240 A. Agassiz — Great Barrier Reef of Australia. 



Akt. XXXII. — A Visit to the Great Barrier Reef of Aus- 

 tralia;^ bj A. Agassiz. 



* Extract from a letter to the editor dated Cook Town, Queensland, May 16tli, 

 1896. 



The steamer "Croydon" of the A. U. S. K Co. 



was chartered for my exploration of the Great Barrier Reef. 

 Dr. W. McM. Woodworth and Mr. A. G. Mayer accompanied 

 me as assistants. We carried a complete photographic appa- 

 ratus and an extensive outfit for pelagic fishing in the way of 

 surface as well as of deep sea Tanner nets, with the usual 

 apparatus for sounding in moderate depths. All this, beside the 

 necessary appliances for preserving the collections, was for- 

 warded to Sydney early in the winter. 



Commander Z. L. Tanner, U. S. N., was kind enough to 

 superintend for me the building of the sounding machines and 

 of the deep sea nets. We hoped to make large collections of 

 pelagic animals both inside the Barrier Keef as well as at sea 

 off the passages leading through the Great Barrier Reef. 

 Unfortunately during our whole stay in the district of the reef 

 boisterous weather prevented us from carrying out our plans 

 for making pelagic collections, and we were compelled to limit 

 our work mainly to the examination of the inner portions of 

 the Great Barrier Reef district. Our most extended observa- 

 tions were made in the vicinity of Cook Town from the Hope 

 Islands on the south to Lizard Island on the north. South of 

 the Cook Town district the weather prevented us from making 

 more than a rapid examination of many of the islands and 

 reefs on our track. While thus gaining only a general knowl- 

 edge of the structure of the Great Barrier Reef, it was, how- 

 ever, quite suflacient to give us an excellent conception of the 

 causes which have brought about the existing conditions along 

 the coast of Queensland adjoining the Great Barrier Reef. 

 Although the English admiralty charts of the Great Barrier 

 Reef are still far from complete, yet many of the sheets are 

 sufi&ciently detailed to show the process of denudation and of 

 erosion which has been going on along the northeast part of 

 the coast of Australia. 



Steaming along the coast and back and forth towards the 

 outer edge of the Barrier Reef, one is at once struck with the 

 broad belt of coral reefs, flanking on the east the navigable 

 channel which extends between it and the mainland as far as 

 Cape York, a belt diminishing greatly in width as one pro- 

 ceeds from the south, northwards. The soundings thus far 

 taken off the outer edge of the Great Barrier Reef, though not 

 very numerous, yet indicate sufi^iciently well the submarine 



