226 "ALBATROSS" TROPICAL PACIFIC EXPEDITION. 



Mr. J. Stanley Gardiner has given an excellent account of the general 

 features of Funafuti, somewhat more in detail than Hedley. The brackish 

 pools of Funafuti he compares to the " Barachois " of Diego Garcia/ described 

 by Bourne." They seem to me to be similar in their structure with the 

 "bays" and sinks so frequently met with in the Ellice, Gilbert, Marshall 

 and Maldive Islands, and to owe their origin to the same causes. 



Gardiner noticed that some of the slabs thrown up on the slope and reef 

 flat were consolidated to the rock below them. He gives an excellent 

 description and figures^ of the outer rim of the reef flat with its fissures and 

 tongue-like indentations, more or less arched over by the growth of Nulli- 

 pores across the openings, leading to the formation of blow-holes.* Like 

 Sollas, he has noticed that on the lagoon side the beach sand is not com- 

 posed of coral sand, but that its jDrincipal constituents consist of fragments 

 of calcareous Alg£B and Foraminifera. 



Gardiner lays great stress, and justly, on the existence of great buttresses 

 running at right angles to the land rim, which once formed part of a 

 higher land, the greater part of which has been washed away or dissolved. 

 Gardiner speaks of the great width of the leeward reef of Funafuti (PI. 222). 

 He states .that with the exception of the shoals, which come nearly to the 

 surface and are indicated by the breaking of the sea, there are no shoals 

 now forming by corals which would eventually grow to the surface. Yet 

 the Admiralty Chart of Funafuti^ atoll indicates several patches rising to 

 a considerable height above the floor of the lagoon. Among them I may 

 mention that there are more than ten knolls rising to 20 fathoms from the 

 surrounding depth of 23 to 24 fathoms, a number to 19 fathoms, three to 

 18, two to 16, two to 15, one to 14, one each to 10 and 11, one to 7, four 

 to 4, two to 3, and four to 2| fathoms. These patches constitute a large 

 percentage of the shoals which have nearly reached the surface and on 

 which the sea breaks. 



I have already, on several occasions, called attention to the narrow bathy- 



1 A. Chart 920. 



2 Proc. R, S., XLIIL p. 440 (1888). 



3 Loc. cit., Funafuti, p. 433. 



^ Gardiner says he never found boulders torn off from the Nullipore rim on the reef flat. This has 

 not been my experience either in the Gilbert or Marshall Islands, 

 ' A. Chart 2983. 



