2">4 James D. Dana. Esq., on 



Mauke is a low elevated coral island. 



Mitiaro resembles Mauke.t 



Okatutaia is a low coral island, not more than six or 

 seven feet high above the beach, which is coral sand. It has 

 a light-reddish soil. 



Mangaia is girted by an elevated coral reef three hundred 

 feet in height. Mr Williams speaks of it as coral, with a 

 small quantity of fine-grained basalt in the interior of the 

 island ; he states again that a broad ridge (the reef) girts 

 the hills. + 



Rurutu has an elevated coral reef one hundred and fifty 

 feet in height. § 



With regard to the other islands of these groups, Manual, 

 Aitutaki, Raro tonga, Remetera, Tubuai, and Raivavai, the 

 descriptions by Williams and Ellis appear to shew that 

 they have undergone no recent elevation. 



d. Scattered Islands in the latitudes between the Society 

 and Samoan Groups. — These coral islands, as far as we can 

 ascertain, are low like the Paumotus, excepting some of the 

 Fanning Group north of the equator, and possibly Jarvis 

 and Maiden. 



Of the Fanning Group (situated near the equator, south 

 of the Hawaiian Group), — 



Washington Island is three miles in diameter, without a 

 proper lagoon ; the whole surface, as seen by us, was covered 

 densely with cocoa-nut trees. This unusual size for an island 

 without a lagoon indicates an elevation, which the height of 

 the island, estimated at twelve feet, confirms. The elevation 

 may have been two or three feet. 



Palmyra Island, just north-west of Washington, is de- 

 scribed by Fanning as having two lagoons ; the westernmost 

 contains twenty fathoms water. Fanning's Island, to the 



* Williams's Miss. Ent., pp. 39, 47, 264. f H>id., pp. 39, 264. 



% Ibid., pp. 48, 50, 249. See also Mr Darwin, p. 132. 



§ Ibid., p. 50. — Stutchbury describes the coral rock as one hundred 

 and fifty feet high (West of England Journal, i.) — Tyerman and Bennet 

 describe the island as having a high central peak with lower eminences, 

 and speak of the coral rock as two hundred feet high on one side of the bay 

 and throe hundred on the other (ii., 102.) — Ellis says that the rocks of the in- 

 terior are in part basaltic, and in part vesicular lava, iii., 393. 



