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SECTION XL 



REPORT ON THE MATERIALS FROM THE BORINGS AT THE 



FUNAFUTI ATOLL. 



By George Jennings Hinde, Ph.D., F.R.S. 

 Contents. 



Page 



(1) Introduction 186 



(2) General Fcatnres of the Main Boring 187 



(3) Detailed Notes on the Materials from the Main Boring 195 



(4) Notes on the Cores from the First Boring (C), 105 feet 296 



(5) Notes on the Cores from the Second Boring (D), 72 feet 303 



(6) Notes on the Materials from the Lagoon Boring (L) 310 



(7) Notes on the Organisms from the different Borings 315 



(«) Foraminifera 316 



{h) Corals 319 



(r) Calcareous Algae and Various 328 



(8) Summary 332 



(9) Tables showing the Distribution of the Organisms in the Borings 336 



(1). — Introduction. 



On the invitation of the Coral Reef Committee of the Royal Society, I undertook, 

 in Febiuary 1 900, an examination of the materials obtained from the various borings 

 sunk on the reef and beneath the floor of the lagoon of the Funafuti Atoll, in 

 1896-1898, with the object of determining the nature and distribution of the 

 organisms which have contributed to the building up of the atoll. Of the three 

 borings carried out on the reef the most important was that known as the Main 

 Boring, which reached a depth of IIU^ feet from the surface; the two earlier 

 attempts of Professor Sollas, known as the First (C), and Second (D) Borings, did 

 not extend deeper than 105 feet and 72 feet respectively. The borings in the lagoon 

 reached a depth of 144 feet below the floor of the lagoon. The materials from these 

 borings consist of solid cylindrical cores and irregular nodular lumps of limestone or 

 dolomitic rock, together with loose, fragmentary, granular and ])Owdery material, 

 partly of small organisms, partly of broken-up limestone. The solid cores and the 

 samples of loose materials from each boring were kept distinct, and they had all been 

 brought to England and deposited provisionally in the Geological Laboratory of the 

 Royal College of Science, South Kensington, under the charge and supervision of 

 Professor J. W. Judd, F.R.S. 



