NORTH MALOSMADULU. 67 



covered with beach rock, and a patch of reef rock honeycombed and weath- 

 ered, pitted and undercut ; elsewhere the island is steep to. Facing the pass 

 to the south, the beach is composed of coarse shingle and reaches of sand 

 with large boulders at the east point. Unfortunately we could not land 

 and examine the high dunes on the island mentioned by Mr. Gardiner.^ 



Mr. Gardiner has made a careful comparison of Moresby's Chart : of a 

 stretch of the western face of North Mahlos, extending from Kukuludi Faro 

 to Maduni Fai'o, with sketches of his own.^ He finds well-marked velus in 

 Dina Faro and Ma Faro ; none are on Moresby's Chart.'' At Telin Faro and 

 Bodu Faro, the broad eastern rims of the velu shown by Moresby have 

 disappeared and they have become connected with the general lagoon. 

 The faros to the north do not indicate any special change. Mr. Gardiner 

 considers the enlargement of the velus as due to the solvent action of sea 

 water. Similar differences on the chart between Turadu and Dunikolu he 

 attributes to the same cause. When, as is often the case, the rims of the 

 velus are merely sand, their demolition and the increase of size of the 

 enclosed velus is not necessarily due to solution. The filling up a velu 

 would result in a reef flat. A study of the northeastern point of Tila- 

 dummadulu indicates an increase of the land areas of the faros. 



I fully agree with Mr. Gardiner's^ view that every large reef on the bank 

 has grown up by itself. It does not follow, however, from the changes he 

 has observed, that North Malos is approaching the condition of a perfect 

 atoll. We can trace the passage of such rims composed of atolls, into long 

 linear reefs only in very limited areas. 



We passed out of North Malosmadulu through the pass west of Tura, and 

 entered again by Maregiri Island (PI. 30, fig. 2; 31, fig. 1). Steaming in a 

 southeasterly direction, we crossed the corner of the area bounded by the 

 twenty-fathom curve, and obtained an idea of the character of the "jungle 

 of reefs," ^ crowded as it is with banks, rings, coral heads, faros, flats, and 

 islands and islets. The first islet we came upon was a small sand islet 

 with a clump of bushes in the centre, with steep coral sand beaches and 



1 Loc. cit., \i. 166. - Loc. cit., p. 169. 



' Though the original charts might have indicated such a velu from the position of the coral rocks on 

 the outer edges on both these faros. 



* Loc. cit., p. 171. 5 Gardiner, loc. cit., p. 167. 



