124, PERCY SLADEN TRUST EXPEDITION. 
reef with its convexity to the east, 26 miles from horn to horn by about 9 miles in 
depth. It is a continuous reef from point to point, varying in breadth from a mile 
about the centre to four and a half miles towards the north-east part. In this position 
there is a pool, or series of pools, of blue water forming little lagoons, said by the 
manager to extend over 9 miles. The reef to the north-east, where alone we examined 
it closely, is steep with a well-defined edge, smoothly incrusted with Lithothamnia. It is 
said to continue unbroken, and to be of similar nature, along the whole of the weather- 
face, but no proper survey of it has ever been made. According to the manager’s 
statement, there are no passages into the lagoons practicable for any vessels larger than 
open boats. On the reef there are three islands to the north, Kstablishment and two 
Bird Islands; one island in the centre, Mapare or St. Pierre, nearer to the eastern edge 
of the reef ; and a series of sand-banks and islets to the south on the western half of the 
reef, known collectively as the Coco Islands, from one of the southern islands having three 
coco trees which have managed to survive the frequent hurricanes. Of these islands, 
those to the south are all of sand piled up from the leeward or west side, similar to 
islands formed on the lagoonward halves of atoll-reefs. Establishment Island is the same, 
but represents only the reduced remnant of the southern of the two islands which 
existed 50 years ago on this part of the reef. The Bird Islands are partially rock and 
partially sand; and Mupare is said to be a rocky island, owing its formation either to the 
effects of storms and hurricanes piling up coral from the reef, or to some change of 
level. Large masses of rock are not uncommon on the reef to the north and elsewhere. 
Such masses in the Maldives and Chagos generally represented the remains of former 
land, but here many of them on the western side were undoubtedly true negroheads, 
similar to those which one of us (Gardiner) had seen piled up by hurricanes here and 
there on Fijian reets *. 
On the leeward side of the reef, to the south of Establishment Island, we found a 
series of bare stony banks, awash at low tide and intersected by channels, through 
which the water escapes off the reef above. These tail off to the east into a sand-flat, 
with a corsiderable growth in places of that peculiar grass-like cotyledonous weed, 
Cymodocea, but otherwise generally bare and almost devoid of life. To the west of the 
banks there is no definite reef-flat, but an area of growing coral, mainly stag-horn 
Madrepora, with pits from 4 to 8 feet in depth. From this the edge, which is covered 
with Lithothamnia and Squamariacee, rises a little, so that it is exposed at low spring- 
tides. It is, though, rather indefinite, being lower opposite each channel in the reef 
above. In places it overhangs a little, and it is relatively bare, presenting an 
appearance as if it were being broken down from seawards and washed away. 
On our arrival we at once went ashore on Establishment Island, where we found a 
station with 28 men, most of whom were out fishing. It was merely a fish-curing 
establishment with scaffolding covered with drying and, as it seemed to us, putrefying 
fish, a tin-roofed manager’s house, a large house for the fishermen, a carpenter's shop, 
and tanks for turtle and water, the latter being collected off the roofs. The manager 
* “The Coral Reefs of Funafuti, Rotuma, and Fiji,” Proc. Camb. Phil. foe, vol. ix. p, 445 (1898). 
—_— en aes 
