Cn. III. 
FRINGING REEFS. 
10 
this island have been much less worn and modified by 
the action of the sea than in most other cases. 
Many islands 1 are fringed by reefs quite similar to 
those of Mauritius : but on coasts where the sea 
deepens very suddenly, the reefs are much narrower, 
and their limited extension seems evidently to depend 
on the high inclination of the submarine slope ; — a 
relation which, as we have seen, does not exist in reefs 
of the barrier class. The fringing-reefs on steep coasts 
are frequently not more than from 50 to 100 yards in 
width : they have a nearly smooth, hard surface, 
scarcely uncovered at low-water, and without any 
interior shoal channel like that within those fringing- 
reefs which lie at a greater distance from the land. 
The fragments torn up during gales from the outer 
margin are thrown over the reef on the shores of the 
island. I may give as instances, Wateeo, where the 
reef is described by Cook as being 100 yards wide ; 
and Mauti and Elizabeth 2 Islands, where it is only 
50 yards in width : the sea round these islands is 
very deep. 
Fringing-reefs, like barrier-reefs, surround islands 
1 I may give Cuba, as another instance ; Mr. Taylor (Loudon's 
Mag. of Nat. Hist., vol. ix. p. 449) has described a reef several miles 
in length between Gibara and Vjaro, which extends parallel to the 
shore at the distance of between half and the third part of a mile, 
and encloses a space of shallow water, with a sandy bottom and 
tufts of coral. Outside the edge of the reef, which is formed of 
great branching corals, the depth is six and seven fathoms. This 
coast has been upheaved at no very distant geological period. 
2 Mauti is described by Lord Byron in the Voyage of H.M.S. 
Blonde, and Elizabeth Island by Captain Beeeliey. 
