442 THK POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 
was elevated only recently, and certainly not longer ago than in late 
Tertiary times. 
Altogether the most interesting problem raised by Alexander Agas- 
siz’s researches in the Pacific is the question of the relation between 
these elevated tertiary reefs and the growing coral reefs of to-day, and 
it still remains unsolved, despite the careful studies made by Mr. E. C. 
Andrews, whom Alexander Agassiz sent to the Fiji Islands especially 
to study this problem, for Andrews’s investigation has merely served to 
show that the subject is very complex and can not be solved until pro- 
longed study of certain favorable localities has been completed. 
From August, 1899, until March, 1900, Alexander Agassiz had for 
the second time the scientific direction of the Albatross. Commander 
Jefferson F. Moser, U.S.N., was in command and the cruise began at 
San Francisco and extended across the tropical regions of the Pacific 
to the Ladrone Islands and thence northward to Japan. On this great 
cruise the Albatross visited the Marquesas, Paumotos, Society, Cook, 
Nieue, Tonga, Fiji, Ellice, Gilbert, Marshall, Caroline and Ladrone 
Islands, steaming many thousands of miles in and out among the atolls. 
From San Francisco the vessel steamed 4,000 miles straight to the 
Marquesas, making many soundings and trawl hauls which led to the 
discovery that there is here a great basin between 2,500 and 3,000 
fathoms deep, the bottom of which is covered with manganese nodules 
and the teeth of extinct sharks. It was an impressive sight to see the 
great trawl bring up tons of the manganese nodules looking like gritty 
brown potatoes, and all nearly as cold as ice, for the temperature of the 
deep floor of the ocean here was less than 3° F. above freezing. Despite 
the heat of the tropic sun beating upon our deck our hands stung with 
the cold as we felt among the mass of nodules and cracked them open 
to discover the enclosed nucleus of pumice, the encrusted ear-bone of 
an extinct whale or a shark’s tooth imbedded in the soft brown rock. 
Some of these shark’s teeth were so large that the shark itself was prob- 
ably more than a hundred feet long. A deep submarine area far greater 
than that of the United States is covered thickly by these manganese 
nodules and sharks’ teeth, and Alexander Agassiz named it the “ Moser 
Deep,” in honor of the commander of the Albatross. 
Very little animal life was found, either floating in the sea or on the 
bottom, over this vast desert of manganese nodules. 
The chief result of this expedition was the discovery that a wide- 
spread elevation of the Pacific islands occurred in late Tertiary times. 
The Hawaiian, Paumotos, Society, Cook, Nieue, Tonga, Fiji, Ladrone 
and Caroline Islands all show elevated coral or limestone reefs, but 
there are no visible indications of elevation in the Marshall or Gilbert 
Islands where the underlying rock is not lifted above the sea. Makatea 
in the Paumotos may have been an atoll which was elevated about 230 
