AGASSIZ: FIJI ISLANDS AND CORAL REEFS. 41 
considered by itself, and that no sweeping generalization can take in 
the formation of all coral reefs. Such atolls as those of Alacran on the 
Yucatan Bank of the Hogsty Reef in the Bahamas owe their origin — 
I mean the conditions existing there now — to entirely different causes 
from those which have brought about the formation of some of the atolls 
of Fiji, and the atolls of Alacran and of Hogsty themselves again owe 
their origin to different causes. The barrier reef of Florida does not 
owe its origin to the same causes as those which have led to the forma- 
tion of the Great Barrier Reef of Australia, or the barrier and fringing 
reef surrounding parts of Viti Levu, or some of the other islands of the 
Fiji group. 
It is playing with words to call such atolls as I have mentioned above 
pseudo atolls, as is becoming the fashion, and to speak of the localities 
to which Darwin’s theory of the formation of barrier reefs and of atolls 
does not apply as exceptions to the rule. These exceptions now cover a 
. good deal of ground. They include nearly all the coral reefs which 
have been examined by recent investigators,—from Semper in the 
Pelew Islands, Rein in the Bermudas, Murray in Tahiti and elsewhere, 
of Forbes, and of Bourne, of Guppy in the Solomon Islands, Kramer in 
Samoa, and others, —down to my own in Florida, the Yucatan Bank, 
Cuba, Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the West India Islands, as well as in 
the Galapagos and Sandwich Islands, besides the exploration of the 
Great Barrier Reef of Australia, and of the Fiji Islands. Surely the list 
of investigators and of localities is long enough. The negative evidence 
is now becoming overwhelming, and the recent borings at Funafuti have 
not weakened the position of those who do not recognize the Darwinian 
theory as of universal application, and as not having been proved to 
exist in a single instance, either by a careful examination of the locality 
or by borings. 
Taviuni. 
Plates 4, 18, 60. 
The islands of Taviuni (Plates 4, 18) and of Kandayu (Plates 10, 11) 
illustrate admirably the formation of reefs encircling denuded and eroded 
extremities of large islands, and readily explain the existence of very 
irregularly shaped reefs representing the former outline of the islands 
which they replace. Other characteristic points similar in their origin 
are the great spits forming the Namena Barrier Reef, which connects 
with the extensive reef platforms reaching towards Ovalau from the 
southeastern extremity of Vanua Levu (Plates 3, 3°) and the north- 
