FORMATION OF THE LAND 113 



side of the land to the other from the ocean to the 

 lagoon. 



We may therefore fairly conclude that this sheet of 

 rock forms the solid base on which the land above it 

 rests. It is composed mainly of slabs of coral, lying not 

 quite horizontally, but overlapping like the tiles of a roof, 

 with a slight inclination towards the ocean side of the 

 reef. 



These fragments have evidently been derived from the 

 outer zone of growing coral. Before the land, as it now 

 exists, was formed, the waves were incessantly engaged 

 in tearing off fragments from the coral zone, and driving 

 them across the reef into the lagoon, till a thick sheet of 

 debris was the result. This became consolidated as it 

 formed, partly by the growth of incrusting calcareous 

 algse, and now forms the solid floor of the island. 



Masses of broken corals, torn up and driven inland by 

 the breakers, continued to accumulate after the for- 

 mation of the floor ; and thus that great pile of coral 

 clinkers, which forms the storm-beach, has been and is 

 still being built up. 



On the other side, the wavelets of the lagoon have 

 washed up smaller fragments of coral and foraminiferal 

 shells, and thus the strip of land which borders the 

 lagoon, and on which the village of Funafuti stands, has 

 been produced. 



The middle of the island the great central depression 

 including the taro ground and the mangrove swamp is 

 the remains of the original solid platform left exposed 

 between the storm-beach on the one hand and the lagoon 

 land on the other. Thus all that portion of Funafuti 

 which stands above high tide has been cast up from the 

 ocean and the lagoon, and this beautiful island, like 

 another Aphrodite, has been born with the foam from the 

 waves of the sea. 



