30 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



These calcareous bosses, formed of masses of Stro7natopora 

 and other aggregated organisms, lie among argillaceous and 

 arenaceous strata, which appear to have formed great sub- 

 marine banks. Their structure is quite explicable on the 

 supposition that they began in one or more scattered clumps 

 upon these banks, and gradually grew up there into atoll-like 

 reefs, as coral-reefs are now doing upon the banks off the 

 Florida coast. 



And now it only remains for me to thank you cordially for 

 the honourable position in which your good will placed me 

 two years ago, and for the uniform kindness and forbearance 

 with which my shortcomings in the discharge of the duties 

 of President have been condoned. I wish for this already 

 venerable Society many long years of active usefulness, and I 

 trust that it may continue to be in the future, as it has been 

 in the past — a centre into which the younger blood of genera- 

 tion after generation will flow, and from which the warmth of 

 sympathy and help will cheer and stimulate the early career 

 of many a distinguished naturalist in days to come. 



[N'ote added January 1884. — An interesting series of 

 soundings made last autumn, in what was previously be- 

 lieved to be deep water between the Mediterranean Sea and 

 the Canary Islands, has revealed the existence of submarine 

 mountains, rising in some parts to within less than fifty 

 fathoms from the surface, and covered with growing and dead 

 corals. These elevations are almost certainly of volcanic 

 origin. Their tops are now being raised in level by the 

 growth of calcareous organisms upon them. It is interesting 

 to find this corroboration of the views above advocated, from 

 an area of comparatively cold water where reef-building 

 corals do not live. See paper (by Mr J. Y. Buchanan) in 

 Tirnes, 7th December 1883. 



Professor Eein, whose work on Bermudas is cited on p. 10, 

 has been so good as to call my attention to a later contribu- 

 tion by him to the anti-subsidence literature of coral-reefs. 

 It was published in the Verhandhmgen erst, dentsch. Geo- 

 graphentags, 1881 (p. 29), and is entitled — " Die Bermudas- 

 Inseln und ihre Korallenriffe, nebst einem Nachtrage gegen 



