Datasets:

alexchen4ai

/

test_pretrained

like 1

Hidden in Plain Sight Today's entry was written by Charley Gordon. Please note the views expressed here are those of the author, not necessarily of The BioLogos Foundation. You can read more about what BioLogos believes here. In the heart of Manhattan , a small statue that once stood in the center of an atrium fountain inside a stately Fifth Avenue mansion has become the center of an international mystery. The home was built in the 1920s for a private family and was sold to the French Embassy in the 1950s. Along with the house came this quaint, but neglected marble carving of a young boy carrying a quiver of arrows. For years, it was ignored by thousands of visitors and dignitaries alike, all headed somewhere else in their busy lives. Then, one fateful evening in 1997, Dr. Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, a New York University art professor, was invited to a social event there. She was instantly captivated by the statue. As she looked closer, she saw what others had not recognized for almost a century: its composition bore the mark of genius. She suspected this piece was from the hand of a young Michelangelo. Naturally, the professor did not announce the statue was the authentic early work of Michelangelo without doing some homework. She discovered it had been listed for sale by auction as an original Michelangelo just after the turn of the 20th century. However, it did not sell and was later bought by the architect of the home, who purchased it from a European dealer as an “artifact of antiquity.” The professor then brought to bear her considerable expertise in the art world and, in looking at the work itself, pronounced its authenticity. When Dr. Weil-Garris Brandt shared her findings regarding the statue now called “Young Archer,” her conclusion was initially met with disbelief. Could it be? This fountain centerpiece turned priceless masterpiece had suffered decades of neglect. More experts were called in, most of whom concurred that the work was, indeed, likely the result of the master’s hand. It is currently on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the only known Michelangelo sculpture in America. There All Along What intrigues me about this story is that the masterpiece was there all along—hidden in plain sight less than a block away from the Met. What it took to draw it out of hiding was the trained eye of a student of the arts. At our home, we love I Spy books and Where’s Waldo?, but it makes us crazy once we realize what we were looking for had been there all along, staring us in the face! (I do this with my keys, by the way—hide them where one would least expect to find them, like on the mantle or in a drawer.) My question is this—what else are we missing? As a medical student learning about how the body works, I thought it fascinating to understand how we fight off disease, how the brain responds to stress and how we reproduce, how we perceive vision and memory—the list goes on and on. These, too, are miracles in plain sight. Regardless of how you believe these everyday miracles came about, they speak to an underlying order and bedrock physical principles that we can only contribute to an eloquent genius. Without the predictable, physical laws that order our universe, none of these miracles could happen. In fact, we would not happen. But how soon we forget the mystery of beauty and the joy of being able to breathe and to think! Like the thousands of people hustling by the “Young Archer” for decades, we scurry past God’s most wondrous creations on display every day. And in doing so, all too often we miss the miracle hidden in plain sight. God, the Artist In Romans 1:20, we are told, “Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—His eternal purpose and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made so that men are without excuse.” In other words, God’s invisible qualities show up in the visible universe. This is really amazing when you think about it. We can learn about God by studying nature? Yes, it is true and biblical. The more we learn about our universe, the more examples we find of physical laws that mirror spiritual laws. There are these consistent physical laws and principles that allow us to exist, all of which are orderly and consistent. The Bible teaches us that the spiritual world and the natural world are inter-related, and as we learn more about the natural world, we better understand its Creator. My belief is that this Creator, like Michelangelo and all artists, has a distinctive style—and it shows up in the most unexpected places. I first noticed this while studying the brain cells responsible for coordination, the Purkinje cells. I’ll never forget the night I realized how much they resembled oak trees. See for yourself in the accompanying photographs. Then I started seeing these “design copycats” everywhere, in places one would least expect them. Next, a sunflower that looks like a silicone crystal. And the branching of a bronchial tree that reminds me of a river flowing into the sea. Really, if you look, you can find thousands of examples every day. In fact, they are so common that we often fail to notice them. For example, take the endless variety of spirals: from roses, to seashells, to your inner ear. These patterns are at once mysterious and beautiful. Much has been studied about this pattern, termed the “Golden Ratio,” but no one understands why we are drawn to it. I think I have a clue. God is an artist, and we are endowed with His sense of appreciation for beauty. These repetitive themes represent God’s signature on His work, His calling card, if you will. These themes show up in what’s been referred to as the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” and are often strikingly beautiful. They are scattered throughout creation for our pleasure, yet are often so commonplace that we often overlook them. I invite you to reawaken your sense of wonder, and I guarantee if you look, you will find evidence of the Author of Beauty in your everyday world. Dr. Charley Gordon is committed to seeing God’s handiwork in daily life. As a neurosurgeon and scientist in Tyler, Texas, he brings a unique perspective to his pursuit of cataloging evidence of God’s signature throughout creation. His observations can be found in a recently published book called, In Plain Sight: Seeing God's Signature throughout Creation available at amazon.com. See more of his work at www.DesignedOnPurpose.com.

<urn:uuid:b8219efe-27fc-45ec-a9e0-46393923357b>

Michel Pastoureau begins his book Black: The History of a Color with a Biblical quote: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void. Darkness was upon the face of the deep… God said, ‘Let there be light”. The color black has been a part of our collective pysche since the beginning of time. With a thorough text and a beautifully curated set of images, Pastoureau, a Historian at the Sarbonne, examines how over the centuries, the meaning and influence of the color has fluctuated in relation to culture, art and dress. Prior to the year 1000, black was easily accepted as clothing. But in the early Christian period, black became less a color for everyday life and took on an association with the devilish and infernal. In medieval times, black was symbolic of wealth, royalty and luxury, before swinging back to the gloom and depression of the Romantic Period (think Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven). In the 20th century, black and white film, photography and print elevated black once again. As acceptability and perception have shifted over time, today we see black as a dual personality: the proper, businesslike, modern, sleek color of the little black dress and the business suit is the same as the dark, rebellious, dangerous color of the gothic and the undergound. Black reflects the duality of human values in our modern society. Much like Pastoureau looks at broad historical periods to identify how perceptions of black have changed over time, designers are also required to look at trends in society each season and determine how to use the color black in a collection. Keep your eye on the runway during fashion week and you’ll start to see exactly how this translates into fashion.

<urn:uuid:a795bec7-0007-4913-8e53-6bdaaa19c834>

The latest of our proofreading projects to be completed is The Brighton Boys in the Trenches. The Brighton Boys series is something that may be a bit hard for the modern reader to imagine: books for young boys glorifying the act of going to war, written during an ongoing conflict. Using the same basic hardcover series format as Tom Swift or the Bobbsey Twins, these books provide juvenile adventures in various World War I contexts. Unlike many similar series, though, the Brighton Boys books do not follow the same heroes from title to title; instead, each adventure features different students from the fictional Brighton Academy. Given the subject matter, there is a rather grim reason for this atypical format! While the overall series concept is itself a bit shocking, The Brighton Boys in the Trenches goes a step further by dealing with what is probably the dirtiest and most horrific aspect of a dirty and horrific subject: trench warfare. The plot is simple enough: after encountering a boastful German, Herbert Whitcomb, a 17-year-old orphan with an eye for shooting, leaves school to enlist along with his Irish sidekick Roy Flynn. Before long, they are engaged in combat in France, facing gas attacks, trench foot and other dangers! As a work of fiction, the book leaves much to be desired. Its main characters are two-dimensional at best, and the prose is littered with long, awkward, nearly-unreadable sentences. The author’s most ambitious attempt at achieving literary merit appears to be having one of his characters name a gun after a Dickens character. The plot is thin, just a series of action-filled incidents loosely strung together. However, despite its flaws, the book is quite interesting as a piece of social history. The early portions of the book, set in America, have a decidedly paranoid tone. Germans and their agents are actively trying to turn the public against the war, and the book makes it very clear that acts of physical violence are perfectly acceptable to counter such dangerous speech. Once the action switches overseas, the book’s role as propaganda remains fairly clear. The Germans are generally referred to in dehumanizing terms, and while the conflict is unquestionably portrayed as dangerous, the text is designed to frequently imply American superiority and inevitable victory. The book’s role as propaganda is not particularly surprising; more startling are its occasional deviations from predictability. There is a heroic depiction of an implicitly homosexual — or at least feminized — character (“He possessed a manner that some would have termed ‘sissy’”). There are occasional philosophical tangents about the madness of war (“In times of peace we regard the murder of one person as something over which to get up a vast deal of excitement and much indignation, but in warfare we plan for the killing of thousands as a business matter and read of it often with actual elation.”) and the pitfalls of stereotyping the enemy (“It is all wrong, unfair and a little small to consider all the people in any land unworthy; don’t you think so?”). And while the book at one point suggests that it is best “to draw the mantle of delicacy over those details of horror that follow a close conflict” it still offers some surprisingly disturbing details, as in this passage: “They’re both gone! Wiped out! Shell! It hit right at Bill Neely’s feet! I couldn’t see anything but legs and arms and things.” “Poor chaps! The only two boys in the family, too. Their poor old mother’ll miss them.” “Know them, Pyle?” “Sure; since we were kids. Just across the street.” That about sums up the book: a strange mix of series fiction shallowness and gritty realism, an uncomfortable compromise between propaganda and protest, and a rather unengaging read that is nonetheless fascinating throughout. If you are interested in experiencing the whole thing for yourself, you can read it online or download it in many popular eBook formats at Project Gutenberg.

<urn:uuid:7b3d52d3-12c3-48da-9db9-50111141c15d>

The other day, I was complaining to my mom about someone, and she scolded me for ‘trash talking.’ It pollutes the air, and it poisons everything, she correctly pointed out. Moms are always right. Gossiping is a nasty habit, I know, but that phrase ‘trash talking’ got me thinking. What other ways do our mouths pollute the world? What other kinds of trash do our yappers create? (Cigarette shawl taken from Treehugger.com) Take smoking, for example. Each year, at least 4.5 trillion non-biodegradable filter-tipped cigarette butts are discarded worldwide, and we all know where they end up – in front of our office buildings, clogging city drains, washed up on our favorite beaches, and stuck to the bottom of our cute little shoes. Searching for a way to recycle all of these butts, Chilean designer Alexandra Guerrero founded the Mantis Project, and began turning butt filters into clothing. Sound crazy (or disgusting)? Well, it’s actually genius. The filters inside trashed butts are purified, mixed with natural wool, and spun into a rustic looking thread that can then we knitted into any kind of garment imaginable. Check out the process here. The results are very promising…and quite fashionable! Keep reading for toothbrush, utensil and chopstick recycling ideas! (Craft knife toothbrushes taken from Seattlepi.com) What about all those discarded toothbrushes? Dentists recommend that we change our toothbrush after 3-4 months of use to avoid bacteria growth, but that’s a lot of plastic clogging up out landfills. Here are some ideas for reusing those old chomper-cleaners: 1. Ditch the bristles, and use the handles – WWU student Jason Harrow made craft knives from old toothbrush handles and sells them! Get creative with your flatware by attaching fork and spoon heads onto toothbrush handles. Maybe make a pen, a paintbrush, or a crochet hook out of the plastic handle. The possibilities are endless! 2. Cleaning – Old toothbrushes are great for cleaning in nooks and crannies. First, put your toothbrush in the dishwasher or douse with a boiling water/vinegar mixture to sanitize. Then, get cleaning! Faucets, doorknobs, shoe soles, jar threads, garlic presses, window screens, keyboards, tarnished jewelry, etc. In the laundry room, an old toothbrush works wonders for scrubbing stains. Soak combs and brushes in water and vinegar for a few hours, then use an old toothbrush to whisk away any buildup. 3. Jewelry – Here’s a super cute idea. Make a bracelet out of an old toothbrush! Pull out the bristles with a pair of needle nose pliers. Boil a pot of water, remove it from the stove, and drop the bristle-less brush into the water. It should take about 5 minutes for the plastic to soften. Remove the brush with a pair of tongs and wait for it to become cool enough to handle. Wear gloves or use a pot holder to mold it around a glass jar. When you’ve got your desired shape, submerge in a bowl of ice for a minute. Once the plastic sets, you’ve got yourself some awesome eco-fashion! (Plastic flatware light from Trendir.com) Speaking of plastic, there’s also the issue of plastic utensils. Every time I order take-out, go on a picnic, or host a BBQ, I’m conflicted – plastic is so convenient, affordable, and practical, but it’s so bad for the environment! The best thing to do is reuse or recycle your plastic forks and spoons whenever possible, but there are more creative ways to reinvent them. The BVD Collective, a student project from Appalachian State University, debuted a stunning collection of lighting fixtures created from recycled plastic flatware. They called their gorgeous creations the ‘Waste Not’ line of lamps, and proved just how illuminating recycled design can be. (Chopstick jewelry taken from Seattlepi.com) Chopsticks are another form of disposable utensils. I’m a big fan of jazzing up old chopsticks with paint, wire, beads or glitter and sticking them in my hair, but there are so many options for these versatile sticks! Jewelry tops my list. Check out these amazing Altered Chopstick Earrings I found on Etsy. So creative! I want to try and make a chopstick bracelet or necklace when I save enough old pairs. Use old chopsticks in the kitchen as veggie skewers, shrimp de-veiners, or noodle scoopers to test if your pasta is done! In the garden, chopsticks can be used as support for struggling shoots. If you’re a crafter, old chopsticks are almost essential. Make picture frames, soap dishes, baskets, mobils, centerpieces, card holders…let your imagination run wild! Do you have any cool ideas for reusing our ‘mouth waste?’ What do you do with old dental floss containers? Straws? Mouthwash bottles? Empty toothpaste tubes? Put your recycling where your mouth is, and let us know what you think!

<urn:uuid:ee346c6b-d0ef-44aa-a5d5-84763c4e53fc>

If you’ve ever been told to eat your fruits and vegetables, it might be because they are an abundant natural source of vitamin C. Vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, is well-known as an essential vitamin and nutrient. Found in fruits, vegetables, and supplements like multivitamins and lozenges, vitamin C is everywhere and with good reason. Vitamin C can make a difference between good health and illness because of its powerful antioxidant effects inside the body. This article will discuss: - Vitamin C’s functions - Deficiency in vitamin C - Where to get vitamin C Vitamin C’s functions Vitamin C provides a host of benefits, most of which play an important role in the proper functioning of the body. What are some of these functions? Boosts the immune system. Vitamin C strengthens white blood cells, which are responsible for fighting off bacteria and viruses. People who don’t get enough vitamin C are vulnerable to many of health problems, ranging from colds to scurvy to cancer. Gives energy. Vitamin C aids in the production of other important substances like L-carnitine, a chemical involved in chemical energy production. L-carnitine works by transporting fats to the mitochondria, which provide the cell with energy. Mitochondria take fats and convert them into much needed energy. Without enough vitamin C, L-carnitine levels can drop, making it harder for cells to oxidize fat and get the energy they need to function. Is essential to the nervous system. Vitamin C helps to produce neurotransmitters, which are responsible for the communication between the brain and nerves. Without neurotransmitters, people can’t think clearly or move properly. Vitamin C is responsible for aiding in the production of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, one of the hormones responsible for the “fight or flight” response. Aids in the formation of collagen. Collagen is the strong connective tissue that give our bodies structure. It holds the skeleton together, attaches muscles to bones, and keeps skin and organs in place. Without collagen, our bodies would literally fall apart. Is an antioxidant. Vitamin C protects the body by neutralizing free radicals, unstable cells that create a chain reaction of further cellular damage. Finally, studies have connected vitamin C with preventative effects, including that it significantly lowers the incidence of diseases like: - High cholesterol - Heart disease Deficiency in vitamin C Historically, the most common disease associated with vitamin C deficiency is scurvy. Although scurvy is often thought of as a disease that sailors used to get, it can still happen to anyone who is deficient in vitamin C. Scurvy causes many problems including: - Slow wound healing - Bleeding gums - Tooth loss - Eventual death That’s a serious disease for just one vitamin deficiency to cause. It was hard to provide fresh fruits and vegetables during a voyage. Preserved meats, which contain no vitamin C, remained edible for the entire trip, and thus became sailors’ main source of nutrition. Without vitamin C sources on board, an entire crew could be wiped out from scurvy on long voyages. However, scurvy is immediately reversible by eating foods containing vitamin C. Once sailors figured out what caused scurvy, they began bringing fruits like oranges and limes on their journeys. Now, sailors bring foods with essential vitamins with them, making it easier to avoid vitamin deficiencies. Although the most common, scurvy isn’t the only problem that a vitamin C deficiency can cause. Not getting enough vitamin C can leave the body unprotected and undernourished, which weakens the immune system and makes you more vulnerable to disease. Even though scurvy is an uncommon disease in a society with abundant fruits, vegetables, and fortified products, you still need to be conscientious of your vitamin C intake to ensure your body gets enough of this essential vitamin. Where to get vitamin C Most animals produce vitamin C naturally in their liver. However, humans lack the liver enzyme that is necessary to do this, so vitamin C must come from the diet. Vitamin C has a reputation as an at-home remedy for curing colds. However, even if you aren’t sick, you need vitamin C in your daily diet in order to stay healthy. The recommended daily dosage is different depending on age, sex and lifestyle, so make sure to check dietary guidelines for how much vitamin C you should consume. Some good sources of vitamin C include: - Fruits like oranges, apricots, lemons, limes, mangos, bananas, berries, grapefruit, cantaloupe, and others - Vegetables like brussel sprouts, asparagus, broccoli, greens, peas, peppers, tomatoes, and others - Vitamin C supplements in multivitamins or as a standalone supplement Dr. Perricone has formulated supplements that include vitamin C and vitamin C ester, both in combination with other vitamins and also as a separate supplement. Vitamin C is an important part of the everyday diet as it both prevents disease and makes the body healthier. By adding fruits, vegetables, and vitamins to your diet, your body will get all the vitamin C it needs to function at its best. Vitamin C ester creams are another Perricone-developed method to strengthen collagen and reduce irritation. Watch this video for Dr Perricone‘s suggestion to eating healthy:

