FUNAFUTI. 225 



says, only very slightly affected by the agencies at work, " which must take 

 long to make a perceptible advance in so huge a task." 



Mr. Hedley has called attention to the shallow passages which interrupt 

 the thread of the land rim, but not of the reef rim upon which the islets are 

 placed. These passages I have called "gaps," they are a feature which 

 occurs in all the Pacific atolls, but the gaps vary in depth from dry depres- 

 sions above high-water mark to flats bare at low water, to cuts through 

 the reef platform with variable 5epth, forming merely boat passages, or 

 to openings of somewhat greater depths passing into ship passages. 



The slope of the bottom on the lagoon face of the passages is stated by 

 Hedley to extend into it fan-shaped. This is not universally the case, the 

 shape of the extension, as I have shown in other atolls, depending upon 

 the width of the shallow passages, their depth, the character of the bottom, 

 and their exposure to the prevailing winds, all of which are essential factors 

 in determining the resultant action. 



Mr. Hedley has given a list of the plants of the Ellice group,* with inter- 

 esting remarks on their uses by the natives. He compares the flora of the 

 western atolls of the Pacific to that of the eastern islands, and finds the 

 number of species repeated from atoll to atoll increases as we go \yestward. 



In the summary of his observations, Mr. Hedley states that Darwin's 

 theory is favored as against Murray's by the fact that the atoll is planted on 

 a cone, that it is girdled by a precipitous submarine cliff, and that the lagoon 

 is filling up ; whereas Murray demands its excavation. Similar statements 

 are made by Professor Sollas ; they are mere repetitions of former argu- 

 ments. In spite of the fact that a lagoon may be filling up at a certain 

 stage of its development, that does not prevent solution from being an 

 effective agent in carrying off material from the lagoon of an atoll. Nor is 

 the existence of a precipitous submarine cliff explicable only on the theory 

 of subsidence. There certainly are a sufficient number of such cliffs found 

 in areas of elevation, in no way dependent upon subsidence for th,eir 

 formation. 



The reports of Bonney and of David refer to the progress made in the 

 boring at Funafuti. 



^ Loc. cit., p. 21. 

 15 



