group, one of the most ancient of the 

 Pacific archipelagoes, of that great movement of emergence, which 

 is abundantly demonstrated over the Western Pacific. 



The standpoint is therefore taken that the movement of 

 emergence which began in the Tertiary period and is probably 

 still in operation is confined to the southern portion of the tropical 

 Pacific. Speaking of the time of the Fijian emergence, Professor 

 Agassiz observes that " it is not unnatural to assume that it was 

 coincident with the elevation of Northern Queensland, and that the 

 1 Das Antlitz der Erde^ French edition by E. de Margerie, ii. 534. 