<urn:uuid:653654be-e888-4f6b-9c56-02c0ba300b1a>

As we stomp our empty Natty Lites flat to make room in the blue-bin, wrap our Costco chicken wings in foil, and enjoy cheap high-speed air travel – it is easy to forget that just outside of living memory, aluminum was considered a precious metal. According to Jefferson Lab, “Scientists suspected than an unknown metal existed in alum as early as 1787, but they did not have a way to extract it until 1825. Hans Christian Oersted, a Danish chemist, was the first to produce tiny amounts of aluminum. Two years later, Friedrich Wöhler, a German chemist, developed a different way to obtain the metal. By 1845, he was able to produce samples large enough to determine some of aluminum’s basic properties. Wöhler’s method was improved in 1854 by Henri Étienne Sainte-Claire Deville, a French chemist. Deville’s process allowed for the commercial production of aluminum. As a result, the price of the metal dropped from around $1200 per kilogram in 1852 to around $40 per kilogram in 1859. Unfortunately, the metal remained too expensive to be widely used.” Although aluminum is the most abundant metal in the earth’s crust, it is never found free in nature. All of the earth’s aluminum has combined with other elements to form compounds. Two of the most common compounds are alum, such as potassium aluminum sulfate (KAl(SO4)2·12H2O), and aluminum oxide (Al2O3). About 8.2% of the earth’s crust is composed of aluminum.” Pure aluminum was so rare at that time it was considered a precious metal. Charles Martin Hall’s method of processing the metal ore was to pass an electric current through a non-metallic conductor (molten sodium fluoride compound was used) to separate the very conductive aluminum. In 1889, Charles Martin Hull was awarded U.S. patent #400,666 for his process. In 1888, together with financier Alfred E. Hunt, Charles Martin Hall founded the Pittsburgh Reduction Company now know as the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). By 1914, Charles Martin Hall had brought the cost of aluminum down to 18 cents a pound and it was no longer considered a precious metal. 1914. Sound familiar? The start of WWI. In roughly the same distance in time as from DESERT STORM to now, Aluminum went from a rarely used metal in the military with only the German Junkers J.I making it to war, to being a strategic commodity ubiquitous in its use from eating utensils to intercontinental bombers. Were the fathers of economic aluminum Charles Martin Hall, Paul Heroult, and Karl Joseph Bayer thinking about how aluminum would change the way war would be fought? No. Did the military know right away the way aluminum would transform the strength and performance of established technology? No … but some had an idea. I thought of the story of aluminum earlier today when another funny sounding word came in my ear; graphene. Do you know what graphene is? Well, I think you will more and more – just as Teddy Roosevelt’s generation started to hear aluminum and bauxite more and more as it slowly transformed their world. Not overnight, but year by year with a quickening as smart minds saw new ways to take advantage of this new advance. Back to the Navy. What gets a lot of futurists excited as they look for the next kinetic and/or weaponeering leap? That is easy; rail guns, lasers, and particle beam weapons. In our early 21st Century tool box, what is holding these promising technologies back? What is the long pole in the tent that everything else requires to be there? In a word, energy. Many more cards need to come out of the deck – but if you are interested in the offensive potential of rail guns, and the defensive promise of lasers and particle beam weapons – but are humbled by the very real limitations there are to making them operational – then I offer you the below. Not revolution, but evolution. Evolution with the possibility of a quickening that 100 years ago the world saw with aluminum. Graphene based super-capacitors? Use the next generation of the DDG-1000 engineering plant? Watch the below if you can or click here, and ponder with me. Yes, we live in interesting times as our Chinese friends might say – but rejoice dear hearts; the future has potential. No, I not writing words of encouragement to veterans suffering with PTSD; though they are out there and probably need it. No, I am not writing to veterans who are suicidal; though they are out there and probably need it. No, I am writing to those who are sick of the drumbeat of articles, news stories, or listening to the empathy addict down the street that just won’t shut up about how much she cares and only wants to hear things that validate her preconceived notions. If you are irritated, skeptical, and suspicious of the whole chattering – you’re in good company, and history and facts are on your side. Ignore the compassion trolls, it is ok to push back. We are not broken vessels, and those who maliciously imply that we are such things are no better than those who would spit in your face, as their goals are the same – to degrade your status as a equal. A starting point for any post on this topic has to be B.G. Burkett’s book, Stolen Valor : How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History. There was a pattern set after the Vietnam War that tried to paint veterans as broken vessels. If you have not read Stolen Valor, then go order your copy now. What was done then is being done now – it even looks the same. Almost a decade ago, a lot of people heard the first few beats of what is now steady and loud. From the murder of Chief Kyle to the kidnapping of children, to the poseurs written about in the homeless articles in your local papers, it is there. It comes from two sources; one honorable and one malicious. The honorable sources are those who want to help those who serve or have served, but don’t know how to. They tend to look for things to be saved, victims to be helped – and using a legitimate case or two of veterans who have transition challenges as a template, start to see all veterans in that template. There are also those who know someone who has real PTSD or has suicidal thought, and then applies the classic logic error of applying the specific to the general (I saw a duck with a green head today; therefor all ducks have green heads). They are well meaning and should be respected for wanting to help, but if they go too far, their compassion can be counterproductive by feeding the other half of the problem; the anti-military malicious. We all know the type; the only time they have any respect for those in the military is when they can use them to attack the nation and military they were part of. They also are resentful of the respect those in the military are given in civic culture, and want to do whatever they can to bring that respect down; to marginalize the veteran. If the veteran is a victim; he is to be pitied. If he is to be pitied, then he must be helped by his betters. If he has to be helped by his betters to function in society, then he is not an equally contributing member of society. If he is not an equally contributing member of society, he can be marginalized. If he can be marginalized, he can be dismissed and his input ignored. If he can be marginalized politically and his contribution to public discourse ignored, then he cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas and influence. If he cannot compete, then he has no power. That attitude manifests itself in strange places now and then. MSNBC talking head Chris Mathews is a case in point. Reflecting on Sen. McCain’s (R-AZ) aggressive questioning of Chuck Hagel last week, Matthews reflected on McCain’s performance of his Constitutional duties thus; “Let me start tonight with this — why is John McCain so angry?” Matthews said. “Forty years after the Vietnam POWs came home, the most famous of them is angrier than ever. Why is America — why are we fighting the Vietnam War all over again in the United States Senate? The ticked-off vitriol against Chuck Hagel, what is it about? Is it for show? Is it about something Hagel said in the cloakroom?” “Is it about the basic unfairness of Vietnam itself, that some went and some didn’t?” he continued. “Is it about Lyndon Johnson’s inability to either win that war or end it? What is it that burns so deeply in John McCain these days?” “Well, tonight, we dig into the deep well of resentment burning in John McCain’s patriotic heart — a resentment not against the North Vietnamese who imprisoned and tortured him all those years, not against George W. Bush and his political henchmen who tried to stain McCain’s reputation back in 2000 — but against a guy who fought against fear and rallied against wounds, just like he did in the same army of America’s long nightmare in Vietnam, Chuck Hagel. A nightmare, by the way, whose flashbacks must haunt still the mind and heart of John Sidney McCain. … I’m absolutely convinced we’re watching a flashback.” Quod erat demonstrandum. If they will do that to a Senator and once Presidential candidate – what message does that send to other veterans? Like I mentioned earlier, a book has been written on the topic, so let me just pick one little vibe out of the zeitgeist; veterans suicides. Just googlesearch it; you’ll get the idea. In a great, fact-based reply, let’s go to Greg Jaffe’s superb article in the Washington Post. He wanders in to a few fever-swamps of the zeitgeist, but is otherwise a solid article if you read closely and critically. Every day about 22 veterans in the United States kill themselves, a rate that is about 20 percent higher than the Department of Veterans Affairs’ 2007 estimate, according to a two-year study by a VA researcher. The VA study indicates that more than two-thirds of the veterans who commit suicide are 50 or older, suggesting that the increase in veterans’ suicides is not primarily driven by those returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Has the war fought as of late been one fought by residents of The Villages? No. “There is a perception that we have a veterans’ suicide epidemic on our hands. I don’t think that is true,” said Robert Bossarte, an epidemiologist with the VA who did the study. “The rate is going up in the country, and veterans are a part of it.” The number of suicides overall in the United States increased by nearly 11 percent between 2007 and 2010, the study says. As a result, the percentage of veterans who die by suicide has decreased slightly since 1999, even though the total number of veterans who kill themselves has gone up, the study says. Statistics are tough; the truth is in the details. See if you catch it. The veterans’ suicide rate is about three times the overall national rate, but about the same percentage of male veterans in their 50s kill themselves as do non-veteran men of that age, according to the VA data. Ok. Females make up ~15% of the military, and for those involved in combat, then males are well in to the 90%. American males kill themselves at a rate four-times that of females. The military heavily skews male. Starting to see where their story starts to get wobbly? Sooooo….. anyone who has made even a blogger-in-PJs effort will soon see that you cannot compare veterans suicide rates to that of the general population unless you want to skew the numbers for effect. Are we also controlling for age, race, socio-economic background, etc … all highly significant factors in suicide? No, of course not. That would get in the way of a good story and/or the non-profit that pays a hefty six-figure salary. In many cases you have read, you have either lazy journalism, advocacy journalism, or the deliberate contribution to the smearing of veterans – something that has been a regular feature for the last 40 years. Yes, the compassion trolls will get grumpy at you, and the compassion addicts will think you are a cold and heartless sociopath (she will probably whisper to others that your behavior is just a manifestation of your own PTSD), but they are not the problem – only useful idiots to those who are the problem and deserve your push back – the smear merchants. Is there a problem with PTSD and veteran suicide? Sure there is – but this constant picking at a sensitive spot until you make it worse does not help fix anything. At worst, it plants seeds of ideas in to the nogg’n of the vulnerable who may act. At the least harmful it impacts the ability of veterans to get civilian jobs when they get out. After all, who wants to hire a bunch of traumatized, suicidal, time bombs? Yea, that is a topic for another day. Until then, let’s see serious studies done by serious statisticians – a study that publishes all the data and variables with the regression analysis. Age, sex, race, ethnicity, regional origin, education level, combat exposure … all those and more. While we wait for that – buy or re-read Stolen Valor – and push back some. It’s not just you What seems obvious in hindsight is not, for most, that obvious to those closest to it, distracted from it, or willfully floating along in a sea of indifference. There are times, decision or pivot points for some, where the signs become clear. That steady, darkening, and thickening line starts to burn through the ambient noise. It looks familiar, it is harmonic of what you have seen before – it cannot be ignored. It demands action You only get the Fleet your nation decides to buy, more people need to accept that … and the political and economic reality we are in. Former Senator Hagel has been nominated to be the next Secretary of Defense. In an August 2011 interview with The Financial Times’ Stephanie Kirchgaessner, he stated the following; The defence department, I think in many ways has been bloated. I think the Pentagon needs to be pared down. I think we need the Pentagon to look at their own priorities. There’s a tremendous amount of bloat in the Pentagon, and that has to be scaled back … I don’t think that our military has really looked at themselves strategically, critically in a long, long time. Every agency needs to do that. The Department of Defence, and I’m a strong supporter of this … no American wants to in any way hurt our capabilities to national defence, but that doesn’t mean an unlimited amount of money, and a blank cheque for anything they want at any time, for any purpose. Not at all. Not at all, and so the realities are that the mess we’re in this country, with our debt and our deficits, and our infrastructure and jobless and all the rest, is going to require everybody to take a look, even the defence department, and make a pretty hard re-evaluation and review. President Obama picked Hagel for very specific reasons, and his views above are not unknown and were part of that. Good people can agree or disagree on the substance of his argument, but that is the fact both sides will have to work with. Next, let’s look to the uniformed side of the house. In a speech at SNA earlier this week, Vice Admiral Copeman stated the following; Ultimately, (Copeman) warned, “if you don’t want to get hollow, you have to give up force structure.” “Resources are going to drop. They’re going to drop significantly,” the admiral said. … “If it were my choice,” Copeman said, “I’d give up force structure to get whole. But it’s not always my choice.” There are just a few tidbits of I&W to ponder. In the last few years, we have heard a lot of talk about a Fleet of 313 and now 300. Many of us have been arguing for half a decade that neither is the number we should be looking at, that is not what the nation will fund; 270 to 240 is more likely. “If we cannot have the navy estimates of our policy, then let’s have the policy of our navy estimates.” If this is the maritime Zeitgeist for the remainder of this decade, then let’s embrace it. We can’t stomp our feet and hold our breath until the Pentagon turns blue. How do we best do it? What do we need to preserve – what should we cut – what will we have to get rid of root-n-branch? What are our priorities? The smart money on the future is on who the CINC is hiring, what that hire’s recent statements say about his ideas, and what our senior officers are starting to send out trial balloons on to test the winds. In the course of reading Robert Kaplan’s article in the Wall Street Journal, I had to back up and read this twice. The Japanese navy boasts roughly four times as many major warships as the British Royal Navy. Wait … what? OK, that reality has sunk in over the last decade – but we are still a bit of an Anglophile navy, and even with the Pacific Pivot, we still give the mother country a lot of heft for historical and emotional reasons. In their constitutional quasi-isolation, Japan’s very real power has Here is the context; … in Asia. Nationalism there is young and vibrant—as it was in the West in the 19th and 20th centuries. Asia is in the midst of a feverish arms race, featuring advanced diesel-electric submarines, the latest fighter jets and ballistic missiles. China, having consolidated its land borders following nearly two centuries of disorder, is projecting air and sea power into what it regards as the blue national soil of the South China and East China seas. Japan and other countries are reacting in kind. Slipping out of its quasi-pacifistic shell, Japan is rediscovering nationalism as a default option. The Japanese navy boasts roughly four times as many major warships as the British Royal Navy. As for Vietnam and the Philippines, nobody who visits those countries and talks with their officials, as I have, about their territorial claims would imagine for a moment that we live in a post-national age. The disputes in Asia are not about ideology or any uplifting moral philosophy; they are about who gets to control space on the map. Silly Transformationalists … dreaming is for kiddies. Get ye back to your history books! Back on topic though; yes, the facts are clear. Though you can find +/- difference depending on source, definitions, and recent com/decom; here are the numbers: Helicopter Carriers: 2 Amphibious Ships: 2 Submarines: 6-SSN, 4-SSBN We’ll call that 24. Helicopter Carriers: 2 (technically 4, all of which are helicopter carrying destroyers. The SHIRANE Class of 2 are only half decks and are really just destroyers. HYUGA Class of 2 are no-kidding helicopter carriers. Two more much larger 19,500 ton ships on the way this decade as well). Amphibious Ships: 5 We’ll call that 67. If you are what Salamander defines as “major combatants” then you have 2.8 times, not 4x, but there are lots of ways to count. Perhaps they are looking at smaller ships as well. By either definition though, it should give one pause not only to reflect about the decline of the Royal Navy – but more importantly – the latent and potential power of the Japanese Navy. Anyone who has worked with the Japanese will agree with me as well that from a professional point of view, they are an exceptionally quality force. Here is the tie in. Did you catch this little memo? Japan’s Defense Ministry will request a second boost to its military budget, according to reports, just a day after the government announced the first Defense budget increase in 10 years. The boosts, although relatively modest compared with Japan’s overall defense spending, coincide with increasing tensions in the Asia Pacific region.Japan’s Defense Ministry intends to ask for 180.5 billion yen ($2.1 billion) from a government stimulus package – on top of an increase of more than 100 billion yen ($1.1 billion) to its military budget announced earlier this week – in order to upgrade its air defenses, according to the BBC.. Good. Japan needs to continue to do this, and we should welcome the move as long overdue (though don’t get too excited, their larger budgetary problems are even greater than ours). Europe fades, Royal Navy withers … where can the USA look for its major partner at sea? We don’t have to look far. With the tweaks they are on the road to make in their Constitution – Japan is right there. With the Big E coming home for good, the NIMITZ acting a bit old and busted, there has been a lot of discussion as of late about the ability of the US Navy to do what she has become accustomed to doing; projecting power globally from the sea with almost impunity – and the large-deck carrier being the tool primarily used to do so. Through gross program mismanagement, myopic POM-centric rice bowl games, and simple parochialism – much of the nuance, depth, and flexibility of what was on those decks are gone as well, most notably the loss of the S-3, ES-3, organic tanking (fighters tanking don’t count, silly goose), and independent long range strike – gone and replaced with a deck of jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none RW and light fighters with AEW thrown in for character. Add to that the ongoing “to the right” extended deployment of our Amphib “small deck” carriers (yes, I know, I know, I know) and their ARGs, funkyesque methods of Fleet number counting, and the expected contraction in shipbuilding budgets that all but this ordered to say otherwise accept will be the new norm – then more and more smart people are trying to step back and get the larger view. What exactly are the larger Strategic implications of the clear decline in the US Navy’s global reach? As is often the case, to help break the intellectual gridlock, it is helpful to bring in outside views. Over at the UK blog Thin Pinstiped Line, Sir Huphrey speaks with big medicine. The whole post is worth a read – but everyone should ponder the below a bit. The reality is that the USN now is probably in the same place as the RN found itself in the mid-1960s – mid 1970s. Reduced budgets, elderly vessels still in service, while the new designs (T42s, 22s) were taking longer than planned to come into service, and yet operationally committed across the globe. The ability of the USN to operate with impunity across the globe, steaming where it wanted on its