262 APPENDIX. 



defective on the whole group. Of the eastern islands, Bar- 

 buda and the western coasts of Antigua and Mariagalante 

 appear to be fringed : this is also the case with Barbadoes, 

 as I have been informed by a resident ; these islands are 

 coloured red. On the shores of the Western Antilles, of 

 volcanic origin, very few coral-reefs appear to exist. The 

 island of Martinique, of which there are beautifully executed 

 French charts, on a very large scale, alone presents any 

 appearance worthy of special notice. The south-western, 

 southern, and eastern coasts, together forming about half 

 the circumference of the island, are skirted by very 

 irregular banks, projecting generally rather less than a mile 

 from the shore, and lying from two to five fathoms sub- 

 merged. In front of almost every valley, they are breached 

 by narrow, crooked, steep-sided passages. The French 

 engineers ascertained by boring, that these submerged banks 

 consisted of madreporitic rocks, which were covered in 

 many parts by thin layers of mud or sand. From this fact, 

 and especially from the structure of the narrow breaches, I 

 think there can be little doubt that these banks once 

 formed living reefs, which fringed the shores of the island, 

 and like other reefs probably reached the surface. From 

 some of these submerged banks reefs of living coral rise 

 abruptly, either in small detached patches, or in lines 

 parallel to, but some way within the outer edges of the 

 banks on which they are based. Besides the above banks 

 which skirt the shores of the island, there is on the eastern 

 side a range of linear banks, similarly constituted, 20 miles 

 in length, extending parallel to the coast line, and separated 

 from it by a space between two and four miles in width, and 

 from five to fllteen fathoms in depth. From this range of 

 detached banks, some linear reefs of living coral likewise 

 rise abruptly ; and if they had been of greater length (for 



