798 
Proceedings of the Royal Society 
the triennial period 1877-80, for his paper on “ The Structure and 
Origin of Coral Reefs and Islands,” which was communicated to 
the Society on April 5, 1880, and thereafter printed, in abstract, in 
the Proceedings of the Society. 
One of the most remarkable results of the voyage of H.M.S. 
“ Beagle,” which was undertaken forty years ago, was the publica- 
tion by Mr. Darwin of his book On the Structure and Distribution 
of Coral Reefs , in which he advanced a theory of their mode of 
formation which was at once universally accepted by scientific men, 
and may be stated to have been all but universally entertained till 
the publication of Mr. Murray’s paper on Coral Reefs. 
He had the good fortune, about the commencement of his scientific 
career, to serve as naturalist on board the “Challenger” during its 
voyage of discovery round the world. Among the new facts and 
ideas we owe to that celebrated expedition, and the skill with 
which it was conducted, those referring to the amount and distribu- 
tion of oceanic life from the surface to a depth of about 100 
fathoms, and the different chemical processes at work both at great 
depths and near the surface, must be named as among the more 
prominent. 
The great merit of his paper consists in having brought these 
new facts and ideas to bear on the structure and origin of coral reefs. 
He has shown how the foundations for coral reefs have been pre- 
pared by the disintegration of volcanic islands and by the building 
up of submarine volcanoes by the deposition on their summits of 
sediments composed mainly of dead organisms. He has further shown 
that the food of the coral consists chiefly of the abundant oceanic 
life brought ceaselessly to them by the surface drift currents of the 
tropical regions ; and that the extensive solvent action of sea-water, 
which so completely removes the carbonate of lime-shells at great 
depths of the ocean, holds no place at the shallow depths which 
form the habitat of the coral. 
Without going further into details, it may here suffice to say that 
the theory of coral reefs propounded in Mr. Murray’s paper renders 
it unnecessary to the geologist to assume, in explanation of some of 
the more difficult problems presented to him, the occurrence of 
great and repeated general subsidences which have formed one of 
the great difficulties of geology ; and that from the general accept- 
