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upheaval is progressing throughout the region of Torres Straits and the Great Barrier 
system, and this, too, must tend towards rendering the older charts untrustworthy. 
The coral reefs volunteer their own evidence upon this point. At many stations 
throughout this region the circumstances maybe noted that large expanses of dead coral 
intervene between high water mark and the living banks. This dead coral here referred 
to, is not the broken dihris that has been cast up by storms, such as commonly exists 
all along extreme high water mark ; but occurs at a lower level in situ as it originally 
grew, and is only lacking in vitality to distinguish it from the living reefs. The Albany 
pass between Cape York and Albany Island, yields a prominent illustration of this 
phenomenon. On either side of the passage there is a fringing coral reef, the living 
inner margin of which, composed chiefly of a branching Madrepore, is only exposed at 
the lowest spring tides. Immediately adjoining this living bank, between it and the 
foreshore, there is a belt of the same species of coral, but entirely dead and brittle, 
like rotten ice to walk upon. Within a few more years this dead belt will no donbt 
be broken up by the action of the waves and chemical disintegration, and be 
added to the existing inshore area of coral mud and dihris. An examination 
of the circumstances that have brought about the present condition of the 
reef shows that this dead belt of coral is now exposed to atmospheric 
influences, which are antagonistic to its growth, with every ordinary spring tide ; 
while the living coral, as before observed, is only visible above the water at the 
exceptional or lowest springs. At the period that the inner belt of dead madrepora 
was alive, and which from its state of preservation cannot be long ago, it mnst have 
grown at a similar lower level as that now living, and nothing but the general upheaval 
of the area on which it throve can logically explain the fact of its decadence. The 
fringing reef off Magnetic Island, near Townsville, presents closely analogous 
phenomena. Dead bivalve shells of large size, such as Tridacnas and Pinnas, also 
occupy their original positions here, in close contiguity to the dead corals. Yet more 
substantial evidence of the upheaval in this district was afforded me by a station-holder 
on Magnetic Island, and by whom I was informed that within the time he had 
been located there a very perceptible change had taken place in the small bay facing 
his property. In former years boats could approach the landing-place at all tides, 
excepting very low springs, whereas now it was not possible to bring a boat in at even 
ordinary low tide. The shallowing of the water could not be accounted for by the 
silting up of the bay, there being no fresh water flowing into it, while the rocky bed of 
the bay itself had apparently been raised to a higher level. The instances now recorded 
might easily be multiplied.” 
Mr. Maitland describes * the occurrence of stranded pumice in various parts of 
Magnetic Island, notably on those portions most exposed to the open sea, and adds that 
he never observed it at a greater elevation than twelve feet above sea level. “ The rounded 
form and somewhat decayed interior presented by many of the pebbles, bear evidence 
of their having travelled some considerable distance, and as has been noticed by various 
observers in many islands of the Pacific, pieces wore found iucrusted with calcareous 
tubes of the tubicular annelids, Serpula and Spirorbis. The source of these pumice 
drifts is to be looked for in many of the volcanic islands with which the Pacific is known 
to be studded.” 
I am informed by Mr. Joseph Hughes, Sub-collector of Customs, Townsville, that 
on Eattlesnake Island a deposit of dead coral, similar to that described by Mr. Saville 
Kent, occurs at about five feet above high water mark. 
* Report on Magnetic Island. Brisbane : by Authority : 1892. 
