167 



SECTION X. 



GENERAL REPORT ON THE MATERIALS SENT FROM FUNAFUTI, 

 AND THE METHODS OF DEALING WITH THEM. 



By Professor J. W. Judd, C.B., LL.D., F.R.S. 



Having been entrusted by the Coral Reef Committee of the Royal Society with the 

 examination of the cores and other materials obtained during the several expeditions 

 to Funafuti in 1896, 1897, and 1898, I proceeded, with the sanction of the Board of 

 Education, to make such arrangements as were possible for carrying on the work in 

 the Geological Research Laboratories of the Royal College of Science at South 

 Kensington. Owing to the large mass of materials sent on from Sydney, consequent 

 upon the success attending the last year of the work, the task proved to be a much 

 heavier one than was originally anticipated, and a corresponding delay has occurred 

 in completing it. 



In the execution ui the work during the last six years, I have received much 

 valuable assistance from my colleagues, Mr. F. Chapman (now of the University 

 Museum, Melbourne), Dr. C. G. Cullis, and Dr. E. W. Skeats ; while very useful 

 chemical work has been done in connection with the inquiry by Mr. J. Hart Smith, 

 under the supervision and in the laboratory of Professor Tilden. During visits 

 which they have j^aid to this country. Professor T. Edgewohth David and Mr. G. 

 Sweet have afiorded me much assistance, while Dr. Sorby, Professor Sollas and 

 Mr. Stanley Gardiner, with Sir John Murray and Professor Alexander 

 Agassiz, have from time to time given me very valuable counsel and aid. To the 

 officers of the Natural History Division of the British Museum — Professor E. Ray 

 Lankester, Mr. G. Murray, Professor T. Jeffrey Bell, Mr. Kirkpatrick, 

 Mr. Bernard, and others — I have always been able to appeal in cases of doubt or 

 difficulty. 



But it is to Dr. G. J. Hinde that I especially owe a deep debt of gratitude for his 

 most invaluable assistance. He has devoted many months of patient labour to the 

 study of the various cores, and of the sections prepared from them, directing liis well- 

 known skill in this kind of research to the elucidation of the nature of the organisms, 

 the skeletons of which had often undergone great alteration by chemical actiou. 

 But for Dr. Hinde's invaluable aid, it may be safely asserted that it would have been 



