AGASSIZ: FIJI ISLANDS AND CORAL REEFS. AT 
establish the boring plant. Having a lighthouse on it, with a keeper 
and assistants, it afforded unusual facilities for establishing a comfortable 
camp for the boring crew, who were at work a couple of days after 
landing. 
The following is the record of our boring at Wailangilala.? 
From the surface — 
To 20 feet, coral and coralline sand with broken shells, like that on 
the beach. 
20-30 feet, coralline sand. 
30-40 ‘* coral and coralline sand, coarse. 
40-50 “fine coralline sand. 
49-51 “ parts of core of yellow limestone (elev. limestone). 
51-61 6“ “é 6c 66 “ ‘6 “ 
MIval 6c (74 6s “cc “ec “e “ 
Tapas (yy vee “ ‘“ 66 “ “c << 
80-85 oe (73 (73 “é “ ““ “<c 
It was on the western inner edge of the island (Plate 109) that I 
established our boring apparatus, soon after arriving at Suva, and while 
under the impression conveyed by the newspapers, and from published 
reports, that the second Funafuti boring expedition had demonstrated 
that at the Funafuti atoll true coral reefs extended to a depth of 643 
feet. This information seemed so positive that had it been received before 
the shipping of my outfit to Fiji via Australia, | should have remained 
at home, convinced that at any rate, whatever had been my experience in 
the West Indies, Australia, and the Sandwich Island reefs, yet that in 
a region of typical atolls in the Pacific the conditions of subsidence 
suggested by Darwin and Dana might exist, unless the boring at Funa- 
futi proved eventually, on closer examination, to have been carried on in 
the sea face talus of a reef. -But my outfit having left, I was not 
prepared to accept the preliminary conclusions of Professor David as 
recorded by the papers, and I started on my expedition ready to con- 
firm by my own borings the truth of the great thickness of modern 
coral reefs in atolls of the Pacific, or to give some other explanation 
of this apparently overwhelming proof of the correctness of Dar- 
win’s theory. 
From what we saw of the elevated coralliferous limestone at Ngele 
Levu, Vanua Mbalavu, Mango, and other points in Lau on our way to 
Ongea, it was very evident that these limestones attained a great thick- 
1 The bore hole was about five feet above high water mark, and about thirty 
feet from the shore line, a few feet north of the Landing (figure on page 45). 
