THE GREAT BARRIER REEF 319 



It is fortunate that there is no one except myself on 

 whom this failure falls, and that I have not to account 

 for such a miserable expedition to any one, so that I 

 can now turn down this wretched page and think no 

 more of it except when I write a few pages giving an 

 account of the trip. I have had a pleasant yachting 

 trip and am very sorry for my two assistants whom I 

 hoped would gather no end of pelagic stuff to work up 

 when they got home. They have taken it very good- 

 naturedly, for it's no joke for them to lose, as they 

 have done, five months of other work. 



Agassiz's reasons for disagreeing in toto from the 

 opinion of Jukes that Darwin's theory was applicable to 

 this region may be summarized as follows : In the first 

 place, the " unfathomable depth " of the sea outside the 

 barrier, of which so much is made in coral-reef discus- 

 sions, simply does not exist. The slope outside the reef 

 is, in fact, more gradual than the outer slope of the ex- 

 tension of this great continental plateau farther south, 

 where there are no corals. Furthermore, the space be- 

 tween the outer reef and the present coast line is stud- 

 ded with islands, which would give Jukes' s imaginary 

 diagram an entirely different aspect, as it would show a 

 series of peaks cropping out and connected with the 

 mainland G. (p. 311.) 



The deeply eroded flanks of the coast mountains, the 

 existence of extensive high table levels, characteristic 

 of the adjacent islands also, convinced Agassiz, when 

 taken together, that the coast of Queensland has for a 

 long period been subjected to a very extensive denuda- 

 tion and erosion, and that the islands were once a part 

 of the mainland. This supposition is fully confirmed 