terms, and able to stand its ground against almost any aggressor has gone forever. Todays’ USN remains a fiercely capable and strong navy, but its ability to exert unlimited and unchallenged control of the high seas has gone, probably forever. Instead it would be more realistic to judge that the future USN will provide a capability to deploy power into some areas, but only at the cost of reducing capability and influence in others. In a classic, “over to you” moment as the Royal Navy slowly retreated West of Suez after the late 1950′s unpleasantness, and with the final moment by Prime Minister Wilson in the annus horribilis that was 1968 – the world approaching mid-21st Century is stuck with a quandary. The British at least were handing things off, indirectly, to her daughter; a relatively smooth transition to a nation that was cut from the same cloth and whose interests were more often than not those interests of Britain. If, as Sir Humphrey states, we face a future where the global capability of the US will decline in proportion to her navy – then who will be there to fill the gap? Multiple smaller regional powers? A rising power? Status quo, but thinner? Nothing? None of those three are in the interests of the US. Willfully abandoning territory – enough of the “global commons” PR stunts, please – to the whims of whatever power has the will to take it, is a classic description of a nation in decline. In our case, that would be a willful decline – but almost all declines are willful. Is everyone on board with that? It is a choice. Hat tip BJ. A couple of years ago here, I posted about the danger of getting too close to the media, I described what is the downfall of many GOFO; Vanity. Non-mission related, non-value added vanity that degraded or destroyed the “brand” of men who gave decades of service to their nation and rose to its highest levels. In his self-immolation, General Petraeus, USA, has provided, in a fashion, a very good object lesson for leaders from LPO to CNO. It is not a new lesson, it is not a unique lesson – as a matter of fact it is a lesson that echoes throughout human history. It isn’t limited to the military environment either, it is just part of the human condition; ego, power, and sex. Do we talk about this enough? Not really. Not in the direct manner we need to. We talk around it. As it can be a bit touchy for some in a socio-political context, usually we only discuss the second and third order effects after it all goes south. We are more than willing to talk about the externalized manifestation of the ego-power-sex dynamic; the person who abuses their power to gain sexual favors or to force themselves on subordinates, but we do not talk enough about the internalized version of it; the magnetic draw and seductive nature of power itself, how it warps the ego, and how it morphs in to the emotional and mammalian drive towards sex. Power is an aphrodisiac that can make even the physically or personally repulsive person attractive. It draws in certain personalities to men with power and influence. Can it happen male to female as well as female to male? Sure, I’ve see the “scalp hunters” in action – but that would be the extreme exception to the rule, and frankly silly to discuss. In the real world we are talking about the man in power and the women who are drawn to them. We see that dynamic at NJP, in the relief of Commanding Officers, and all the way to the 4-star level. Perhaps some leaders who are not fully self-aware may have missed it, but in a gender mixed environment, almost all male leaders will have females of lower status attempt to get closer than they should – in a heterosexual context via a way a male colleague cannot. We are all adults here, we know how the bouncing ball goes from that brief moment of enjoying the company of a woman’s voice a little longer than one should. About the whirlwind unleashed by General Petraeus’s very human weakness, more details will come out, and others will be writing about every aspect of this for awhile. Get used to it, as this has all the aspects of power, sex, infidelity, and intrigue that a story with legs needs. It is much more interesting to the general public than sequestration, the Afghanistan withdraw, or fiscal cliffs. Let that work its way out, but for us – what is the base lesson that should come out of this at the deckplate level – specifically for male leaders? It is simply this; you will find yourself in a place sooner more than later where a female subordinate will make herself available to you. It can cover the entire spectrum from raw and physical immediacy, to a slow growing relationship based on professional respect and friendship that intensifies with proximity. There was more than one decision point in the relationship that brought down General Petraeus where he should have diverted then-Major Broadwell back to the gym solo, but he didn’t. As a result, a reputation is in tatters, a critical agency has lost a leader, a war’s leaders are distracted, and two families are in turmoil. In time I am sure we will all know more than we want to, but one thing is clear. He is the person responsible for this. He was senior in age (almost two decades) and position (at the start we think O-4 to O-10). It was his inability to control his weakness, his ego, and his actions that brought him here. He knows this too, or at least he does now. As young leaders grow in positions of authority they need to keep simple human nature in mind. You will be tempted, even if you try to avoid it. You can end it as quickly as it comes up, and all will go along as before. We are all human, and at a weak moment, you may pause – but don’t pause long – there are too many lives, families, and careers that are riding on you being a leader and doing the right thing. If you fail, that is on you. Same with General Petraeus; this is on him. Not the woman on the other side of the story; not the media; not the FBI; not his staff; not anyone above him in the chain of command, other agencies, or political parties. There are many positive things to benchmark with General Petraeus’s career, and now you have a negative one. Don’t want to have all your hard work blow up in your face? Look at the poor decisions he made, and look for those decision points in your life where you will have to make the call – you will be there – do it right. In his twitter feed, our co-blogger here at USNIBlog and SHAPE, Admiral Stavridis, points to a link for a very nice story that really is worth your time to read, as it does represent the very best of our partnering with the ANSF – and what should have been the general condition of our relationship in 2012, vice just a specific instance; 1st Lt. Michael Molczyk had heard stories about “insider” attacks — and the Afghan soldiers and police officers who grew to see their partners as enemies. As a platoon commander, he couldn’t ignore those assaults on American troops, which during bad weeks were reported day after day. But to him, he said, the stories sounded like news from a different planet. In Molczyk’s corner of eastern Afghanistan, uniformed Afghans had saved American lives time and again. They had developed a brotherhood with their U.S. partners that felt earned and unassailable. … no relationship mattered more to Molczyk than his partnership with Jalaluddin, the head of the Afghan police in Jaji district … Sadly, that relationship between two specific individuals is not in line with the general trend in Afghanistan – and with each Green on Blue we need to look that fact square in the face. While there are always individual stories that can tell any side of an issue – it is the general trend that you need to keep an eye on. The bottom line is this; we are well along the scheduled withdraw on a calendar-based vice conditions-based OPLAN. That is a polite way of describing a retreat under fire. Those we will leave behind, and those who will fill the vacuum after we leave are acting in a rational manner, and the second and third order effects of our decision to leave the field will continue to fill your news feed as the process takes its natural course. We have been here before. As noted last month; The last of the 33,000 American surge troops sent to Afghanistan two years ago have left the battlefields of Afghanistan, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said. Actually, it was four years ago that the uplift of forces started – but let’s not quibble. That little note from last month was one of the critical junctures following President Obama’s 2009 West Point Speech where he announced the end of conditions based planning for AFG. Gone was the “Shape-Clear-Hold-Build”, and in was the race to slap something together with bailing wire and duct-tape until our then 2011 (and now 2014 thankfully) drive to whatever will be our version of the Friendship Bridge. Defeat, like decline, is more often than not a choice. In AFG, it is/was unquestionably a choice. We threw away a good chance for an acceptable outcome the minute we told our enemies, and more importantly our friends and those on the fence, that we lacked the strategic patience to follow through on our promises, creating in essence a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. They have seen this before. As the cliche states, “Hope is not a plan.” In war, hope is a path to self-delusion and defeat. So it has always been, so it will always be. In the executive summary from the International Crisis Group’s, Afghanistan: The Long, Hard Road to the 2014 Transition, they cut right to the chase; Plagued by factionalism and corruption, Afghanistan is far from ready to assume responsibility for security when U.S. and NATO forces withdraw in 2014. That makes the political challenge of organising a credible presidential election and transfer of power from President Karzai to a successor that year all the more daunting. A repeat of previous elections’ chaos and chicanery would trigger a constitutional crisis, lessening chances the present political dispensation can survive the transition. In the current environment, prospects for clean elections and a smooth transition are slim. The electoral process is mired in bureaucratic confusion, institutional duplication and political machinations. Electoral officials indicate that security and financial concerns will force the 2013 provincial council polls to 2014. There are alarming signs Karzai hopes to stack the deck for a favoured proxy. Demonstrating at least will to ensure clean elections could forge a degree of national consensus and boost popular confidence, but steps toward a stable transition must begin now to prevent a precipitous slide toward state collapse. Time is running out. Yes, our timing is that bad. Quiet planning should, nonetheless, begin now for the contingencies of postponed elections and/or imposition of a state of emergency in the run up to or during the presidential campaign season in 2014. The international community must work with the government to develop an action plan for the possibility that elections are significantly delayed or that polling results lead to prolonged disputes or a run-off. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) should likewise be prepared to organise additional support to Afghan forces as needed in the event of an election postponement or state of emergency; its leadership would also do well to assess its own force protection needs in such an event well in advance of the election. Does anyone see a ISAF, post-USA withdraw, getting involved in AFG domestic police actions? Really? No, they/we won’t. The Taliban also know we won’t. They know we have left the field for them, and they are patient. We no longer have the ability or will to break their back, and with only one more fighting season left until we are totally focused on withdraw – we can’t. I am reminded of one of the heartbreaking scenes – for a military professional – from the 1984 movie, The Killing Fields. In the background as Dith Pran and Sydney Schanberg watch the fighting between Khmer National Armed Forces and the Khmer Rouge, we see Tom Bird’s US military adviser character do what he can to push his Cambodian forces on, to let them know that the USA was with them. Pointing to himself (in bold below); 00:27:00 What did he say? 00:27:01 He said he thought all American people left already. 00:27:05 Made in the USA. 00:27:10 Are we winning? 00:27:12 No, you’re not winning. We have seen this before, and so have those who were our friends. Much more will be written about our AFG experience over the next couple of decades. Somewhere there is a young man or woman who will be the next McMaster, who will cut their PhD teeth on how this all came apart. How a conscious decision was made to slide from a position of strength and progress to one of weakness, vacillation, insecurity, and decline. Why thousands of years of sound military experience was thrown away one evening in New York State, pretending that the lessons of history didn’t apply to us. We thought that because it was spoken, so it would be done; that hope and luck would beat the calender and patience. Through it all, the silence of “make it happen” marched forward in to the maw, again. Rest assured, we won’t be leaving these problems behind in AFG. No, then enemy has a vote – and they too have seen this before. “There is this narrative coming out of Washington for the last two years,” Logan said. It is driven in part by “Taliban apologists,” who claim “they are just the poor moderate, gentler, kinder Taliban,” she added sarcastically. “It’s such nonsense!” She made a passionate case that our government is downplaying the strength of our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as a rationale of getting us out of the longest war. We have been lulled into believing that the perils are in the past: “You’re not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight. In your arrogance, you think you write the script.” The Taliban and al Qaeda, she made clear, “want to destroy the West and us,” and we must fight fire with fire, She appeared to leave the assembled alternatively riveted and just a bit troubled by a critique with interventionist implications clearly drawn from her reporting. When you have the person who just tried to kill you on the ground, with your knee on his chest and your knife at his throat, but then you get off and try to walk away without finishing the job – should you be shocked when he gets up and attacks you? Should you be shocked if he does not stop his attack simply because you stopped it? Will he stop if you cry uncle? If you bow, apologize, and plead? So there we are; we have emphasized the meme of the weak horse, and the butcher’s bill will be dear because of it. What is the solution? Frankly, I think it is too late to get back to where we were in late 2009. We are almost three years in to the signal of retreat that we sent. Those allied nations in ISAF who have not already left will soon. Those AFG on the fence have already made plans and associations with our enemies to protect the interests of their families, villages, and tribes in the expectation that we will abandon them. Smart move, if I were them I would do the same thing. A precursor to the Soviet withdraw were their version of Green on Blue – the AFG remember that and are seeing it again. They have indications and warnings too. Could the NOV USA election change anything? No. With the lack of top-level support and enthusiasm for the mission, the American people lost whatever will they had to aggressively sustain operations in AFG – and with much of the uplift gone and force levels back to late-’09/early-’10 levels and falling, that momentum is gone and even if the will was there – it would be difficult to get back. We are at the point now where the die is cast. This version of the war in AFG for USA forces will soon be over regardless, by design. All that remains is to see if we drive across our version of the Friendship Bridge, or leave in a helo under fire; all the while doing our best to avoid Gandamak. Until then, there are things that can be done on the margins, but one question remains; if we are not in this to win it – do we have the political will, rules of engagement, and operational plan to create the effects on the ground to further our national interests besides just “getting out?” Is, “Do the best we can until the summer of 2014 and then wish them luck.” now by default our Mission Statement? Has the military leadership been realistic about what can be achieved inside the POLMIL guidance it has received? What Decisive Points have we achieved in our Lines of Operation? Are they in-line with expected time-line dates? What about our Effects Matrix? District by District, Province by Province – is the Afghan government on, behind, or ahead of schedule to take over security responsibilities? Are the criteria used to determine that status tighter or looser than they were three years ago? Yes, much of that is classified – but it won’t be forever. This story will be told, and people will be held to account. If history is any guide, that won’t mean much to the thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions who will die because we did not finish what we started. The last time we abandoned a nation like this, the losses were in the millions. After noting the loss of Lt. Col. Raible and Sgt. Atwellt in the attack a week ago, it is natural for many to point out the irreplaceable nature of the AV-8B+ Harriers that were destroyed – our greatest loss of aircraft since the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. While true, that is just the background. It is also true that every loss of life is significant, but in time except for those who know them – losses become a number or perhaps a thumbnail picture. It is helpful when the opportunity presents itself to look a little deeper in to a loss. What was the character of those lost? What did they represent? What impact did they have on those they served with, the organizations they led, the services they were members of, and the nation that they gave the ultimate sacrifice? Thanks to our friends over at SLD – we have a copy of Lt. Col Raible’s Command Guidance. Read it. Ponder it. Compare it to your own. If you are someone soon to take Command and are working on one; here is your benchmark. From: Commanding Officer, Marine Attack Squadron 211 To: Squadron Attack Pilots Subj: COMMANDER’S GUIDANCE FOR SQUADRON ATTACK PILOTS 1. Professional hunger. My goal is to identify those Officers who want to be professional attack pilots and dedicate the resources required to build them into the flight leaders and instructors that are required for the long-term health of our community. This is not a socialist organization. We will not all be equal in terms of quals and flight hours. Some will advance faster than others, and because this is not a union, your rate of advancement will have nothing to do with seniority. Your rate of advancement will instead be determined by your hunger, professionalism, work ethic, and performance. If flying jets and supporting Marines is your passion and your profession, you are in the right squadron. If these things are viewed simply as your job, please understand that I must invest for the future in others. Your time in a gun squadron might be limited, so it is up to you to make the most of the opportunities that are presented. 2. Professional focus. Our approach to aviation is based upon the absolute requirement to be “brilliant in the basics.” Over the last few years Marine TACAIR has not punted the tactical nearly so often as the admin. Sound understanding of NATOPS, aircraft systems, and SOPs is therefore every bit as important as your understanding of the ANTTP and TOPGUN. With this in mind, ensure the admin portions of your plan are solid before you move onto objective area planning. Once you begin tactical planning, remember that keeping things “simple and easy to execute” will usually be your surest path to success. If the plan is not safe, it is not tactically sound. I firmly believe in the phrase “hire for attitude, train for skill.” Work ethic, willingness to accept constructive criticism, and a professional approach to planning, briefing, and debriefing will get you 90% of the way towards any qualification or certification you are pursuing. The other 10% is comprised of in-flight judgment and performance, and that will often come as a result of the first 90%. Seek to learn from your own mistakes and the mistakes of others. Just as a championship football team debriefs their game film, we are going to analyze our tapes and conduct thorough flight debriefs. It has often been said that the success of a sortie is directly proportional to the caliber of the plan and brief. The other side of this coin is that the amount of learning that takes place as a result of a sortie is directly proportional to the caliber of the debrief. 