or 
AGASSIZ: FIJI ISLANDS AND CORAL REEFS. 
SOME POINTS IN THE LITERATURE ON CORAL REEFS. 
It will prevent considerable confusion if, before proceeding with the 
account of our expedition to Fiji, I should devote a few pages to the 
examination of some of the literature on coral reefs, in the light of 
the observations we made while at Fiji. 
On looking over the literature on coral reefs, one cannot fail to be 
struck with the amount of irrelevant matter which has been passed 
down from writer to writer. Statements made on hearsay have gradu- 
ally become facts. The observations of inexperienced persons receive 
general recognition. Special cases are discussed without reference to 
their limited or exceptional application. The whole question is often 
threshed out de novo, so that it is difficult to separate the new from the 
old. And, finally, information gathered from charts is substituted for 
observation in dealing with questions which the latter alone can settle. 
Every new investigator naturally adds important information from the 
field he surveys, and each has in his way described the numerous and 
varying conditions affecting the growth and existence of coral reefs in 
the tropical waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific. Recent explorations 
have only increased the number of questions to be solved regarding 
coral reefs ; and until the whole field has been examined in the light of 
these questions, it is hopeless to attempt a general revision of the 
theories regarding the formation of coral reefs. A revision based upon 
a partial examination, though it be more extensive than that of our 
predecessors, is usually brushed aside with the statement that even if 
the exception described is true, the old theory may yet be true in some 
other atoll region. Of course, such criticism can never end, and we may 
go on searching forever for this imaginary atoll, or until the last remain- 
ing atoll has been hunted down. 
In many quarters it has become a question of creed to uphold the 
Darwinian theory of subsidence as essential to the formation of atolls 
and of barrier reefs. Facts and arguments supporting other explana- 
tions are ignored or explained away in the most extraordinary manner. 
Regions which are cited by Darwin and Dana as typical become excep- 
tions when shown to be no longer characteristic regions of subsidence. 
Typical barrier reefs become patch reefs, atolls are dubbed pseudo 
atolls; so that the regions where true barrier reefs or typical atolls, 
which owe their origin to subsidence, can be examined, are little by little 
becoming very restricted. In fact, if we are to judge of the regions not 
yet examined, and which have not been examined by Darwin and Dana, 
