34 EXPEDITION OF THE “ALBATROSS,” 1899-1900. 
of the greater Vavau. They form tongues of land and sea and sounds 
of all shapes and sizes, showing the traces of the former land connec- 
tions of the islands and islets, and their disintegration on the eastward 
and southward by the action of the sea. The islands and islets to the 
southward of the main island rise from more or less extensive reef flats 
which stud the whole plateau, and on which corals grow in great profusion 
(mainly Millepora, Porites, Pavonia, Pocillopora, Fungia, and Astrea), to 
a depth of five to six fathoms in the sounds. In the Nomuka Group 
they extended in the more open waters to fourteen and sixteen fathoms. 
It is evident that in the Tonga Group, which is a very extensive area 
of elevation, the recent corals have played no part in the formation of 
the masses of land and of the plateau of the Tonga Ridge, and that 
here again, as in the Society Islands and the Cook Islands, both also in 
areas of elevation, they are a mere thin living shell or crust growing 
at their characteristic depths upon platforms which in the one case are 
volcanic, in the other calcareous, the formation of which has been 
independent of their growth. 
After coaling and refitting we left Suva* on the 19th of December, and 
arrived at Funafuti on the 23d, stopping on the way at Nurakita, the 
southernmost of the Ellice Islands. I was, of course, greatly interested 
in my visit at Funafuti, where a boring had been made under the direc- 
tion of a committee of the Royal Society, in charge of Professor David, of 
Sydney, after the first attempt under Professor Sollas had failed. The 
second boring reached a depth of more than 1100 feet. This is not 
the place to discuss the bearing of the work done at Funafuti, as beyond 
the fact of the depth reached we have as yet no final statement by the 
committee of the interpretation put upon the detailed examination of 
the core obtained, and now in the hands of Professor Judd and his assis- 
tants. In addition to the above-named islands, we also examined Nuku- 
fetau, another of the Ellice Group. 
1 Explorations of the ‘¢ Albatross” in the Pacific. IV. [Letter No. 4, on the Cruise of the ‘* Alba- 
tross,’? dated Yokohama, Japan, March 5, 1900, to Hon. George M. Bowers, U.S. Commissioner of 
Fish and Fisheries, Washington, D. C., by Alexander Agassiz.] Am. Jour. Sci., Fourth Series, 
Vol. IX., No. 53, May, 1900. 
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