4. Moral courage. Speak up if something seems wrong or unsafe. We all know what the standards are supposed to be in Naval Aviation and in the Corps. Enforce them! When we fail to enforce the existing standards, we are actually setting and enforcing a new standard that is lower. If you average one hour per workday studying, 6 months from now you will be brilliant. That is all it takes; one hour per day. As you start to notice the difference between yourself and those who are unable to find 60 minutes, I want you to know that I will have already taken note. Then, I want you to ask yourself this question: “How good could I be if I really gave this my all?” 6. When all else fades away, attack pilots have one mission: provide offensive air support for Marines. The Harrier community needs professional attack pilots who can meet this calling. It does not require you to abandon your family. It does not require you to work 16 hours per day, six days per week. It requires only a few simple commitments to meet this calling: be efficient with your time at work so that you can study one hour per day; be fully prepared for your sorties and get the maximum learning possible out of every debrief; have thick skin and be willing to take constructive criticism; find one weekend per month to go on cross country. When you are given the opportunity to advance, for those few days go to the mat and give it your all, 100%, at the expense of every other thing in your life. To quote Roger Staubach, “there are no traffic jams on the extra mile.” If you can be efficient during the workweek, give an Olympian effort for check rides and certifications, and are a team player, the sky will literally be the limit for you in this squadron. C. K. RAIBLE A half-decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, a top-down movement started to take root in the US Navy around a word; transformation. The Transformationalists gained steam as they were swept up in the mid-90s Zeitgeist; all was new and now was the time to make a new Navy. With the end of the existential threat of global Communism, technology’s promise of Moore’s Law, and with the self-esteem and optimism that their generation felt as they first gained the reins of power from the White House to the first GOFOs – this was the time where, yes, all was new – in a fashion. There were challenges though. In the pre-9/11 Pentagon, the post Cold War was one of lean budgets and an expensive to maintain legacy Fleet. Each new ship and each new program put greater demands on a already strained budgetary pie. How do you sail in to the future with, as you see it, a sea-anchor of the past holding you back? Even with a larger budget, as the Navy fed off the fat of the Cold War Fleet – how do you get the Fleet of tomorrow? With challenges comes opportunities the saying goes, all that was needed was a vision. Decades, indeed centuries, of best practices of shipbuilding and aircraft development – how to build them, maintain them, and man them – were showing one path of requirements and a way forward; but that was a hard story – one that made beloved new theories come away bruised and battered. On that path to that still undefined “there” one thing was clear – we could not get “there” from “here” with the money in hand and the numbers in mind. If experience, history, and best practice told us what we did not want to hear, there was but one thing to do – ignore that reality and create a new one. From such was born Transformationalism. By selective hearing, blinkered optimism, para-scientific concepts, faith, a dose of hope in the best case scenario, and even more importantly – the force of personality – we thought would get “there.” Our Navy would be transformed – a Navy based on New Technology, New Networks, New Manning, New Training, and New Maintenance; the PowerPoint gods had it written; therefor it would be done. There is a fine line between institutional optimism, overconfidence, and arrogance. When facts are brushed aside and history ignored, and instead you gird your future with untested theory and hope – you have to play the odds. As an institution we decided in that brief period in time that now was the time, it was a moment that a generation needed to grab hold of an institution and Transform it; to steer not in to – but away from the skid and see what the odds brought. “Don’t you want to take a leap of faith? Or become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone!” — Saito, from the movie Inception. And so we threw away the charts, put the radar in to stand-by, and we sailed forth in to the sea of New Technology, New Networks, New Manning, New Training, and New Maintenance. Who was to ride the wave of Transformationalism and have a front-row seat? Naturally, those who would make it happen would be those Captains who at the turn of the century would make Flag and would spend the next dozen years doing the best they could to bring the fruits of Transformation to the Fleet. The best perspective would be from someone who spent a good quarter-century in the Cold War “legacy Navy” – one knowledgeable of the “build a little, test a little, learn a lot” philosophy & culture that brought about such programs as cruiser development in the 1920s and 1930s, and surface-to-air missiles from the 1950s through Aegis. They would have seen how it was done, knew how it was done. What have those individuals who have rode that path seen? In a moment of candor – what do they have to say at the end of their travel? What fruits have come from the tree of Transformationalism? 4-star Admirals come and go. Some leave larger footprints than others, and today one of the size-13 4-stars has re-joined the civilian world; Admiral Harvey – welcome to the other side – and thank you for your service. Like one of his predecessor 4-stars from another service – Admiral Harvey has left those who are taking over the watch a gift, if they want to take it. Earlier this month, Admiral Harvey sent out an email to the other SWO Flag Officers. I encourage you to read the whole thing; The Fundamentals of Surface Warfare: Sailors and Ships and read the embedded attachments. The past few years have been a serious wake-up call for our surface force. We discovered that the cumulative impact of individual decisions made over long periods of time, driven by unique and widely varying circumstances, had put the future readiness of our surface force at risk. Prepare yourself, because a decade of manpower, maintenance, and programmatic sacred cows are about to be brought to task by one of the ones who raised them. We shifted our primary focus away from Sailors and Ships – the fundamentals of surface warfare – to finding efficiencies/reducing costs in order to fund other important efforts such as recapitalization. We took our eyes off the ball of the main thing for which we were responsible – maintaining the wholeness and operational effectiveness of the surface force. Because readiness trends develop and evidence themselves over years and not months, shifting our primary focus to individual cost-cutting measures gave us a very myopic view of our surface force and the way ahead; institutionally, we essentially walked into the future looking at our feet. Institutionally, there was a culture that had you keep your head down, and your mouth shut. Who created that culture, and why? There is also that “f” word; “fundamentals” – that most ignored concept as of late but the record is clear; the naval gods of the copybook headings are calling for their offerings. Ignoring fundamentals in manning, maintenance, and program management were all warned of, why were they dismissed? Did we grow an appreciative and rewarding environment of operational excellence – or did we grow and reward administrative bureaucratic bloat? Did we function as a learning and self-correcting institution of critical thinkers? … we “trained” our people on the deckplates that improving efficiency trumped all other considerations – certainly an approach and a philosophy that was completely contrary to the institutional culture of ownership – “this is MY ship; this is MY gear” – and the institutional focus on operational readiness – “we are ready NOW” – that have been at the very foundation of our surface force since its beginnings. … and what did we do to those who objected to this outgrowth from the cheap grace of b-school management books and silly 2-week Outward Bound MBA seminars? Simple – they either shut up or were professionally told to follow the sign to Ausfahrt. How many people did we promote that didn’t have a deckplate culture (months at sea, hours in the cockpit) – but did have other things non-related to performance at sea or in the aircraft? What were those things we valued so much, and why? The flawed process is just a byproduct of a more critical problem, a flawed culture. When the assumptions behind the man, train, equip and maintain decisions did not prove valid, we didn’t revisit our decisions and adjust course as required. In short, we didn’t routinely, rigorously and thoroughly evaluate the products of the plans we were executing. There you have your answer. Again, the word of the day; why? Part of the answer is an undercurrent to the entire Transformationalist movement; their totalitarian opposition to dissent. They abused the very important military concept – keep your differences quiet outside closed doors. That is a great thing for war – but a recipe for failure outside a no-kidding war war. The institutional cancer of promoting a culture of loyalty to individuals over institutions, I would offer, is north of 51% of the answer to the above, “Why?” Those assumptions were evaluated and found wanting many times over the last decade … and those results were ignored and/or suppressed. Little action was taken for reasons related to needs of individuals temporarily in positions of power, not the institution’s long term viability. We shifted maintenance ashore, scaled back our shipboard 3M program and reduced our preventive maintenance requirements to fit a smaller workforce, and then failed to fully fund the shore maintenance capacity we required. The result was optimally-manned ships that we could not maintain to the performance and reliability standards we previously mandated in order to achieve mission success over service life. This result became apparent with the increase in the failure rate of the INSURV Material Inspection, the “gold standard” inspection which measures the performance of our Sailors and their ships against the established standards required to sustain wholeness and mission effectiveness over the life of the ship. How did we respond to this? We made INSURV classified in order to further hide the problem, and protect the tender egos of those who helped create the problem. That may sound a bit harsh, but it is the only answer that can survive the follow-up question. Here is one of the best parts of the email – one everyone should read twice. Now in discussing these issues with you, I want to acknowledge up front that I realize how much more I could have done to fully evaluate the impact the actions I’ve described to you had on our surface force’s overall mission effectiveness. Looking back on my time as a Flag officer, I can see that I focused too exclusively on the tasks and responsibilities immediately at hand and did not take sufficient time to “step off the pitcher’s mound” and reflect more broadly on the Navy-wide/community-wide impact of what we were doing. And, when we did gather together as community leaders, we did not get to the heart of the matter: our Sailors and our ships and their collective readiness to carry out our assigned Title 10 missions. I could have done better. We could have done better. You MUST do better, because now we know better. I was guilty too. On active duty, I allowed myself to be shut up. Why? Complicated answer for myself, so I won’t pretend to know it for someone else either – but I do know what the culture was that drove me to shut up. Even at his level, I think Admiral Harvey was in the same culture. … our TYCOMs, ISICs and ships must be focused first and foremost on EFFECTIVENESS – if it’s cheap, efficient, but doesn’t work, it does us no good. If our budgets drop, we may certainly have to do less; but whatever it is we decide to do, we must do it well. If it is expensive, inefficient, and doesn’t work – then it is doubly no good. I am not sure we were focused on “cheap.” LPD-17 and its titanium fire mains were not cheap. LCS as a littoral corvette is far from cheap. The pocket battleship sized Zumwalt “Destroyers” are not cheap. I’m not sure what we have tried to make that is cheap in the last couple of decades. F-35? No. F-18? Well, they are cheaper than the alternative … but they do work at least. Here is another quote that is valuable and deserves great reflection in our Flag Officers; The absolute accountability of our COs for the performance of their ships and Sailors is the sure foundation for the performance of our Navy under the most challenging conditions imaginable. We know that the concept works. So why did we so readily walk away from an approach that had accountability at its foundation with regards to how we deliver combat capabilities to the Fleet? Yep. Accountability up? Spotty record there. Towards the end, there is a call for an about-face to what is already the dying concept of Transformationalism; Re-establishing the fundamentals of how we train, how we equip, and how we operate and then putting those responsible to deliver on those fundamentals back under accountable officers in the chain-of-command … for the sake of our surface force and our Sailors, be ruthless in the maintenance of our standards and keep your focus where it MUST be – on our ships and Sailors. … That is a good start. Some may say that Admiral Harvey’s call is too late, perhaps – but that does not matter. Is he now an anti-transformationalist? I don’t know, but he’s trending that way at least. I will give him the benefit of the doubt, and all should welcome the message of this email. The higher you go, the larger the Sword of Damocles is … but of course no one but the person in the seat can see it. As most everyone does – he did the best he could for the country and Navy he served, and he did it better than most. We should hope that this letter is the start of an ongoing conversation, not just by Admiral Harvey as he adopts the suit and tie, but by those in uniform as well. There is a lot of ruin in a navy as big as the US Navy. Regardless of well intentioned mistakes of the past, there is still plenty of excellence left to build a better Navy from. Let us repair and redirect the damage done as we move forward from the last couple of decades of poor concepts and cultural warping. If the larger Navy community is looking for a starting point for that conversation – Admiral Harvey has provided us one to use; we should accept it in the manner it was offered and get to work. When does a leader need to backoff – and when does a leader need to get in to fine-granularity leadership? The more senior a leader gets – what is a constructive level of detail? This time around this habit gained steam with “Intrusive Leadership” and the belief in that if we have a long enough shafted screwdriver with a finely engineered head, then by-golly we can get things right! Is it people or process? A bit of both? Perhaps. Is it required, or is it simply one leader’s reaction to D&G higher up? After awhile, even the best “Intrusive Leadership”/micromanaging/helicopter-leadership/etc reaches a point of diminishing returns by either excessive detail or context. Those at the receiving end feel frozen from action and look for a point of pivot where they can get some relief, while those at the giving end believe that the more they do of the same, the further away from what is needed they find themselves. Everyone is frustrated, and results suffer. This week over at my homeblog, we’ve had a little fun with CNSL’s SHIPS ROUTINE message, but in all seriousness shouldn’t one ask; is this an efficient and effective way of doing business at that level? It brings up two broad questions; are we excessively micro-managing our leaders from the highest levels, and are we making prudent use of Record Message Traffic? As I understand it, the message we highlighted is just one of a series that’s been getting rolled out this summer (the first being about small arms), and the messages are just the *highlights* from the upcoming re-publication of SURFLANT Regulations. It is a good thing to update and clarify how things should be done … but do we really need CNSL to put out a messages (as opposed to regulations promulgated via different means) that prescribes details so minor they wouldn’t even make it in to the POD? Is that a good habit for others to copy? ALL COMMODES, URINALS, SINKS, SHOWERS, AND DRAINS MUST BE CLEAN AND OPERABLE. SHOWER CURTAINS, MATS, BULKHEADS, AND DECKS MUST BE CLEANED AND SANITIZED TO PREVENT MILDEW. We call it “Record Message Traffic” or “Messages,” but I always preferred the Royal Navy “Signals” – mostly because it frames the medium better. There should be very few “signals” – and those that exist should be short, direct, and of such importance that other delivery methods are inadequate – otherwise the important things get drowned out in the signal-to-noise ratio. When, as leaders, do we get too far in to the weeds to the point that we can’t do our jobs because we are too busy doing others’ job? When is too much – just too much? Well, as one of my commenters pointed out – when in doubt, benchmark the best. At the beginning of the year that would end with our nation in a World War, Admiral Ernest J. King, USN, then CINCLANT, put it well; Subject: Exercise of Command — Excess of Detail in Orders and Instructions. 1. I have been concerned for many years over the increasing tendency — now grown almost to “standard practice” — of flag officers and other group commanders to issue orders and instructions in which their subordinates are told “how” as well as “what” to do to such an extent and in such detail that the “Custom of the service” has virtually become the antithesis of that essential element of command — “initiative of the subordinate.” 2. We are preparing for — and are now close to — those active operations (commonly called war) which require the exercise and the utilization of the full powers and capabilities of every officer in command status. There will be neither time nor opportunity to do more than prescribe the several tasks of the several subordinates (to say “what”, perhaps “when” and “where”, and usually, for their intelligent cooperation, “why”), leaving to them — expecting and requiring of them — the capacity to perform the assigned tasks (to do the “how”). 3. If subordinates are deprived — as they now are — of that training and experience which will enable them to act “on their own” — if they do not know, by constant practice, how to exercise “initiative of the subordinate” — if they are reluctant (afraid) to act because they are accustomed to detailed orders and instructions — if they are not habituated to think, to judge, to decide and to act for themselves in their several echelons of command — we shall be in sorry case when the time of “active operations” arrives. 4. The reasons for the current state of affairs — how did we get this way? — are many but among them are four which need mention: first, the “anxiety” of seniors that everything in their commands shall be conducted so correctly and go so smoothly, that none may comment unfavorably; second, those energetic activities of staffs which lead to infringement of (not to say interference with) the functions for which the lower echelons exist; third, the consequent “anxiety” of subordinates lest their exercise of initiative, even in their legitimate spheres, should result in their doing something which may prejudice their selection for promotion; fourth, the habit on the one hand and the expectation on the other of “nursing” and “being nursed” which lead respectively to the violation of command principles known as “orders to obey orders” and to that admission of incapacity or confusion evidenced by “request instructions.” 5. Let us consider certain facts: first, submarines operating submerged are constantly confronted with situations requiring the correct exercise of judgment, decision and action; second, planes, whether operating singly or in company, are even more often called upon to act correctly; third, surface ships entering or leaving port, making a landfall, steaming in thick weather, etc., can and do meet such situations while “acting singly” and, as well, the problems involved in maneuvering in formations and dispositions. Yet these same people — proven competent to do these things without benefit of “advice” from higher up — are, when grown in years and experience to be echelon commanders, all too often are not made full use of in conducting the affairs (administrative and operative) of the several echelons — echelons which exist for the purpose of facilitating command. 6. It is essential to extend the knowledge and the practice of “initiative of the subordinate” in principle and in application until they are universal in the exercise of command throughout all the echelons of command. Henceforth, we must all see to it that full use is made of the echelons of command — whether administrative (type) or operative (task) — by habitually framing orders and instructions to echelon commanders so as to tell them ‘what to do’ but not ‘how to do it’ unless the particular circumstances demand. 7. The corollaries of paragraph 6 are: (a) adopt the premise that the echelon commanders are competent in their several command echelons unless and until they themselves prove otherwise; (b) teach them that they are not only expected to be competent for their several command echelons but that it is required of them that they be competent; (c) train them — by guidance and supervision — to exercise foresight, to think, to judge, to decide and to act for themselves; (d) stop ‘nursing’ them; (e) finally, train ourselves to be satisfied with ‘acceptable solutions’ even though they are not “staff solutions or other particular solutions that we ourselves prefer.” One does wonder how Admiral King would react to the goings-on in our Navy. A man whose own daughter stated, … her father was “the most even-tempered man in the Navy. He is always in a rage.” Odds are, he wouldn’t take kindly to retired CDRs commenting on his messages. Good odds, methinks. - Midrats this Sunday, May 17 2013 – Episode 167: Intellectual Integrity, PME, and NWC - Remembering our Fallen Coast Guard Shipmates and their Families - On Midrats 10 Mar 13, Episode 166: “Expeditionary Fleet Balance” - Guest Post by LTJG Matthew Hipple: From Epipolae to Cyber War - For Strength and Courage: Neptunus Lex

