APPENDIX 1L 
SUMMAEY OF THE PRINCIPAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE 
HISTORY OF CORAL REEFS SINCE THE YEAR 1874. 
By Professor T. G. Bonney, D.Sc., LL.D., F.R.S. 
Since the publication of the last edition of Mr. Darwin’s 
work several important researches have been undertaken, 
which have added largely to the stock of knowledge con- 
cerning marine physical geography in general and coral 
reefs in particular. Of the valuable material thus obtained 
Mr. Darwin would, no doubt, have availed himself had his 
life been spared and his health allowed. Probably addi- 
tions would have been made to the text of this work, and 
not a few pages have been rewritten ; the older and less 
precise information being replaced by the more ample and 
exact results of recent explorations. The criticism to 
which Mr. Darwin’s theory has been subjected during the 
last few years, and the hypotheses which have been ad- 
vanced by other workers, would, no doubt, have been dis- 
cussed by him in that candid and philosophic spirit which is 
so evident in all his writings. This revision may be counted 
as one of the heavy losses which science has suffered by his 
death. It became, then, a question, when a new edition 
of this book was called for, what should be done to it. 
Simply to reprint the last edition, without any notice 
of the important contributions which have been made to 
the knowledge of the subject during the last few years, 
seemed undesirable ; but any attempt to reconstruct the 
work seemed yet more undesirable. Mr. F. Darwin, after 
