PROCEEDINGS 
OF THE 
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
Volume 4 SEPTEMBER 15, 1918 Number 9 
METALLIFEROUS LATERITE IN NEW CALEDONIA 
By W. M. Davis V h, 
Department of Geology and Geography, Harvard University 
Communicated June 24, 1918 
A recent paper on lateritic ore deposits by W. G. Miller 1 gives among other 
matters an account of the composition of the nickel- and cobalt-bearing lat- 
erite of New Caledonia, but does not call attention to the physiographic rela- 
tions of the laterite, probably because the physiography of the island has been 
little discussed in published articles. Even the manifest evidence of sub- 
mergence given by its embayed shore line has hardly been mentioned by the 
students of its geology. The mature sea cliffs, which usually cut off the hard- 
rock highlands along the northeastern coast and which frequently descend, 
except for narrow fringing reefs, into ten or twenty fathoms of water, contrast 
strongly with the rounded hills and sloping lowlands of weaker rocks that 
dip gradually under sea level along the southwestern coast; but the contrast 
has only been treated empirically if at all in accounts of the island. Further- 
more, the form of the northeastern cliffs, the depth of the reef-enclosed lagoon 
in front of them, and still more the form of the embayed valleys that interrupt 
the cliffs, all taken together, indicate that the cliffs were cut by waves while 
the island stood several hundred feet higher than now, and that this higher 
stand occurred during a subrecent period of the physiographic development 
of the island when the northeastern coast must have been unprotected by coral 
reefs for a time long enough for the cliffs to be worn back several miles; but 
these physiographic contributions to the historical geology of the island, not 
being attested by fossiliferous stratified deposits, appear to have been over- 
looked. As long as elements so important as these in the historic geology of 
New Caledonia land forms remain unstated, the origin of its superficial ore 
deposits will necessarily be unsolved. 
The most significant features in connection with the ore deposits are the 
highlands on which they lie. Although the greater part of the mountainous 
island is of irregular form and varying altitude, there are certain districts, 
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