DED UC TION. ANTTCIPA TION. I 3 / 



from this point of view narrow fringing reefs 

 would be insignificant, and likely to be over- 

 looked. He said, " I do not doubt that several 

 of these islands, now left uncolored [on his 

 map], ought to be red." Bonney, in his revised 

 edition of Darwin's "Coral Reefs," says, on 

 the authority of Captain Wharton, that Banks 

 Islands are fringed in parts. 1 



The data from which he had compiled the 

 map of the distribution of coral reefs and 

 islands had been recorded for a purpose entirely 

 different from that for which he wished to use 

 them ; hence much information that was impor- 

 tant for him was left out. The imperfect data 

 verified his principle of distribution; and he 

 was able to infer deductively that there were 

 small fringing reefs in existence where they 

 had not been observed or recorded. 



In pursuit of the same subject he studied 

 carefully the charts of the Great Chagos Bank, 

 which he had not seen himself. He saw from 

 a study of the chart that, as he said, " On the 

 eastern side of the atoll some of the banks are 

 linear and parallel, like islets in a great river, 

 and they pointed directly towards a great breach 

 on the opposite side of the atoll. I inferred 

 from this that strong currents sometimes set 



1 Structure and Distribution of Cpral Reefs, p. 220. 



