THE ISLAND BEACHES 171 



decomposition. The Krakatua puiuice is almost uniformly grey, 

 and is fresh and clean : but pumice exists far from the sea 

 that has become impregnated with foreign substances, and is 

 in many places entirely fragmented. The various stages of 

 pumice degeneration may be traced from the sea beach to the 

 interior of the island. Some of the pumice has never been 

 grey, and rounded blocks of a black and cinder-like substance 

 are here and there found in the parts of the island where 

 pumice has been most freely washed ashore. This pumice 

 does not appear to belong to any one particular period, for it 

 is found to-day on the beaches, and in the islands, but its 

 composition wherever found appears to be the same, and, on 

 fracture, its internal part is always shining and fresh-looking, 

 if it be picked up on the beach or far in the centre of an 

 island. Pieces of wood, the timbers of ships, Tv^ell covered with 

 barnacles and often with portions of copper still attached to 

 them, float ashore from time to time, and in the history of the 

 islands many interesting finds have been made. 



Many hard seeds and seed-pods are washed ashore with 

 every high sea, and it is an interesting fact that there are 

 quite half a dozen commonly found seeds, which will grow if 

 planted, but which have never, by the agency of waves or 

 birds, succeeded in making a footing in the islands. Various 

 large beans are common on the beaches, and I have succeeded 

 in growing them, but in all the islands there is no plant of their 

 kind that has grown from a sea-tossed waif. The waves trans- 

 port the seeds to the high- water mark and leave them there, 

 and there seems to be no agent in the atoll to effect their 

 removal to a suitable site for growth to commence. Rarer finds 

 are large masses of gum resins whose place of origin I do not 

 know. The ocean beaches are the resting-places of all sorts 

 of jetsam from the barrier and the coral beds which lie upon 

 the submarine slopes of the atoll. Shells in great variety, 

 coral fragments, the harder portions of crustacea and echino- 

 derms are thrown up in great profusion by every tide. It 

 has repeatedly been stated, and very often doubted, that the 

 dead masses of some corals will float. Dr. H. B. Guppy found 