<urn:uuid:76331367-c12b-45ee-aaeb-9e40ab037d59>

By Alexander Villafania INQUIRER.NET In the aftermath of perhaps the worst typhoon that struck Metro Manila in recent years, environmental groups are blaming climate change for the effects of âOndoyâ (international name âKetsanaâ). In different statements, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Greenpeace warned that such a disaster could be repeated unless comprehensive measures are taken immediately. Greenpeace, in their statement , reiterated their call for industrialized countries to put in money to fund climate change measures especially in disaster-prone countries, including the Philippines. Greenpeace Climate and Energy Campaigner Amalie Obusan said in a statement that the disaster in the Philippines had to happen in between two international climate change meetings, the recently concluded G20 Summit and the upcoming United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Summit. âWhile world leaders are pussyfooting on their commitments, countries like ours are left to experience the ravages of climate change,â Obusan said. In a separate statement, WWF-Philippines Vice Chair Jose Lorenzo Tan is calling for the reduction of fossil fuel consumption, which is being blamed for contributing to climate change. Tan said the country is not equipped to take the brunt of another similar disaster and so measures must be taken to help mitigate its effects. âPlanning must start from scenarios of the future, rather than from the present. Collectively, we must identify 'next practices', because today's 'best practice' will no longer suffice. We must start small, learn fast and scale rapidly,â Tan said. The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) reported that Ondoy dropped the heaviest rainfall in Metro Manila in recent history, a record 34.1 centimeters (13 inches) of water in less than six hours. The previous record was in 1967 with 33.4 centimeters of rainwater over the course of 24 hours. September 2009 Archives By Dennis Posadas THERE are interesting developments in Chinese cleantech, and I will discuss some headlines of interest that have been reported recently. While I will continue to write about Philippine cleantech efforts in renewables and energy efficiency, it is also important to take note of what is happening in the region, and maybe some implications for us. The first is a news report in the New York Times that First Solar, a company that makes thin film solar photovoltaics, bagged a contract to build the world’s largest solar installation in Mongolia. The rated capacity of the solar plant will be 2GW (or 2,000 MW if you prefer), and will be built using the non-silicon technology of First Solar. Thin films like Cadmium Telluride are typically deposited on surfaces like glass, and do not require silicon. The upside of thin films is that you can make it into windows and basically coat a building with it, at a cheaper price. The downside is it is only around 7% efficient, as compared to 11% efficiency of silicon-based solar photovoltaics, which means you need more cells and you need more space (e.g. land). Another is that Cadmium is poisonous, and so while there is no danger of leaching for the active life of the solar cell, the cells have to be disposed of properly once these are past their useful life of around 25 years. The implication for us is that this particular project, because the winner was a thin-film solar technology (which we do not make here as far as I know) did not result in additional business for the local Philippine operations of SunPower and Solaria, which make silicon-based photovoltaics. However, if the 2GW China project is an indication of future opportunities, maybe it will be good for the industry as a whole. The second, featured in both in MIT Technology Review and the New York Times, is what the Chinese are doing with clean coal. It appears that most of the plants being built in China these days are advanced technology clean coal plants, which do not burn the coal directly (which releases carbon dioxide) but instead, using an old pre World War II process, converts coal into synthetic gas (similar to natural gas). China has the world’s third largest coal reserves, after the US and Russia. US Energy Secretary and Nobel Laureate Steven Chu has promised to prioritize its adoption in the US as well. It is important to stress that while the carbon dioxide emissions have been cut by a large percentage, these new plants still emit carbon dioxide. The Chinese have even built a small experimental plant to remove the carbon dioxide from power emissions, and use it for softdrinks carbonation. What a creative way to do carbon capture and storage! Store it in our bodies when we drink it. Of course, we will eventually release it back to the atmosphere. But seriously, the Chinese are also looking at Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), although I have not seen any major advances yet in China in this arena. The implication here for us is that if the Chinese can develop a better way, or an alternative to CCS that cuts carbon emissions of coal, then maybe coal can have a second life, particularly since we have a lot of it. But that is, in my opinion, still in the realm of research. I do not expect to see carbon capture and storage in the Philippines for a long time; it is still very, very expensive, unless someone comes up with a breakthrough. In wind, China has doubled its capacity in the past few years and will become the world’s largest market for wind equipment. Interestingly enough, India, through a company called Suzlon Energy (you may have seen their commercials on CNN) is now giving US and European wind players like GE and Vestas a run for their money. Locally, I think we should pursue the development of micro-wind and micro-hydro systems. In electric vehicles, Fortune recently did a profile on a company called BYD (Build Your Dreams) which Warren Buffett recently invested in. In solar photovoltaics, Suntech, a Wuxi-based company which was started by local government funds is now one of the largest solar cell manufacturers in the world. The key learning for us here is that Suntech was started by Chinese local government funds, not even national government funds. The figure mentioned in Fortune was $4m, which is doable even here. Maybe that is a learning we can use, but I am not sure if local laws will permit that. Finally, the UK Guardian recently reported that US President Barack Obama may be in China this November to sign a major US-China cleantech alliance accord, prior to the December Copenhagen climate summit. While it is hard to convince the US Senate, which has to contend with a strong oil, gas and coal industry lobby, to go green, it appears that the Chinese see green as a way, not just to improve their worldwide image in the climate arena, but to actually make some serious green (as in greenbacks) out of it. The question there is where does that leave us? __________________________________________________________________________ Dennis Posadas is the editor of Cleantech Asia Online, and the author of Jump Start: A Technopreneurship Fable (Singapore: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009) By Dennis Posadas While I appreciate the enthusiasm that groups like Greenpeace and WWF about enabling as much clean/renewable energy as we can put into the system, given that we have a new renewable energy law, there are also a few mindset changes we need to put into place. I am all for renewable energy; however, as a trained engineer, I also realize that there are some hurdles that need to be overcome. First is, some renewable energy sources, like solar and wind, while abundant, are also intermittent. The sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow. On the other hand, cogeneration and biomass plants, which are clean sources, can be stable if enough heat or biomass material is forecast and planned. For solar and wind, if we want to use it for 24x7 use, we need to make sure that there is an energy storage mechanism of some type. The most common energy storage device is of course a battery. For bigger solar and wind systems, running in the megawatt range, batteries would have to be connected together, so it probably won’t be practical. Concentrated Solar Plants (CSPs) that employ banks of mirrors in the desert use some type of liquid like molten salt. Another possibility is to use pumped storage, like in Lake Caliraya. When power is available, it is used to pump water up an elevated lake. During nighttime, the lake water can be released to drive a generating turbine. Other schemes involve compressed air (in the US), or as in the case of some wind systems, natural gas turbines. But for many systems, the storage technique they employ is to simply connect the renewable energy system to the grid. Now as we increase the percentage of renewable energy systems that connect directly to the grid, we have to remember again that these are intermittent. You can’t exactly tell the sun to shine exactly at 6:00am, or the wind to start blowing at 9:00pm. So there has to be a way to prevent blowups of circuit breakers or fuses, a way to plan when each energy source will come on stream. There is a role for software and intelligent grid systems that work with meteorological information to determine that there is a high/low likelihood that the wind/sun will be available at a certain time. The grid itself, and components will have to be redesigned to take into account the higher occurrence of intermittent turn-on and turn-off of power sources, many of them being renewable. Appliances may need to have chips in them, telling them that the power at a given hour is mostly coming from renewable sources, or not. Meralco’s plan, for example, to offer Internet over broadband lines, is indicative of this. The common perception is that they plan to mainly utilize this to offer broadband services to the public through their power lines. Actually, it is not as simple as that. The Internet over power lines can also be used to command and control equipment, such as chillers in malls, to turn on or to idle at a certain time. The grid needs to be intelligent, to handle the intermittent nature of clean/renewable energy systems. There will be a lot of new capabilities, already being experienced in places like California and Europe, that we will soon have here. Our electric meters (“kontadors”) for example, will run backwards and forwards. So if we decide to install solar panels or wind turbines on our roofs, not only can we be consumers, we can also be mini power producers supplying to Meralco. The amount we sold, is then subtracted from the amount we consumed. The more citizens and private industry, as well as government, invest in these mini and private renewable energy systems, the less need there will be for big, and often carbon emitting power plants. In other words, power generation will be decentralized to many small renewable power producers, as opposed to a few large ones. Now who will pay for that? Some cities in the US consider solar panels as part of the house (roof) and allow citizens to simply add a little extra to their real estate tax, and amortize the solar panels over 25 years. The payment can actually be taken from the savings generated by the panels, so in effect a no-cash out scheme is feasible. Are we ready for that? We all want reduced carbon emissions. But we don’t get there by simply joining token Earth Hour or Earth Day celebrations. We also need to do some work, and take the time to educate ourselves. ___________________________________________________________ Dennis Posadas is the editor of Cleantech Asia Online, and the author of Jump Start: A Technopreneurship Fable (Singapore: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009) By Alexander Villafania INQUIRER.NET After over 50 years, mathematical genius Alan Turing could get the justice he deserves after being prosecuted as a homosexual. Two separate online petitions for an apology by the British government were set up by supporters of Alan Turing, the British cryptanalyst who broke the codes of the legendary German Enigma machines during World War II. The first petition was created by computer scientist John Graham-Cumming. In his blog Cumming said he wanted all records about Turing to be released by the British government. He also said he wanted Turing to get a posthumous knighthood. So far, his petition has gathered about 22,800 supporters. The deadline for the end of signing the online petition is on January 20, 2010. The second petition demanded an apology from the British government for Turing, who was alleged to have been prosecuted because of his homosexuality. The second petition was started by Cameron Buckner in support of Cummingâs first petition. So far, Bucknerâs petition has 8,700 signatories. Based on the records of the British National Archives British National Archives Turing joined the British governmentâs Government Code and Cypher School during World War II specifically to decipher the Enigma machine used by the Germans. His paper, âOn Computable Numbersâ led to the creation of the âTuring machine,â a thought process experiment that simulated the logic of a computer algorithm. Turingâs work on computational algorithms thus led to future development of computer science concepts, as well as the modern computer. But in 1953 Turing was arrested for being a homosexual and was subjected to chemical castration using estrogen injections. He died by consuming a cyanide-laced apple the following year.

<urn:uuid:02304444-c95f-4f31-9bf8-87f611ecbc3f>

The Great Debate UK In his controversial book, “The Invention of the Jewish People,” author Shlomo Sand challenges historical notions of the link between Judaism and Israel, and argues that there is no record of exile of the Jewish people. Israel has deliberately forgotten its history and replaced it with a myth, writes Sand, a Jewish scholar and historian based at the University of Tel Aviv. Without exile, there is no right to return, he says. “The disparity between what my research suggested about the history of the Jewish people and the way that history is commonly understood – not only within Israel but in the larger world – shocked me as much as it shocked my readers.” Early Rabbis and 19th century Zionist Scholars were responsible for the construction of a continuous genealogy for the Jewish people, Sand argues. He attributes the Jewish diaspora to early Judaist evangelism across North Africa, Southern Europe and the Middle East, not a biological lineage.

<urn:uuid:efd67078-c51c-4aee-84da-cd442cd5b229>

May 13, 2011 In the summer of 2009, I had the pleasure of writing about John Kress, a research botanist at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, and his efforts to create a DNA barcode for all 25o plant species on Plummers Island, a 12-acre island in the Potomac River here in Washington, D.C. At the time, Kress spoke about a day when citizen scientists, even schoolchildren, would be able to identify plants with handheld DNA sequencers. They would be able to upload the barcode to a smartphone in order to access an online encyclopedia with basics about the species, botanical art and anecdotal information, he explained. The botanist’s vision seemed so futuristic, but now, just two years later, it is beginning to come to fruition. In fact, Columbia University, the University of Maryland and the Smithsonian Institution have announced that Leafsnap, an iPhone, iPad and Android app that will identify a plant based on a leaf’s silhouette, will be released this summer. The mobile app uses visual recognition technology to identify the species of a plant based on a photograph of one of its leaves. Each leaf photograph is cross-referenced with a leaf-image library, which Kress helped compile, based on several measurements of the leaf’s outline. The user then gets a ranked list of the leaf’s closest matches, as well as other information about the species. Currently, Leafsnap’s catalog includes trees native to the northeast United States, but there are plans to expand it to make it more representative of the entire country. Quite brilliantly, the app will make good on the photographs users upload, sharing them and the trees’ location with the scientific community. From this, scientists will be able to further study the growth and decline of different tree species. “Leafsnap was originally designed as a specialized aid for scientists and plant explorers to discover new species in poorly known habitats,” says Kress, in a press release. “Now Smithsonian research is available as an app for the public to get to know plant diversity in their own backyards, in parks and in natural areas. This tool is especially important for the environment, because learning about nature is the first step in conserving it.” Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.

<urn:uuid:83e8d819-18d4-40f5-b39f-780361ab045c>

August 25, 2012 5:03 pm The man who uttered the iconic phrase, “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind” has died today at the age of 82 years old. As reported by the Associated Press, Armstrong died following complications resulting from cardiovascular problems. On that momentous day of July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon’s surface for three hours, collecting rock samples, taking photographs and conducting experiments. From the AP obit: “The sights were simply magnificent, beyond any visual experience that I had ever been exposed to,” Armstrong once said. The moonwalk marked America’s victory in the Cold War space race that began Oct. 4, 1957, with the launch of the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1, a 184-pound satellite that sent shock waves around the world. Although he had been a Navy fighter pilot, a test pilot for NASA’s forerunner and an astronaut, Armstrong never allowed himself to be caught up in the celebrity and glamor of the space program. “I am, and ever will be, a white socks, pocket protector, nerdy engineer,” he said in February 2000 in one of his rare public appearances. “And I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession.” The Guardian offers a nice background on his rise to NASA: Armstrong was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio, and from a young age was fascinated with aviation, experimenting with model airplanes and a home-built wind tunnel. At 15 he began flying lessons in an Aeronca Champion, and by 16 acquired his student pilot’s licence. In 1947, he enrolled at Purdue University on a Navy scholarship to pursue a degree in aeronautical engineering, but in 1949 the Navy called him to active duty in the Korean War. As a navy pilot, he flew 78 combat missions. He was shot down once and received three medals for his military service. In 1952 he returned to his studies and completed his BSc at Purdue and an MSc in aerospace engineering at the University of Southern California. In 1955 he became a civilian research pilot at the Lewis research centre of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (Naca), the forerunner of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa). Later that year, he transferred to Naca’s high-speed flight station (today, Nasa’s Dryden flight research centre) at Edwards Air Force Base in California as an aeronautical research scientist, and then as a pilot. He was a test pilot on many pioneering high-speed aircraft, including the 4,000mph X-15. He flew over 200 different models of aircraft, including jets, rockets, helicopters and gliders. Armstrong was engaged in both piloting and engineering aspects of the X-15 programme from its inception. He completed the first flight in the aircraft equipped with a new self-adaptive flight control system and made seven flights in the rocket plane. In 1962 he was of the nine test pilots chosen by Nasa for its second astronaut-training programme. Here’s a round-up of some of the reactions from the Twitterverse — : A flash of some of the reactions as the space community reacts to news of Armstrong’s death Armstrong’s reticence to make public appearances or give interviews means that, for many Americans, their sole memory of Armstrong was his trip to the moon. On a related note, it also made his autograph one of the most valuable in the memorabilia market, ahead of Queen Elizabeth II, Paul McCartney and Muhammad Ali. In 2010, our sister publication Air and Space‘s Mike Klesius reported: According to his biography, [Armstrong] signed anything he was asked to for the first fifteen or so years after the moon landing. Then, dealers of collectibles began misrepresenting themselves as school teachers or children, asking for signed photos by mail. By 1993, Armstrong saw that forgeries of his signature were being sold on the Internet, and stopped giving his autograph, advice that Charles Lindbergh had given him in September 1969 at a banquet of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots. Nonetheless, Armstrong’s autograph, according to Paul Fraser Collectibles of the United Kingdom, is the most valuable in the world, and fetches more than $7,500 these days In 2010, Owen Edwards wrote in Smithsonian about the model of the Eagle lunar lander, on view at the National Air and Space Museum on the Mall: Today, visitors to the Apollo exhibition witness an artifact that looks—with a little help from artful curators—much as Eagle looked when it made that giant leap 40 years ago. When Buzz Aldrin radioed back to us riveted earthlings that “this stands as a symbol of the insatiable curiosity of all mankind to explore the unknown,” he was talking about the overall mission. But he might as easily have been referring to the ungainly marvel that made it possible. This weekend, the lander module, the Apollo to the Moon gallery and the Apollo 11 capsule would be a good place to start to pay tribute to the American icon. Sign up for our free email newsletter and receive the best stories from Smithsonian.com each week.

<urn:uuid:631ac3cb-777c-4ca3-bb32-9f0d708301cf>

By Janet Helm MS, RD We make about 200 daily food decisions. Yet, many people are not fully focused on these choices, and they’re unaware that lots of small things influence what they eat – including plate size, package size, people around us, and distractions, such as watching TV or working on the computer. It’s what Cornell researcher Brian Wansink calls mindless eating. It turns out, we don’t have our mind on a lot of the choices we make throughout the day. A study conducted at Duke University found that more than 40 percent of the actions people perform each day aren’t actual decisions, but habits. The habits we form impact so many parts of our lives, including what we put in our mouths. That’s the subject of a fascinating book called “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do and How to Change It” by Charles Duhigg. Before you can break a bad habit and create more positive, health-promoting behaviors you need to understand how habits work, according to Duhigg, who says habits emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, he says, the brain will try to make almost any regular routine into a habit because habits allow our minds to ramp down more often. Habits become automatic decisions that don’t require us to think. We’re just on autopilot. They just become part of our routine. To be created, habits need three things: a cue or trigger that gets us started, a behavior, and a reward. It’s that reward that we begin to crave, and that’s what fuels this “habit loop.” So when a habit begins to start for you, it means your brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks. Unless you deliberately fight a bad habit– unless you find new, healthier routines – the pattern will unfold automatically. You can begin to break your habit loops when you start recognizing the triggers that get you shifting into automatic gear. Or perhaps it means finding new cues and rewards to help you stick to your intentions. A habit can’t be fully eradicated, but it can be replaced, Duhigg says. If we keep the same cue and the same reward, a new routine can be inserted. To keep a habit changed, you need to believe that change is possible. That’s what social scientists call self-efficacy. You need to believe that you can succeed. It also helps to work on small steps and celebrate little victories. Sometimes there’s a “keystone” habit that helps other habits fall into place. For many people a keystone habit is exercise. Once you start being more active, it seems to help you adopt other good habits. I’ve been really interested in the power of habits because that’s the focus of a book I’ve been working on this year with the editors of Cooking Light called The Food Lover’s Healthy Habits Cookbook. It will help you adopt 12 healthy habits. Each chapter is a different habit – from eating three more veggies a day to being active 30 minutes a day for three days a week. It’s all about creating new behaviors – one step at a time – so these decisions start to become automatic. What are the habits you want to break, and what’s a new routine you want to focus on?

<urn:uuid:c892455f-f736-4d39-9fca-fb618840362d>

|Quick Facts: Forest and Conservation Technicians| |2010 Median Pay|| $33,390 per year $16.05 per hour |Entry-Level Education||Associate’s degree| |Work Experience in a Related Occupation||None| |Number of Jobs, 2010||36,500| |Job Outlook, 2010-20||-1% (Little or no change)| |Employment Change, 2010-20||-400| Forest and conservation technicians measure and improve the quality of forests, rangeland, and other natural areas. Forest and conservation technicians typically work outdoors, sometimes in remote locations. Forest and conservation technicians typically need an associate’s degree in a forest technology or technician program or in a related field. Employers look for technicians who have a degree that is accredited by the Society of American Foresters (SAF). The median annual wage of forest and conservation technicians was $33,390 in May 2010. Employment of forest and conservation technicians is expected to experience little or no change from 2010 to 2020. Heightened demand for American timber and wood pellets will help increase overall job prospects for forest and conservation technicians. Compare the job duties, education, job growth, and pay of forest and conservation technicians with similar occupations. O*NET provides comprehensive information on key characteristics of workers and occupations. Learn more about forest and conservation technicians by contacting these additional resources.

