80 BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 
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On the contrary, judging from Fiji analogy, the section indicates the 
elevation of a submarine bank of coralliferous limestone and its subse- 
quent denudation, and the forming of an enveloping reef on its summit 
having no relation with the nature of the deeper sea slope. 
We collected a number of corals from the elevated limestone rock at 
several localities along the south and west coast of Viti Levu, at Suva, 
Ngele Levu, Kambara, Ongea, Ngillangillah, and Oneata. I found it 
impossible to determine whether the corals were 7m situ, or had been 
rolled or dropped along the sea face to form a talus. The difficulty of 
determining this without very considerable blasting at the base, the 
face, and along the exposed slopes of the elevated coralliferous lime- 
stones, is very great. 
The collecting of corals from the exposed faces of the cliff was almost 
hopeless with our appliances. The faces have become extremely hard, 
a hammer produces no impression, and the corals are so well embedded 
as to make it impossible to cut them ont. 
It seems impracticable, except where one can actually see the corals 
grow along a slope, or on a patch or the sides of a head, to determine in 
the elevated reef rock if they are still in their natural attitudes. Madre- 
pores and Pocillopores grow in all kinds of position ; so do the heads of 
Astreeans, Mzandrinas, and other massive corals. Furthermore, the 
spaces between coral patches and heads and individual masses of coral 
reef are filled either with sand, corallines, or fragments of dead corals. 
. We can easily see the difficulty of recognizing the former condition of 
corals now embedded in a homogeneous mass of hard ringing limestone, 
in which the corals often exist as more or less indistinct solidified masses, 
barely indicating the genus to which they belong. The coral and coral- 
line sand have become solidified into a close limestone ringing to the 
hammer. Large spaces have become impregnated with the red earth, 
characteristic of coral limestone formations, and the masses of coral 
fragments form a breccia or puddingstone of corals of the species which 
once flourished on the reef. Masses of Nullipores and Orbitolites are 
similarly cemented, or form the connection between the individual 
masses. The whole again is more or less cavernous, representing either 
spaces originally existing on the reef, or cavities which have been formed 
by the percolation of water through the mass. As far as I have exam- 
ined the corals collected from the elevated limestones, they appear to 
belong to the same genera as those now living. 
A careful and extended examination of one of the elevated coralliferous 
limestone reefs, as at Vanua Mbalavu or Kambara or Mango, for instance, 
