346 "ALBATROSS" TROPICAL PACIFIC EXPEDITIOK 



Alcyonarians, and Actinarians, growing in great profusion upon it. The 

 coral belt of the outer slope is in marked contrast with the corals of the 

 shallower water dividing the lanes and pools of the lagoon flat, where 

 the coral belt is comparatively shallow, although the species are the 

 same as those which grow on the outer face.' The lagoon flat between 

 the outer edge of the barrier reef and the edge of the mangrove belt 

 is, as has been described, covered with pools and lanes of more or less 

 deep water, alternating and separating the patches of corals which have 

 grown up from the bottom of the lagoon, the greater part of which 

 have been killed by silt. On the edge of the outer mangrove belt 

 (PI. 189, fig. 4), which is probably not more than 100 to 150 yards 

 wide, a few small coral masses are thrown up, and the whole slope 

 facing the lagoon is covered with deep, dark blue, finely ground mud. 

 In the inner Kiti Harbor a volcanic ridge runs down close to the shore. 

 It is very narrow and flanked with a band of mangroves. 



Looking up the west coast from our anchorage in the outer Kiti Harbor, 

 the great extent and width of the barrier reef flat to the west is very 

 striking (PI. 190, fig. 2); near the entrance to Kiti Harbor a series of 

 low islands and islets and sand bars encloses a pool of about one and 

 one-half to two miles wide. The islets on the west side of the entrance 

 of Kiti Harbor are well wooded ; the islands on the eastern side have, 

 according to the statement of the pilot, been washed away, and nothing 

 remains to indicate their former extent except a few isolated coral rock 

 boulders on the edge of the outer reef flat. The water of the lagoon 

 on the south and west shore of Ponapi is exceedingly muddy from the 

 silt brought down by the rivers emptying into Kiti Harbor and dis- 

 charged through the long belt of mangrove islands. Something anal- 

 ogous occurs along the Florida keys, when the water dammed up in 

 the Everglades is forced between them in times of floods. Only at 

 Ponapi the land is high, the slopes are broad, and the silt is scattered 

 more uniformly, and not concentrated at a few channels, as is the case 

 along the Florida reefs. 



' Ueber die Korallen d. Insel Ponapi, v. Dr. F. Briiggeman, Jour. d. Mus. Godeffroy, Heft XIV., 

 p. 201. 