<urn:uuid:002cbbaf-f0f1-4cce-ac7f-9526bc87c804>

Our Changing Ocean Vast and powerful though the ocean is people have changed it. It’s a different ocean now. The ocean’s enduring surface beauty hides its plight. But the ocean today is a diminished version of a much healthier ocean of not so long ago. The ocean is the source of about half the oxygen we breathe, much of the water we drink, and much of the food we eat. (If you don’t eat fish, consider this: about a third of the world fish catch gets made into feed for chickens, pigs, and other livestock.) Changes to the ocean undermine the health and well-being of people and wildlife worldwide. These changes include depletion from overfishing, warming, ocean acidification caused by the same carbon dioxide that is warming the atmosphere and the upper sea, chemical pollution, plastic debris, loss of wetlands, coastal mangrove forests, and coral reefs, and invasive species. Each of these alone is serious. Can any particular part of the oceans survive these things happening all at once? The answer is: “it depends.” There is still time to reverse course and restore the ocean to a healthy balance. Many dedicated people and organizations, including Blue Ocean Institute, are working actively to solve the oceans’ problems. Be a part of this hopeful work. Jump in and help save the oceans! Dive into our Issues section to learn more. Being knowledgeable will help you decide what part of the solution is just for you. Why the Oceans? Simple: the ocean supports life on this planet. It feeds us, produces the oxygen we breathe, maintains our climate, cycles vital nutrients through countless ecosystems and provides food and medicines. The ocean provides jobs, food, energy, and recreation. As if that weren’t enough, the ocean is beautiful and inspiring. And that would be enough. People Climate change is the defining environmental issue of our time and our children’s time. Into one crowded elevator go conservation of nature, human health, the prospects for agriculture, international stability, national security, and of course energy policy and technology. Climate change reflects our intensifying presence on the surface of this planet. It wraps together everything Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is changing the oceans’ chemistry. This is ocean acidification. The head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calls ocean acidification global warming’s equally evil twin. The oceans are absorbing up to a million tons of carbon dioxide every hour. The good news: less carbon dioxide in the air Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is not only changing the oceans’ chemistry and warming the atmosphere, it is also warming the oceans. There’s a third more carbon dioxide in the air than at the start of the Industrial Revolution. The carbon acts like insulation in the atmosphere, or like glass in a greenhouse — Overfishing is depleting the world’s oceans and having a negative impact on marine biodiversity and on human health, welfare, and prosperity. Links to more complete info in our Fish as Food section. In the ocean, little fish play a big role. Small fish like sardines and anchovies are some of the most important fish in the sea. Fish such as herring, anchovies, menhaden, and sardines feed mostly on plankton all their lives. They supply calories and nourishment (food!) for many top predators including cod, tuna, salmon, and Invasive Marine Species Invasive species are animals and plants that hitchhike or ride along to places where they are not normally found. In their new homes, invasive species can sometimes create big problems for native species and ecosystems. The main source of marine invasive species is the global shipping industry, specifically through ballast water. Species can also be Marine debris comes from everyone and every source that makes every kind of garbage. Tons of trash from both land – up to 80 percent — and ships constantly finds its way to the sea. Much of this marine debris does not go away; it cannot dissolve and it lasts in the oceans for many Coastal Habitat Loss Homes, jetties, seawalls, canals, and other structures built on beaches or wetlands often destroy habitat for sea turtles, birds, fish, and other sea life. Salt and tidal marshes, wetlands, mangroves, and coral reefs also suffer when development is unsustainable. Wetlands, mangroves and sea grasses are valuable natural resources as they hold sediment and nutrients, filter In addition to carbon dioxide, mercury, and marine debris, which are types of pollution, other man made pollutants constantly enter the oceans from a range of sources. These include oil, fertilizers, toxic chemicals, and sewage. OIL & CHEMICALS Oil spills may be the most infamous pollutant because popular media often vividly shows dramatic damage. The Aquaculture – Farmed Seafood Aquaculture can impact many aspects of ocean life. Visit Aquaculture in our Fish as Food section which also includes sustainable seafood choices plus discussions about genetically modified fish, seafood fraud, bycatch, and more.

<urn:uuid:37813f25-88c4-46b8-a404-67d7ad70dc62>

The core teaching of Buddhism is dependent origination by Zen Master Jongbeom Sunim What is the truth Buddhism expounds? What are its foundational teachings? These are essential questions for the newcomer. In a nutshell, Buddhism teaches dependent origination and the Middle Way. These two principles form the core of Buddhist philosophy-dependent origination explains the principle of Buddhism, while the Middle Way defines the practice of Buddhism. Gautama Buddha was enlightened to the principle of dependent origination, and then for the rest of his life he taught students the practice of the Middle Way. This was Lord Buddha¡¯s succinct explanation: ¡°Whoever sees dependent origination sees the Dharma; whoever sees the Dharma sees dependent origination.¡± What is dependent origination? According to the principle of dependent origination, everything in the universe, including objects, ideas, beings, events, and processes, depends on numerous causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone or independently of others. Because causes and conditions exist, there are effects. With dependent origination, ¡°If there is this, then there is that; with the arising of this, that arises. Everything is interconnected: there is nothing separate, nothing standing alone. Things arise depending on other conditions, and then coexist with others for a while, and then disappear depending on other things. All beings are in causal relationships, for example Buddhas with sentient beings, monastic with lay communities, the wise with the foolish, and parents with their children. Causes and conditions Dependent origination came to be used interchangeably with ¡°causes and conditions,¡± and then with ¡°cause and effect.¡± In a world of dependent origination both physical and mental things arise from dependence on causal conditions. Nothing can exist outside of cause-effect linkages. The present arises from the causal conditions of the past, and the past from the further past. The link of these causal conditions extends endlessly to the past and to the future. Therefore, we need to see clearly the significance of causal conditions in our lives. Buddhists often talk about impermanence. All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. This is why the causal-conditional phenomena are said to be impermanent. For this reason Buddhism teaches us to be attached neither to existence nor to non-existence. When the smoke blows west, we feel the wind blow west, and when the smoke blows east, we feel the wind blow east. Likewise, when you encounter good causal conditions, you could conclude, ¡°I must have created good causal conditions in my previous lives.¡± The Buddha¡¯s teaching is free of the slightest error. If we are in evil causal conditions, we should get out of them as soon as possible and approach good ones. Lord Buddha said that even the Buddhas cannot save those to whom they are not linked causally. Therefore, we should refrain from making bad causes and conditions and strive to make good ones. The Twelve links of dependent origination Lord Buddha said all our sorrow, physical pain, mental agony, and suffering arise from the twelve causal conditions. Let us examine each one in sequential order. ¨ç Ignorance (Avidya-) : The sanskrit word ¡°Avidya-¡± literally means ¡°no illumination.¡± We cannot readily find our way in the dark. Likewise, when our mind is not illuminated, we tend to judge a wrong thought as a right one. ¨è Formations (Sam. ska-ra) : Once ignorance causes us to confuse wrong with right, attachment arises. Then we try to give concrete form to the concept we get attached to. That is, with Ignorance as condition, Mental Formations arise. ¨é Consciousness (Vijn~ana) : When an object takes form by our actions, we tend to discern it. There is the consciousness of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and thinking. That is, with Mental Formations as condition, Consciousness arises. ¨ê Name and Form (Namarupa) : When we discern an object through our Consciousness, we tend to judge if it is a material or nonmaterial being. ¡°Name¡± describes non-materiality and ¡°Form¡± materiality. That is, with Consciousness as condition, Name and Form arise. ¨ë Six Sense Gates (S.ad.a-yatana) : When we judge an object as a material or non-material being using Name and Form, then we have a renewed perception of it through our Six Sense Gates of eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind. That is, with Name and Form as condition, Six Sense Gates arise. From this moment we begin to see, hear, smell, taste, touch and think, and we are aware of things as they happen. ¨ì Contact (Spars¡Ça ) : When we perceive an object through our Six Sense Gates, we conceive of six-sense objects such as visible objects, sound, odor, taste, touch, and mental objects. In other words, we see, hear, smell, taste, touch and think. Contact is the encounter between the sense gates and the sensory information. That is, with Six Sense Gates as condition, Contact arises. ¨í Feeling (Vedana-) : When there arises shape, sound, smell, taste, touch and thought of an object through Contact, then one or more out of the following three feelings arise-pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral (neither pleasant nor unpleasant). All the objects we perceive in this world can generate one or more of these three feelings. With Contact as condition, Feeling arises. ¨î Craving (Tr.s.n.a-) : When one or more of the pleasant, unpleasant and neutral feelings arise depending on Feeling, we crave only for the objects that give us the pleasant feeling. Even when the objects are not the ones that can give us pleasure, we pour in blind love to make those objects render pleasure. That is, with Feeling as condition, Craving arises. This craving is far from Buddha¡¯s compassion, but rather close to love based on greed and hunger. ¨ï Clinging (Upa-da-na) : In response to Craving we attach to and pour our love on an object. When this object gives us a pleasant feeling, then naturally we engage in some kind of action to possess it. That is, with Craving as condition, Clinging arises. ¨ð Becoming (Bhava) : In response to Clinging we try to possess the object of pleasure. That is, with Clinging as condition, Becoming arises. We get to possess a certain material, object or feeling. All the objects in the world did not start out having existence from the beginning, but were made to exist because of Clinging. This is called the process of becoming - becoming someone or something other than what is. ¨ñ Birth (Jati) : When we get to possess a certain object or feeling in response to Clinging, an object or thought has been generated. Consequently, Birth refers to the birth of all beings. Ideas can also be birthed. That is, with Becoming as a condition, Birth arises. ¨ò Aging and Dying (Jara-maran.a) : When an object comes into existence in response to Birth, it will also inevitably age and die. This process is not limited to the aging and dying of the body but encompasses the suffering coming from the thought that we are born, age, and die. Whether form or formless, if a thought arises and then disappears, from the perspective of dependent origination it had a birth, lifespan, and death. That is, with Birth as condition, Aging and Dying arise. What we can learn from dependent origination Buddhism emphasizes the importance of efforts we make at this very moment. If we put in wholesome work at this moment, we will reap wholesome results, and if we put in unwholesome work, we will reap unwholesome results. Therefore, rather than begging or wishing for things from a third party, we should be mindful of the frame of mind we inhabit and the actions we produce in this moment. Then the frame of mind and action will naturally make their own results. As there can be no effect without a cause, there cannot be people we start out loving or hating from the beginning. An object or situation of confrontation will create the conditions for love or hate. Therefore, we should be introspective rather than blaming or hating others. We should think of others¡¯ hard work instead of raising the self on a pedestal. This is the Buddhist way, and the path on which we practice the truth of dependent origination as taught by Lord Buddha.

<urn:uuid:3bcde091-387e-479a-b0f3-72ce70b9b825>

While some of the items in this chapter are related to the operating system Bugzilla is running on or some of the support software required to run Bugzilla, it is all related to protecting your data. This is not intended to be a comprehensive guide to securing Linux, Apache, MySQL, or any other piece of software mentioned. There is no substitute for active administration and monitoring of a machine. The key to good security is actually right in the middle of the word: U R It. While programmers in general always strive to write secure code, accidents can and do happen. The best approach to security is to always assume that the program you are working with isn't 100% secure and restrict its access to other parts of your machine as much as possible.

<urn:uuid:cdbbaed4-e05d-4aff-90a1-9a94a05c6b35>

Each year thousands of Canadian students make the life-altering decision to drop out of high school, thereby not realizing the unlimited potential that exists inside. In most cases, this seemingly simple and personal decision puts our youth on a downward spiral that affects us all. Not allowing their full potential to be unleashed leads to lower wages, higher unemployment, a diminished tax base, higher rates of poverty, and greater dependency on social assistance. There is an imbalance. Dropout rates in low-income communities are as high as 60-70 per cent, compared to the national average of 20-30 per cent. Pathways to Education Canada is a charitable organization that helps youth in low-income communities graduate from high school and successfully transition into post-secondary education or training. Pathways removes systemic barriers to education by providing leadership, expertise and a community-based program proven to lower dropout rates. Founded in 2001, Pathways operates in eleven communities across Canada, with programs in Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Manitoba. There is a strong need for this issue to be communicated across the country in order to raise awareness as well as donations from governments, corporations and individuals in order to grow the program and, in turn, make Canada a Graduation Nation. The Pathways to Education program aims to reduce the high school dropout rate in low-income communities, help youth graduate and successfully transition into post-secondary education or training. We were tasked with raising the awareness of the program in order to drive participation, volunteers, partners and sponsors. In order to help achieve the goals of Pathways to Education Canada, various communication tactics have been put into place. Primarily, we are continually pitching stories about Pathways 12 months of the year to both traditional and online media to ensure the multiple facets of the organization are engaged. Citizen Optimum’s key story telling happens around the success stories – the graduates, the new communities and the generous support received by federal and provincial governments and numerous corporate supporters. By finding new and exciting ways to celebrate the organizations success, we have been able to raise its profile, garner a connection between Pathways and its supporters and well as the caring communities that participate. Since the Pathways program started in Regent Park in 2001, the dropout rate has decreased by more than 70 per cent, with nearly 600 Pathways graduates now continuing on to post secondary studies or entering the workforce. Even more exciting are the thousands of students in the program today and on track to become yet another Pathways success story. As the profile continues to grow, Citizen Optimum’s ongoing story telling program continues to deliver and exceed numbers in both the traditional media and online news and social channels..

<urn:uuid:db8b67d3-cff2-4390-a1b5-1f4c4e4ea28e>

Chandra "Hears" a Supermassive Black Hole in Perseus A 53-hour Chandra observation of the central region of the Perseus galaxy cluster (left) has revealed wavelike features (right) that appear to be sound waves. The features were discovered by using a special image-processing technique to bring out subtle changes in brightness. These sound waves are thought to have been produced by explosive events occurring around a supermassive black hole (bright white spot) in Perseus A, the huge galaxy at the center of the cluster. The pitch of the sound waves translates into the note of B flat, 57 octaves below middle-C. This frequency is over a million billion times deeper than the limits of human hearing, so the sound is much too deep to be heard. The image also shows two vast, bubble-shaped cavities, each about 50 thousand light years wide, extending away from the central supermassive black hole. These cavities, which are bright sources of radio waves, are not really empty, but filled with high-energy particles and magnetic fields. They push the hot X-ray emitting gas aside, creating sound waves that sweep across hundreds of thousands of light years. The detection of intergalactic sound waves may solve the long-standing mystery of why the hot gas in the central regions of the Perseus cluster has not cooled over the past ten billion years to form trillions of stars. As sounds waves move through gas, they are eventually absorbed and their energy is converted to heat. In this way, the sound waves from the supermassive black hole in Perseus A could keep the cluster gas hot. The explosive activity occurring around the supermassive black hole is probably caused by large amounts of gas falling into it, perhaps from smaller galaxies that are being cannibalized by Perseus A. The dark blobs in the central region of the Chandra image may be fragments of such a doomed galaxy.

<urn:uuid:7c5032f8-872f-474b-bda7-8c70bc31adaa>

The experiences in New York, Washington and the Oklahoma City bombing illustrate the tragic impact of a building explosion. We know that the use of explosives can result in collapsed buildings, fires and loss of life. People who live or work in multi-level buildings should: - Review emergency evacuation procedures of their building - Know where fire exits are located - Keep fire extinguishers in working order. Know where they are located; and how to use them. - Learn first aid Contact the local chapter of the American Red Cross for additional information. The following items should be kept in a designated place on each floor of any building: - Portable, battery-operated radio and extra batteries - Several flashlights and extra batteries - First aid kit and manual - Several hard hats - Fluorescent tape to rope off dangerous areas. During an Explosion In a building explosion, get out of the building as quickly and calmly as possible. If items are falling off of bookshelves or from the ceiling, get under a sturdy table or desk. If there is a fire: - Stay low to the floor and exit the building as quickly as possible - Cover nose and mouth with a wet cloth - When approaching a closed door, use the palm of your hand and forearm to feel the lower, middle and upper parts of the door. If it is not hot, brace yourself against the door and open it slowly. If it is hot to the touch, do not open the door - seek an alternative escape route. - Heavy smoke and poisonous gasses collect first along the ceiling. Stay below the smoke at all times.

<urn:uuid:7aeb3dfc-90e2-4214-b119-b9c401af1c98>

Chemistry 109, Lectures 1 and 2, Fall 2011 University of Wisconsin - Madison Prof. Frank Keutsch Prof. John W. Moore There is no need to log in to use this online textbook. It is freely available to anyone Before using the textbook, go through the tutorial How To Use This Site. Useful Links to Bookmark - This page: - Chem 109 Moodle Course Management System: http://courses.chem.wisc.edu (requiresUW NetID login) - Netorials Interactive Chemistry Tutorials - CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics constants - ChemPages Laboratory Resources Online Tutorials on Laboratory Equipment and Procedures that the Lab Manual assigns for viewing before taking pre-lab quizzes. What is the difference between ChemPaths Online Resources and the printed textbook? ChemPaths has been developed as a project of the ChemEd Digital Library to bring chemistry to life using interactive molecule viewers, animations and videos. This online textbook is based on the printed textbook Chemistry by John W. Moore, William G. Davies, and Ronald W. Collins, which was published in 1978. This page is the introduction to the Chem 109-Fall 2011 Pathway through the online textbook. - A typical textbook comes with online portions through the publisher where you can access multimedia resources, whereas ChemPaths incorporates these features right into the text itself. - Just as you will notice that your daily readings skip around from chapter to chapter in the printed textbook, the same would be true of the online text which has chapters in different orders. This pathway, however, lets you read all the various portion of the textbook assigned in the order designed to coincide with the lecture materials - without skipping around. - All material is covered adequately by both the online text as well as the paper textbook - however you may find that some explanations in one version seem superior to the other. For instance - the online textbook has videos and interactive rotatable molecules. These multimedia advantages are helpful in describing 3D orbitals, molecular structures, and reactions. - Both have worked out examples. - Both have extra questions (the paper textbook has them at the end of the chapters, the online resources have additional questions available within the Moodle Course Management System as the ungraded course: Chemistry 109 Study Questions). - Both have tables of useful values. The homework, however, uses the online tables as these are known to be accurate. Textbooks go through periodic revisions as values are updated by scientists. These are done faster through the ChemPaths website than in your textbook. There are links within your homework to the necessary tables - they are also found by using the drop-down menu called "Quick Resources" on any page within ChemPaths. If you find an area thatseems to be unclear or in error on the online version - please email Professor Moore (firstname.lastname@example.org) to report the issue and we'll have it resolved as soon as we can!

