304 . PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May 26, 



of supporting a scanty vegetation of weeds, coarse grass and creepers, 

 but sometimes, as at Cairncross, the Howicks, Pipers, and many 

 others, a dense scrub and well-grown Mangroves, Casuarinae, Pan- 

 dani, Pisoniae, and other trees common along this coast. Of this 

 organic rock the beacon on Eaine Island was built eighteen or nine- 

 teen years ago; and the durability of the material is shown by the 

 fact that the structure bas hitherto undergone no decay from wea- 

 thering. It doubtless tops some crystalline formation on which 

 it has been slowly reared. Still it is evident that, though now per- 

 manently out of, it must have been formed well under water, and 

 have reached the surface at low water with the zoophytes which 

 built it in full activity, when the greater part of the long reef now 

 in full activity at the sea-level at ebb, and of which it forms only a 

 fractional part, was stiU many feet below. And now, when the 

 latter has reached close to the surface at low water, the former pro- 

 jects 20 feet into the air ; but denuded by weathering of its soft and 

 brittle exterior, with its dense solid interior laid bare, and its living 

 many-hued branching madrepores replaced by less gaudy forms of 

 vegetable life. 



3rd. Between the active coral-reef still under water ; and the 

 extinct ones now well raised above it, like E-aine Island, we meet 

 with many intermediate forms, occasionally as islets, which consist 

 of a sand-bank just showing above the surface, and either still un- 

 clad with vegetation or having a few sprouts of mangrove, the har- 

 diest of trees, and usually the first to find a footing in the coarse 

 coral debris, little capable, to all appearance, of sustaining life of any 

 sort ; while others show greater elevation, and both a more exten- 

 sive and better-clad area. In short, we find islands of this class in 

 many difierent stages of upward progress, sometimes forming part of 

 the reef, but more usually lying between it and the mainland, when 

 they occasionally interfere materially with the navigation of the inner 

 passage from being difficult to detect in the bright glare of the 

 sun until the vessel is too close to them to be consistent with her 

 safety. 



Besides the above, other indications of the gradual rising of this 

 coast may not improbably be found on a more careful survey of the 

 land than could be afforded during the rapid passages of H.M.S. 

 ' Salamander ' up and down, when landing was effected only occa- 

 sionally and for periods too brief to be of much avail for geological 

 purposes. The elevation of Eastern Australia is going on very 

 slowly, because the forces which are at least connected in some way 

 with, if they do not actually induce it, are not in the island itself, 

 but distant, and centred either in New Zealand, ISTew Caledonia, 

 the Indian archipelago, or the still more remote volcanic districts of 

 the South Pacific. These facts, taken in connexion with the recent 

 discovery by Bickmore, an American geologist, that the eastern coast 

 of Asia, and especially China and Japan, is also rising, and doubt- 

 less more rapidly, like the opposite coast of South America, while 

 the bed of the South Pacific is slowly subsiding, cannot fail to 

 be interesting to scientific men, whether or not they accept Pre- 



