¥34 BULLETIN: MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 
the present epoch there was an extensive elevation, which lifted the 
great masses of coralliferous limestone resting upon the flanks of the 
islands to a considerable height, in some cases as high as 1,000 feet. 
The base of the limestone masses rests upon volcanic rocks, as can be 
seen at Suva, at Kambara (Plate 78), at Mango, at Lakemba, at Nai- 
tamba, and at Vanua Mbalavu (Plate 72) it shows the thickness of the 
elevated reefs to have been over 800 feet. During this period of uplift 
the physiognomy of the islands of the group must have been greatly 
changed, and still further modified by the denudation and erosion which 
have taken place since the elevation of the ancient limestones. It is to 
the changes brought about by the elevation and the subsequent erosion 
and denudation that we must look for the causes which have fashioned 
the steep slopes of the islands and reefs, and not to the growth of the 
thin crust of corals which thrive upon the reef flats forming the sub- 
stratum of the modern reef,—a substratum which in Fiji may be of 
volcanic origin or composed of elevated limestone, the sea face of which 
is the extension of the former land mass and follows its ancient slope, 
being only slightly modified by the growth of the crust of recent corals 
found upon it. 
Similar elevated reefs (probably composed of the same tertiary lime- 
stone as those of Fiji) have been described by Clark? at the Loyalty 
Islands, and also by Chambeyron (L.),? and’ Pelatan (L.).2 Chambey- 
ron gives figures of the elevated terraces of Lifou and Ouvea composed 
of coralliferous limestone, and there is an excellent photograph taken by 
Pelatan of the elevated coral reefs of Lifou, and reproduced in Bernard’s* 
Nouvelle Calédonie, p. 45. While Maré is said by Pelatan to have five 
terraces of elevated coralliferous limestone, and to be riddled with cav- 
erns,® Clark considers the elevated coralliferous limestones of the Loyalty 
Islands probably to be Pleistocene. 
In the Solomon Islands, Guppy ® has traced extensive elevated reefs, 
1 Q. J. Geol. Soc. London, 1847, Vol. III. p. 61. 
2 Bull. Soc. Géogr., 1875, p. 566, and Bull. Soc. Géogr., 1876, p. 634. 
® Les Mines de la Nouvelle Calédonie. 
4 L’Archipel de la Nouvelle Calédonie, par Augustin Bernard. Paris, 1895. 
5 See also De Rochas, La Nouvelle Calédonie, p. 90. Grundman, Die Loyalty 
Inseln, Peterm. Mittheil., 1870, p. 365. 
6 Guppy, The Solomon Islands, 1887, p. 126, and Scott, Geog. Mag., 1888, 
p. 121, a criticism of the theory of subsidence as affecting coral reefs. Geol. of the 
New Hebrides, Friedrick, Q. J. Geol. Soc. London, 1893, XLIX. 227. Campbell, R., 
Geol. Soc. of Australasia, Melbourne, 1889, VI. 19. Strehl, Zeit. f. Wiss. Geog. 
Ergiinz., No. 3, 1890. J. Walther, Bau d. Flexuren, Jena Zeits. f. Nat., 1886, p. 243. 
J. Garnier, Ann. d. Mines, 1867, p. 59. Walther, Adamsbriicke, Peterm. Ergiinz., 
No. 102. 