<urn:uuid:72d1d23c-0596-4739-9975-c866794b79c1>

This section provides primary sources that document how Indian and European men and one English and one Indian woman have described the practice of sati, or the self-immolation of Hindu widows. Although they are all critical of self-immolation, Francois Bernier, Fanny Parks, Lord William Bentinck, and Rev. England present four different European perspectives on the practice of sati and what it represents about Indian culture in general, and the Hindu religion and Hindu women in particular. They also indicate increasing negativism in European attitudes toward India and the Hindu religion in general. It would be useful to compare the attitudes of Bentinck and England as representing the secular and sacred aspects of British criticism of sati. A comparison of Bentinck’s minute with the subsequent legislation also reveals differences in tone between private and public documents of colonial officials. Finally, a comparison between the Fanny Parks and the three men should raise discussion on whether or not the gender and social status of the writer made any difference in his or her appraisal of the practice of self-immolation. The three sources by Indian men and one by an Indian woman illustrate the diversity of their attitudes toward sati. The Marathi source illuminates the material concerns of relatives of the Hindu widow who is urged to adopt a son, so as to keep a potentially lucrative office within the extended family. These men are willing to undertake intense and delicate negotiations to secure a suitably related male child who could be adopted. This letter also documents that adoption was a legitimate practice among Hindus, and that Hindu women as well as men could adopt an heir. Ram Mohan Roy’s argument illustrates a rationalist effort to reform Hindu customs with the assistance of British legislation. Roy illustrates one of the many ways in which Indians collaborate with British political power in order to secure change within Indian society. He also enabled the British to counter the arguments of orthodox Hindus about the scriptural basis for the legitimacy of self-immolation of Hindu widows. The petition of the orthodox Hindu community in Calcutta, the capital of the Company’s territories in India, documents an early effort of Indians to keep the British colonial power from legislating on matters pertaining to the private sphere of Indian family life. Finally, Pandita Ramabai reflects the ways in which ancient Hindu scriptures and their interpretation continued to dominate debate. Students should consider how Ramabai’s effort to raise funds for her future work among child widows in India might have influenced her discussion of sati. Two key issues should be emphasized. First, both Indian supporters and European and Indian opponents of the practice of self-immolation argue their positions on the bodies of Hindu women, and all the men involved appeal to Hindu scriptures to legitimate their support or opposition. Second, the voices of Indian women were filtered through the sieve of Indian and European men and a very few British women until the late 19th century. - How do the written and visual sources portray the Hindu women who commit self-immolation? Possible aspects range from physical appearance and age, motivation, evidence of physical pain (that even the most devoted woman must suffer while burning to death), to any evidence of the agency or autonomy of the Hindu widow in deciding to commit sati. Are any differences discernible, and if so, do they seem related to gender or nationality of the observer or time period in which they were observed? - How are the brahman priests who preside at the self-immolation portrayed in Indian and European sources? What might account for any similarities and differences? - What reasons are used to deter Hindu widows from committing sati? What do these reasons reveal about the nature of family life in India and the relationships between men and women? - What do the reasons that orthodox Hindus provide to European observers and to Indian reformers reveal about the significance of sati for the practice of the Hindu religion? What do their arguments reveal about orthodox Hindu attitudes toward women and the family? - How are Hindu scriptures used in various ways in the debates before and after the prohibition of sati? - What is the tone of the petition from 800 Hindus to their British governor? Whom do they claim to represent? What is their justification for the ritual of self-immolation? What is their attitude toward the Mughal empire whose Muslim rulers had preceded the British? What is their characterization of the petitioners toward those Hindus who support the prohibition on sati? How do the petitioners envision the proper relationship between the state and the practice of religion among its subjects? - Who or what factors do European observers, British officials, and Indian opponents of sati hold to be responsible for the continuance of the practice of sati? - What were the reasons that widows gave for committing sati? Were they religious, social or material motives? What is the evidence that the widows were voluntarily committing sati before 1829? What reasons did the opponents of sati give for the decisions of widows to commit self-immolation? What reasons did opponents give for widows who tried to escape from their husbands’ pyres? - What are the reasons that Lord Bentinck and his Executive Council cite for their decision to declare the practice of sati illegal? Are the arguments similar to or different from his arguments in his minute a month earlier? What do these reasons reveal about British attitudes toward their role or mission in India? Do they use any of the arguments cited by Ram Mohan Roy or Pandita Ramabai? - What do these sources, both those who oppose sati and those who advocate it, reveal about their attitudes to the Hindu religion in particular and Indian culture in general?

<urn:uuid:672e69ee-fd10-42dc-8e01-f4fde95914a0>

ChristianAnswers.Net WebBible Encyclopedia The sickle of the Egyptians resembled that in modern use. The ears of corn were cut with it near the top of the straw. There was also a sickle used for warlike purposes, more correctly, however, called a pruning-hook (Deut. 16:9; Jer. 50:16, marginal note, “scythe;” Joel 3:13; Mark 4:29).

<urn:uuid:7c50b364-d501-4843-a888-e8c49654eaad>

More on What the Bible Says: Believers should seek God, and not a legalistic rule, about how much to give. - 2 Corinthians 9:7 Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. (NIV) Giving is meant to be a joyful expression of thanks to God from the heart, and not a legalistic obligation. The value of our offering is not determined by how much we give, but how we give. - Mark 12:41-44 Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on." (NIV) The Widow's OfferingI see at least 3 important things about giving in this story of the widow's offering: - God values our offerings differently than men do. In God's eyes, the value of the offering is not determined by the amount of the offering. The text says that the wealthy gave large amounts, but the widow's offering was of much higher value because she gave all that she had. It was a costly sacrifice. Note that Jesus did not say she put in more than any of the others, he said she put in more than all the others. - Our attitude in giving is what is most important to God. The text says Jesus "watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury." Jesus observed the people as they gave their offerings, and he watches us today as we give. If we give to be seen by men or with a stingy heart toward God, our offering loses its value. Verse 41 says the rich threw in their offerings, further indicating that they gave carelessly with no thought. The widow carefully put in her offering. Jesus is more interested and impressed by how we give than what we give. We see this same principle in the story of Cain and Abel. God evaluated Cain and Abel's offerings. Abel's offering was pleasing in God's eyes, but he rejected Cain's. Rather than giving to God out of thankfulness and worship, Cain may have presented his offering with evil or selfish intentions. Maybe he had hoped to receive some special recognition. No matter what, Cain knew what was the right thing to do, but he didn't do it. God even gave Cain an opportunity to make things right, but he chose not to. This illustrates again that God watches what and how we give. God not only cares about the quality of our gifts to him, but also the manner in which we offer them. - God doesn't want us to be overly concerned with how our offering is spent. At the time Jesus observed this widow's offering, the temple treasury was no doubt being managed by the corrupt religious leaders of that day. But Jesus did not mention anywhere in this story that the widow should not have given to the temple. Although we should do what we can to ensure that the churches and ministries we give to are good stewards of God's money, we can't always know for certain that the money we give will be spent correctly. We should not be overly burdened with this concern. Nor should we use this as an excuse not to give. It's important for us to find a good church that is wisely managing its financial resources for God's glory and for the growth of God's kingdom. But once we give to God, we don't need to worry about what happens to the money. This is God's problem to resolve. If a church leader or ministry misuses its funds, God knows how to deal with it. We rob God when we fail to give offerings to him. - Malachi 3:8 Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me. But you ask, 'How do we rob you?' In tithes and offerings. (NIV) The picture of our financial giving simply reveals a reflection of our lives surrendered to God. - Romans 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. (NIV) A ChallengeIn conclusion, I'd like to explain my personal convictions and offer a challenge to my readers. As I've already stated, I believe tithing is no longer the law. We are under no legal obligation to give a tenth of our income. But my husband and I feel strongly that the tithe ought to be the starting point of our giving. We see it as the minimum to give, a demonstration that everything we have belongs to God. My husband and I also believe most of our giving should go to the local church (the storehouse) where we are fed God's Word and nurtured spiritually. Malachi 3:10 says, " 'Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,' says the LORD Almighty, 'and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.' " If you're not currently giving to the Lord, I challenge you to start by making a commitment. Give something faithfully and regularly. I'm certain God will honor and bless your commitment. If a tenth seems too overwhelming, consider making it a goal. Giving may feel like a huge sacrifice at first, but I'm confident you'll eventually discover its rewards. God wants believers to be free from the love of money, which the Bible says in 1 Timothy 6:10 is "a root of all kinds of evil." Giving honors the Lord, and allows his work to go forward. It also helps build our faith. We may experience times of financial hardship when we can't give as much, but the Lord still wants us to trust Him in times of lack. He, not our paycheck, is our provider. He will meet our daily needs. A friend of my pastor once told him that financial giving is not God's way of raising money—it's his way of raising children.

<urn:uuid:22fc567d-2689-4403-b029-4f0900b19e03>

St. Petersburg, Russia, 6 July, 2012 (IUCN) – As the number of natural wonders on the World Heritage List continues to grow, too many sites are left with little resources to manage them properly and conserve the very values they were inscribed for, say IUCN experts. Many face a barrage of threats, not least from mining and oil exploration. Africa’s natural World Heritage Sites are particularly at risk. Over 60% of West and Central African sites are Danger Listed, and one out of four of these iconic areas are threatened by planned mining and oil and gas projects. This includes Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, home to many of the world’s last mountain gorillas. The security situation in these sites is precarious, making their management extremely challenging. Since 1996 more than 130 rangers have been killed in Virunga National Park. Recently, poachers armed with AK47 rifles attacked a neighbouring World Heritage Site, the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, and killed seven people, including two rangers. UNESCO has launched an emergency appeal to raise $120,000 by 20 July to help the families of the victims and support the Reserve (www.justgiving.com/okapi). “IUCN is deeply saddened by these killings,” says Mariam Kenza Ali, World Heritage Conservation Officer. “Unless the Okapi Wildlife Reserve receives urgent help, the poachers who perpetrated the killings will have free reign to decimate the largest remaining population of forest elephants in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and to terrorize local communities.” None of the four natural World Heritage sites that IUCN recommended for inclusion on the Danger List have been added, in what is seen by IUCN as a serious set-back for conservation. IUCN, the official World Heritage advisory body on nature, had recommended that Lake Turkana National Parks in Kenya, Dja Faunal Reserve in Cameroon, Virgin Komi Forests in Russia, and Pitons Management Area in Saint Lucia be added to the List of World Heritage in Danger. The World Heritage Committee rejected all four recommendations. Six outstanding natural sites were given World Heritage status following the advice of IUCN to the annual meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, which ends today in St. t Petersburg. Sangha Trinational - shared between Cameroon, the Central African Republic and the Republic of Congo; Lakes of Ounianga in Chad, Rock Islands Southern Lagoon in Palau, and Chengjiang fossil site in China have been inscribed on the World Heritage List. Lena Pillars Nature Park in Russia and Western Ghats in India were also added to the prestigious list by the World Heritage Committee, a 21-nation panel. “This move should mobilise international support for the planet’s extraordinary places that are facing serious threats to their conservation,” says Tim Badman, Director of IUCN’s World Heritage Programme. “International efforts are essential to secure the future of our planet's most important natural areas and the life-support services they provide, including clean air, water and livelihoods.” IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature, helps the world find pragmatic solutions to our most pressing environment and development challenges by supporting scientific research; managing field projects all over the world; and bringing governments, NGOs, the UN, international conventions and companies together to develop policy, laws and best practice. IUCN is the independent advisory body to the World Heritage Committee on natural heritage.www.iucn.org For more information or to set up interviews, please contact: - Borjana Pervan, IUCN Media Relations, m +41 79 857 4072, e firstname.lastname@example.org - Brian Thomson, IUCN Media Relations, m +41 79 721 8326, e

<urn:uuid:801b0f7d-4b23-46e9-af02-1dabb01259a9>

We have three 6th grade Science classes and two 8th grade Science classes blogging here from the Pacific Northwest in Chimacum, WA! Sixth graders are learning a bit about Mt Saint Helens, environmental science through fresh water ecology, and physical science this year. Eighth graders are learning about life science this year. Please join us as we learn Science by exploring our world. Mr. G's Blog Mr. G's Class Facebook Page what is a battry? a battery is something that powers other objects. it can also be charged, and they usually require an acidic based chemical in them. when you charge it, the battery stores chemical energy. when you use it, it puts out electrical energy. then, when it comes from the lightbulb, it is called light and heat energy. flowing electrons create electricity.

<urn:uuid:71380e19-885b-4d9d-aea6-df9f337362a1>

"It's something I would never have thought of," said my friend, talking about some pruning her son did in their yard, "but I like it." My friend's son used a thinning cut called skirting, limbing up, or crown raising. My friend is right that most people don't consider this particular cut. So what exactly is skirting? Cass Turnbull, in "Guide to Pruning," discusses this simple and effective pruning cut. It is simply to remove the lowest branches of a tree so that it looks less bulky and heavy. The cut should be about 1/4 inch above where the original bud began. Be careful that you don't cut into the trunk and that you don't leave a nub. Turnbull quotes Dr. Alex Shigo, the renowned research scientist known as the Isaac Newton of arboriculture, who says, "Trunk wood is much different from branch wood." The trunk houses the tree's vascular system. Both water and sugar, by means of pipe-like tissues, move up and down through the trunk by zylem, in the center of the tree, and phloem, right under the bark of the tree. Understanding how close the phloem are to the bark helps us realize why a cut too far into the trunk can damage a tree permanently because it compromises the tree's vascular system. Likewise, cutting into a trunk with a weed whacker or a lawn mower can kill a tree over time. Skirting, then, removes lower limbs. Remember that trees should look like trees, so don't limb-up more than one-third the tree's visible height. I recently skirted our azara tree because it was looking bulky and because it was cutting too much light from the Easter lilies growing beneath it. In an hour's time, the tree looked totally different. The shape of the trunk was visible and its structure was both delicate and textured. The tree looked more handsome, just as a man does when his beard and mustache are well-trimmed. I used a Felco folding handsaw I purchased at a local nursery, which was much more useful than pruners because of the thick branch diameters. I'm soon going to tackle a few Japanese maples whose branches are dragging on the ground. Look around your garden and see which trees could use limbing up. While you have the handsaw in hand, look to see if the tree might use some thinning in its branches, which will allow more sunlight and air circulation into the middle of the tree. Be careful not to overthin. Just remove those branches that cross one another, rub up next to another branch, jut out in the wrong direction or are dead. By simply removing these branches, you probably will have pruned properly. Overthinning places too much weight at the ends of other branches. The tree should look full and healthy rather than anorexic. Some trees, such as ornamental cherries, plums and crab apples, have branches that seem messy. They resent too much pruning and show that by producing lots of water sprouts. Turnbull says, "If the water sprouts are repeatedly removed every year thereafter, the tree's branches will rapidly age, crack and eventually die." One good reason to thin a tree is to open a view. Many of us are privy to spectacular panoramas except that there is a tree to block our view. The most short-sighted treatment is to top it. What will result is that a dense mass of branches and shoots will replace each cut trunk, ultimately creating a denser top than before. Such a top will catch the wind and will increase the risk of the tree falling in a storm. Also, many topped trees develop root rot, weak branch attachments and rotten or hollow trunks. Sometimes it takes years for this to happen, so we mistakenly think we've made a good decision when we are actually damaging the tree. Property owners have been sued because topped trees have resulted in falling limbs that have injured property or people. A much kinder solution to open a view is called windowing. Simply thin the branches that will open the view. Artistically, that implies that you should balance the tree on the other side by windowing another section further down or up higher. Beverly Hoffman can be reached at email@example.com. Make the kindest cuts 1) When buying a plant, check the size it will become and add a bit more height because plants grow so well in the Pacific Northwest. 2) If you take out the dead wood and dead leaves, you've accomplished about 80 percent of pruning needed. 3) Prune from the bottom up, not from the top down. Remove branches falling and rubbing against one another. 4) Cutting into the tree trunk, damaging the phloem, can be far worse than pruning a tree in the wrong season. The Sequim Gazette is located at 147 W. Washington Street in Sequim. Business hours are Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Phone 360-683-3311, or toll free at 800-829-5810. FAX 360-683-6670. For a complete company directory with contact information please click HERE.

<urn:uuid:e0830096-dc86-427c-9bcd-782efca6446a>

Bundelkhand’s ravine wastelands. Photo: Keya Acharya/IPS BUNDELKHAND, India – Narrow, cobblestoned lanes separate the rows of mud houses with cool interiors and mud-smoothened patios, some with goats tethered to the wooden posts. This is Tajpura village, deep in this water-stressed, drought-prone region of northern India. An area of stark beauty marked by deep ravines in central India, Bundelkhand spans the states of Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. The ruins of stone fortresses dotting the landscape betray a history of constant warfare just as the remnants of water courses and irrigation systems speak of peaceable and prosperous times gone by. Bundelkhand suffers from manmade problems, starting with the government’s misplaced land and water policies that have worsened an already stressed climatic situation caused by prolonged droughts and erratic rainfall. Air dropping of ‘Prosopis juliflora’ seeds as a soil-conservation measure in the 1960s resulted in the plant becoming an invasive species that killed indigenous shrubs and trees, making the soft soils of the ravines leach water rapidly and turned vast areas into wastelands. Thoughtless promotion by the government of water-intensive crops like mentha (mint) encouraged richer farmers to dig deep tube wells while neglecting groundwater recharge, resulting in a disastrous lowering of the water table. Marginalised farmers, unable to afford expensive infrastructure and inputs, suffer as groundwater depletion adds to problems caused by the ancient rainwater storage and distribution systems going defunct. Drought is now a familiar spectre in this region and less than half of its one million hectare arable spread is now cultivable, causing distress to its mainly farming population of 50 million people. “What you have is very high water consumption in an area suffering from water crisis,” says Anil Singh, coordinator of Parmarth, an organisation working to revive traditional systems of water and cropping among marginalised communities that inhabit the ravines of Bundelkhand. In Tajpura village, as though in denial of Bundelkhand’s stark conditions, 36-year-old Mamtadevi, wife of Ajan Singh, serves up a meal of steaming hot chappatis (Indian flat bread) smeared with clarified butter, a cool, green salad and a dish of smoked brinjal, boiled potato, fresh tomato and green chilli. “That extra taste in the vegetables is because they are grown sustainably and without chemicals,” explains Mamtadevi. Ajan Singh and Mamtadevi were among the first to adopt Parmarth’s ‘low external input sustainable agriculture’ (LEISA) which is now standing them in good stead as rainfall becomes scantier and average temperatures rises. LEISA involves such practices as efficient recycling of nitrogen and other plant nutrients, managing pests through natural means, maintaining ideal soil conditions and ensuring that local farmers are aware of the environment and the value of preserving ecosystems. The soundness of this method shows in the freshness of Ajan Singh’s vegetable crops, in biodiversity conservation through the use of hardy indigenous seeds and avoiding chemicals for maintaining soil health. Ajan Singh is also able to beat the vagaries of the weather and this year’s drought, caused by failure of the monsoons, holds no great terror for him or for other farmers who follow LEISA. Bhartendu Prakash, steering committee member of the Organic Farmers Association of India (OFAI) and in-charge of its northern branch based in Bundelkhand, says the region was hit by frost last winter but organic farmlands using LEISA were the least affected. “I did not know this system previously. I would grow ‘gehu’ (wheat) and manage 200-300 kg on this same plot,” says Ajan Singh. Parmarth helped the community in contouring the lands for rainwater run-off and storage and constructed a well for irrigation. Its volunteers also taught farmers like Ajan Singh how to make vermicompost and set up pheromone traps to catch insects. Most farmers though, already had their own methods of making biopesticide – usually a mix of neem leaves and garlic soaked in buffalo buttermilk. “But before the pheromone traps were laid, the spraying had to be done once every three days, now once a week is enough,” says Mamtadevi. By 2009, the couple’s vegetables had such a reputation for quality that they sold at the local market 10 km away at higher than prevailing rates, earning them nearly 80,000 Indian rupees (then approximately 1,800 dollars) yearly. Three years later, Ajan Singh bought another ‘bigha’ (approximately 2.2 acres) of land. He now takes his produce to two markets and also sells milk from five buffaloes that he bought with his earnings. Fifteen more farmers from Tajpura are now following Ajan Singh’s methods. Along with this, the women of the community have banded together into self-help groups that maintain a savings and loan account to assist women find simple livelihood alternatives like livestock rearing. The women also run a grain bank that sells surplus grain in the open market and give grain free to distressed families in times of need. “We are now trying to link the community to government schemes wherever possible, such as obtaining sprinklers, and getting some benefit from the state-run Bundelkhand Relief Package which does help with drought-proofing,” says Anil Singh who works for Parmarth. Released in 2009 by the federal government, the package worth 1.5 billion dollars supports rainwater harvesting, proper utilisation of river systems, irrigation canals and water bodies over a three-year period. But Bundelkhand’s natural farming methods need to get more support as the funding period comes to an end. “Bundelkhand is too entrenched in northern Indian chemical farming methods,” says OFAI’s Prakash. In contrast, OFAI is deluged with requests for training in organic farming methods from farmers in Punjab and Haryana, the ‘mother zone’ of the so-called ‘green revolution’ that transformed agriculture in India after introduction in the 1960s. Rajesh Krishnan, campaigner for Greenpeace in India, is optimistic that the government will see the wisdom of promoting organic agriculture as a counter measure to the numerous fallouts of chemical agriculture that fuelled the green revolution. Krishnan is hopeful for the probable financing of sustainable agriculture in India’s 12th Five- Year Plan, due to be rolled out in November. Prakash is confident that sustainable agricultural farming will survive through a growing demand for organically-grown crops.

