306 BULLETIN 103, UXITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



to be about 20 fathoms, but in places some facts indicate that the 

 maximum is between 30 and 40 fathoms. Although more accurate 

 investigations of the amount of the submergence are needed, the 

 available evidence accords with the hypothesis that glacial control is 

 one of the important factors in bringing about the formation of 

 living coral reefs. 



Coral reefs of the Pacific Ocean. 



It is m.anifestly impracticable to consider in this chapter more than 

 a few of the important reefs of the Pacific Ocean. Those selected 

 for discussion are the Great Barrier of AustraUa, the barrier reef off 

 New Caledonia, and those off the Fiji and Society islands. Finally 

 a few paragraphs will be devoted to atolls . 



GREAT BARRIER REEF OF AUSTRALIA. 



The literature on the Great Barrier Keef is very extensive, and 

 includes contributions from numbers of investigators, among whom 

 Jukes, Saville-Kent, H. B. Guppy, Alexander Agassiz, A. C. Haddon, 

 Wood Jones, E. C. Andrews, C. Hedley and Griffith Taylor, Edge- 

 worth David, W. M. Davis, and A. G. Mayer may be mentioned. 

 R. A. Daly and I have based statements regarding it upon carto- 

 graphic studies. No attempt will here be made to review all the 

 literature, and attention will be mostly confined to those papers that, 

 in my opinion, correctly interpret the relations of the reef. 



Andrews in 1902 pubHshed a remarkable paper ^ on the shore fine 

 of Queensland and the platform on which the Great Barrier Reef 

 stands. This paper contains an excellent account of the physiog- 

 raphy of the Queensland coast, applying the deductions based upon 

 the physiographic study to the conditions under which the reef 

 developed, and in it is recognized the significance of a continuous 

 platform and an interrupted reef. Because of the embayed shore 

 line Andrews correctly inferred submergence of the Australian con- 

 tinental shelf, and he makes the important statement: 



* * * the continuance in width of the shelf southwards of the limits of reefs 

 (coralline), and the great shoals thereon, points to a minor part only of the shelf being 

 formed of coral growth.^ 



A few years later Hedley and Griffith Taylor published a valuable 

 paper on the same subject.^ They accepted Andrews's deduction 



1 Andrews, E. C, Prelininary note on the geology of the Queensland coast with references to the 

 geography of the Queensland and N. S. Wales Plateau, Linn. Soc. N. S. Wales, Proc. for 1902, pt. 2, pp. 

 146-185, 1902. 



2 Idem, p. 177. 



3 Hedley, C, and Taylor, T. Griffith, Coral reefs of the Great Barrier, Queensland: A study of their 

 structure, nfe distribution, and relation to mainland physiography, Australasian Assoc. Adv. Sci., Ade- 

 laide Meeting, Jan. 1907, pp. 394-413, 3 pis. 1908. 



