xu 



Professor David in Section IV. To the expenses of this Expedition the Royal 

 Society contributed a sum of £350, the larger share, as stated in his report, being 

 defrayed by the Government of, and private subscription in, the colony. 



But our friends were not yet satisfied, for the submarine contour of the island, 

 determined by Captain Field's soundings, suggested that the base of the coral reef 

 might be very near, so the Boring was continued in 1898, as narrated in Section IV, 

 :mtil a depth of 1114 feet had been reached. To this the Royal Society subscribed 

 £200. The whole of the core was sent to England, to be dealt with as Professor 

 JuDD has described in Section X, and all the half-cylinders of core with duplicate 

 portions of the looser material have now been returned to Sydney. The part 

 retained in England has been placed in the British Museum, South Kensington. 



When consideral)le progress had been made in working out the cores and other 

 materials obtained in these Expeditions, Professor Judd presented a preliminary 

 report on the work to the Committee, and they, after considering it, authorised 

 the Chairman to request the Council of the Royal Society to publish the results 

 in the ' Philosophical Transactions.' The answer is given in the following extract from 

 the ' Minutes ' of the Council dated June 15, 1899 :— 



Read a Statement by the Vice-Chairman* of the Coral lieef Committee, reporting upon the materials 

 obtained by the recent Borings at Funafuti, and detailing the steps being taken for their complete 

 examination, and asking the sanction of the Council to the Committee's undertaking the preparation of 

 a monograph on the atoll of Funafuti on the following general lines, namely : — 



A description of the whole core from the points of view of the naturalist and the chemist, forming 

 the main feature of the monograph ; together with brief notices of all papers dealing with the 

 general results of the Expedition, and a list, with critical remarks of the species of animals and 

 plants collected ; the whole forming a volume of about 500 pages with plates. 



Resolved : That the Coral Reef Committee be authorised to take steps for the preparation of a volume 

 on Funafuti, on the lines above desciibed. 



In 1900 a sum of £116 was granted by the Council in aid of expenses partly 

 connected with the preparation at Sydney of the maps in this volume, and £70 was 

 received from the Government Grant Committee to defray sundry expenses connected 

 with the working out of materials in this country. 



In the beginning of 1898, before much advance had been made in working out the 

 materials, and prior to the Third Boring, the Connnittee requested Professor 

 SoLLAS to act as Editor of the volume already contemplated. But as time went on, 

 I perceived more and more clearly that the Editor's task would not l^e a light one, 

 and that it would press less heavily on a resident in London. Moreover, as not a 

 little of it would be rather mechanical, I felt how much science would lose if my 



* Prior to December 6, 1900, this was the strict title, the President of the Royal Society being in 

 theory the Chairman. 