<urn:uuid:34eabe1a-7864-4b64-9b8b-dce88b0f492c>

Common Sense was first produced in Edinburgh in 1987. It offered a direct challenge to the theory production machines of specialised academic journals, and tried to move the articulation of intellectual work beyond the collapsing discipline of the universities. It was organised according to minimalist production and editorial process which received contributions that could be photocopied and stapled together. It was reproduced in small numbers, distributed to friends, and sold at cost price in local bookshops and in a few outposts throughout the world. It maintained three interrelated commitments: to provide an open space wherein discussion could take place without regard to style or to the rigid classification of material into predefined subject areas; to articulate critical positions within the contemporary political climate; and to animate the hidden Scottish passion for general ideas. Within the context of the time, the formative impetus of Common Sense was a desire to juxtapose disparate work and to provide a continuously open space for a general critique of the societies in which we live. – May 1991 editorial The life of Common Sense began in 1987 and ended in 1999 after the publication of 24 issues. Since then, a selection of articles from the journal have been republished in the book, Revolutionary Writing, and a few have been collected on libcom. Despite the journal’s significance in the development of open and autonomous Marxist critical theory, a complete set of issues has been difficult to source, until now. You can read how the digitising got under way and a few notes on the scanning process itself. The complete set of issues that were kindly donated by past Common Sense editors for the digitisation project has been deposited with the British Library for preservation. A further set is held by the National Library of Scotland.

<urn:uuid:691450d4-79f6-4660-ae87-01d69f0e8b17>

Deductive versus Inductive Reasoning Noah D. Alper [Reprinted from Land and Freedom, March-April In his History of Civilization in England, Henry Thomas Buckle makes some interesting observations on the respective merits of the deductive and inductive methods of propagating thought in the development of civilization. In the deductive method we begin with a general conclusion and then attempt to point out the facts which support it. In the inductive method we first select our facts and then seek to lead to the acceptance of the general conclusions or principles. Buckle says: "If we take a general view of those countries where science has been cultivated, we shall find that, whenever the deductive method of inquiry has predominated, knowledge, though often increased and accumulated, has never been widely diffused. On the other hand, we shall find that, when the inductive method has predominated, the diffusion of knowledge has always been considerable, or, at all events, has been beyond comparison greater than when deduction was prevalent. If, in any civilized nation, two men, equally gifted, were to propound some new and startling conclusion, and one of these men were to defend his conclusion by reasoning from ideas or general principles, while the other man were to defend his reasoning from particular and Visible facts, there can be no doubt that, supposing all other things the same, the latter man would gain most adherents. Facts seem to come home to every one, arid are undeniable. Principles are not so obvious, and, being often disputed, they have to those who do not grasp them, an unreal and illusory appearance, which weakens their We find historically that the establishment of the modern inductive philosophy, with its varied and attractive experiments, its material appliances, and its constant appeal to the senses, has been intimately connected with the awakening of the public mind, and coincides with that spirit of inquiry, and with that love of liberty, which has been constantly advancing since the sixteenth century. . . . "In both cases [induction and deduction] there is no doubt a line of argument essentially ideal; just as, in both cases, there is an assemblage of facts essentially sensuous. No method is pure, or stands entirely by itself. But inasmuch as, in induction, the facts are more prominent than the ideas, while, in deduction, the ideas are more prominent than the facts, it is evident that conclusions arrived at "by the former plan, will, as a general rule, obtain a wider assent than conclusions arrived at by the latter plan. Obtaining a wider assent, they will produce more decisive results, and will be more likely to shape the national character and influence the course of national affairs." Buckle's penetrating observations may be taken as a guide to Georgeists in the dissemination of their principles. What is the Georgeist objective? It is to free men. Its practical goal is to abolish all forms of special privilege in order that an environment might exist in which the free enterprise system of production and distribution of wealth can operate. More specifically, it is to abolish all forms of securing public revenue save those which collect for the use of the community the publicly created rental value How are we to bring this about? We must secure favorable interest and decision on the part of a large majority of the people. We cannot hope to be the beneficiary of any dictatorship or of any totalitarian revolution. We must maintain and use the discriminating democratic processes. We must influence thought, difficult as that may be. We must educate in ways that will give understanding. The advice of Buckle comes in for consideration here. The Georgeist philosophy is adaptable to both the inductive and the deductive methods. But when we use the latter, we find that the statement of strong conclusions leads to antagonism toward them. Farther investigation is discouraged, and the prospective convert is in no mood to ask for or receive facts. But if facts are presented first, people will listen. To many self-styled practical people, a principle, however sound it seems to be, is not a fact. A fact to these observers is a figure, a measurement, an example. Facts promote curiosity, interest, inquiry. Witness our ubiquitous radio quiz programs and pictorial "believe-it-or-not" presentations. Facts, then, must be our starting point. It was my pleasure and privilege to be associated with Judge Jackson H. Ralston of California during the years 1935-1938 in his gallant effort to secure the adoption of a strong application of Georgeist principles in that State. It is from this experience that I have arrived at what I feel is a pattern of activity which can be followed to bring about the acceptance of our social and economic proposals. This pattern follows the principles of influencing thought presented by Buckle, making use largely of the inductive method, though not, of course, excluding use of the deductive. The great majority of the people must be made to feel that they will gain materially from the Georgeist proposal and that it is on the whole sound and just. Two propositions relating to our method of securing public revenue must be demonstrated factually so that they will be understood and accepted by the people. The first proposition is that the people, who should hold title to the land values of the nation, today hold little or no title to it. The second is that a tax on the value of land, or a direct levy on the rent, must be paid out of the rent now collected by the present title holder, and that he cannot shift this charge to the people in higher prices or rents and so recover an equal amount for himself. Of course, during the process of education, the other points in the Georgeist theory must also be demonstrated. People must be made to" see that rent is the measure of communal privileges; that the economic activities of all who labor and spend contribute to the rent fund; that the taxing of land values and the untaxing of labor and industry will benefit all. How is this objective to be accomplished? First, a study must be made of the land values in the community where the program is to be launched. This is a problem of research, of accumulating the facts in the given geographical area. They involve records, public sales, etc. -- facts that are familiar to people. During the Ralston campaign in California such a study was made. Because of data regularly collected, the problem in that state was not so difficult. Based on 1936 figures compiled by Prof. Alfred S. Niles, of Stanford University, it was found that over 50% of the state's land value was located in only three of the fifty-eight counties. The three counties were Los Angeles (36.02%), San Francisco (11.09%), and Alameda (5.78%). This left the vast remaining area of fifty-five counties with bat 47.01 % of the land values. In the city of San Francisco it was demonstrated that 3% of the city blocks contained over one-third of the total land value of the city. By a breakdown of the distribution of land values in this manner it can be shown where the land value is to be found. By studies of ownership of titles it can be shown what percentage of the property holders and what percentage of the total population control and enjoy the vast bulk of the rental income of the land. This is a matter of statistical effort and study which any Georgeist group that hopes for any sort of success in a political way must be prepared to make. Such facts as these the people can grasp. Further, they are facts which cannot be denied or argued by the land-title holders or their agents of agencies. Our second proposition must also be demonstrated -- the proposition that a tax on land values cannot be shifted, and that the net effect of the Georgeist proposal is to make land holders pay fairly and equally to the community for the privilege of holding land. Unless the idea of the non-shiftability of our method of raising public revenue is accepted by the majority of the people, we cannot hope to secure favorable action on our proposals. There is another important point to be remembered in the planning of an educational program -- that is, its "timing." We lost the 1938 Ralston campaign in California, not because the methods used were unsound, but simply because we did not have the time or the funds to reach the people with our information. If any group of Georgeists feel they are prepared or will one day be prepared for a political campaign, they must first and above all plan a long-range campaign of basic factual education. In far too many cases (perhaps in all cases, so far) the campaign method has never had a chance to succeed, because the correct sort of preliminary barrage of facts had not been laid down, and hence the ground was not prepared for political action. Although Georgeist campaigns have in the past failed, they have left us a precious heritage -- that is, anticipation of the probable line of attack on us by the opposition. Chief among the arguments used against the Georgeist proposal is that it will hurt the small home owner and raise rents, and that it will ruin the fanner. Preparation against such arguments should be undertaken by dissemination of facts on the case, before any political action is undertaken. A campaign should not begin with a draft of an amendment or legislative enactment. Such an action will not only interfere with the preliminary educational program, but will draw the fire of the opposition on the nature of the measure. It will place us at a disadvantage in the ensuing fight. The legislative draft, which is only able to incorporate principles, is about the last thing to be After the work of research, which is the first requirement in a Georgeist campaign, must come the work of publicizing these facts. All the attributes of the good salesman and advertising man, the radio quiz artist and the educators need to be brought into play to present the figures and facts to the people. During our California campaign, we held a meeting before the Pomona Grange, consisting of the Grange organizations of Shasta and Trinity Counties. The type of facts we presented profoundly affected those attending the meeting. The farmers of Trinity County were asked how much land value there was in their county. None of them knew. Then we presented the facts: The 1937 figures of the Controller's Report of California showed that there was $2,728,715 in land value in that county. Along with this figure we gave the figures for the land value of block 329 in the City of San Francisco. This small, triangular block of 1.54 acres had a land value of $2,766,020 -- more than all of Trinity County. The fanners of Shasta County were also asked about the land value in their county. They, too, did not know. The 1937 report gave Shasta County a land value of $12,166,890. It was shown that three large blocks between Third and Sixth Streets in San Francisco, some 17 acres, had a value of over $13,000,000 -- nearly a million more than all of Shasta County. Another presentation designed to attract attention might be in the form of weekly releases of the accumulated facts. In California we distributed such releases. One read: "Less than one acre of land under the Russ Building (in San Francisco) rents for $120,000 a year. This is paid to the title holder for .99 years. It would take 120 men, working eight hours a day, making $1,000 a year, to produce wages or salaries equal to the wealth taken by the title holders to this land each year. Here is a measure of the value of privilege and the value of wages." All the channels of publicity can be used in distributing the facts. If this policy were carried on continuously for a period of time without any concrete political proposal, it is of course to be expected that the enemies of the "to be proposed" measure would in time suspect the situation. But in the face of indisputable facts, they would be at a disadvantage as compared to their position if a legislative amendment were first drafted. Sooner or later, in the course of the educational campaign, the question of the non-shiftability of the land value tax will have to be faced. Several types of arguments can be used. It might be started on a quiz basis, a series of questions, such as the following: If the community increased the tax on the value of a vacant lot, could the owner shift the tax or would he have to pay it himself ? To whom could he shift it ? If the supply of vacant lots for sale or rent increased, due to a tax on land value, would their price go up or down? If a man is getting all the land rent he can for the use of a certain piece of land, could he collect more if the taxes on his rent were increased? If he could increase his rent, would he wait for the tax in order to do so? If a tax on land values can be shifted, why do landowners oppose it so strongly? A carefully prepared campaign, planned to run over a period of several years, could become more specific as the time came to launch a definite proposal and the actual campaign. Until some definite proposal was made, the opposition would be at a great disadvantage. If they attacked in advance of a definite proposal, it would have to be over fundamental principles, the facts being indisputable. Of course, Georgeists would welcome such an attack. If it did not come, the Georgeists should even provoke it. The best thing that can happen to our cause is to have our principles brought out into the open, discussed, argued, made into an issue. We can then be sure that we are making real advances.

<urn:uuid:fbe17957-fcdd-47ad-a4cc-535ff449f557>

The Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) offers some advice for safely handling food when you’re dining outdoors this summer: Warm weather brings a bounty of fresh produce, and a trip to the local farmers market can make a nice addition to your outdoor meal. Food safety starts in the field. It’s important to get to know the growers selling produce at your local farm stand, and ask about their farming practices. How do they keep their products free from bacterial pathogens and other contaminants? Farmers may also have great tips for storing produce, testing for ripeness and even ways to prepare the fruits and veggies they sell. IFT spokesperson and food safety expert, Don Schaffner, PhD, says that when you’re purchasing produce, make sure it’s free of mold, bruises or blemishes where bacterial pathogens can grow. Many grocery stores offer freshly cut, packaged produce for customers seeking nutritious convenience foods. Freshly cut vegetables and fruit need proper temperature control to prevent the growth of bacteria that cause foodborne illness. Before preparing food, wash your hands thoroughly with soap and warm water for at least 20 seconds. Make sure all prep utensils such as cutting boards, dishes and countertops are clean before preparing each food item. Dirt, dust and pathogenic microbes can linger on produce. It’s important to wash fresh produce before consuming it. The only exception is are pre-bagged salads and leafy greens, as experts advise that additional washing of ready-to-eat green salads is not likely to enhance safety. Thoroughly washing in cold water will suffice for most fruits and vegetables, but some types of produce require special handling. Wash spinach or salad greens in a bowl of water and rinse them gently to remove dirt and other contaminants. Give extra attention to fruits with stems, such as apples, pears and peaches. You may be tempted to forego washing fruit with a rind, since you won’t be eating the rind. But, it’s still important to wash oranges, avocados, melons, cantaloupe, etc. – pathogens can linger in unwashed crevices and transfer to your hands or the knife you use to cut the fruit. In addition, wash items you’ll peel – such as carrots and cucumbers – for the same reason. If you’ll be grilling at home, remember to always marinate meat in the refrigerator, never on the kitchen counter or outdoors. Discard any extra marinade that’s touched raw meat. Grill food thoroughly, using a thermometer to ensure the proper internal temperature: 145 F for steaks and fish, 160 F for pork, hot dogs and hamburgers, and 165 F for poultry. Keep finished meats hot until you serve by moving them to the side of the grill rack, away from the coals or highest flame on your gas grill. Avoid cross contamination by using separate serving plates and utensils for different meats and vegetables. If you’ll be grilling away from home – in a park, tailgating at a sporting event or on a camping trip – consider purchasing pre-formed patties for burgers and pre-cut poultry. This minimizes the amount of handling meat requires and can help minimize the risk of bacteria and cross contamination. A picnic in the park can be great fun for everyone, but it’s important to assure your food arrives safely along with your family and guests. Follow smart food packing guidelines. Keep meats, including lunch meats and raw meats, cheeses and condiments cold in insulated, soft-sided bags or coolers with freezer gel packs. Food needs to be stored at 40 F or colder to reduce the risk of pathogen growth, so limit the number of times you open the cooler. Never allow food to sit for more than two hours at temperatures below 90 F, and no more than an hour when temperatures exceed 90 F. Throw away food that’s been sitting out too long. Securely package raw meat, seafood and poultry to ensure the juices don’t contaminate other foods. Pack only the amount of perishable food that you think will be eaten. Beverages and perishable foods should travel in separate containers and coolers, especially if you’ll be transporting raw meat. When it’s time to go home, don’t reuse packaging material that has touched raw meats or meat juices. Make sure perishable leftovers stay cold on the trip home. Avoid taking home uncooked leftovers.

<urn:uuid:4919eb93-ebd0-4495-9c74-b6e574fd4caa>

You must read through the US Public Health Service Policy and the National Academy of Sciences Guide to understand animal care and use. Notice that the Guide closely follows the Policy and extends it in some ways. The Guide is an interpretation and commentary on the Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, which is the the authoritative regulatory document on this subject. As a practical matter this orientation will concentrate on the Guide. The Guide makes relatively easy reading of the more fundamental documents: the Federal statutes and USDHHS policies and other materials from which much of The Guide is composed. Many of these fundamental documents are also available by selecting the "Resources" link below. The second thing to notice about The Guide is that it is NOT comprehensive. One must use other documents and resources to answer questions and devise protocols for the use of laboratory animals. Agricultural animals, microscopic animals, and alternatives to using animals are not covered in any depth or with the same authority. Please read widely in the documents listed under Resources below.

<urn:uuid:b032a327-d921-4633-af03-73f8f519e24f>

RECORD: Darwin, C. R. 1842. The structure and distribution of coral reefs. Being the first part of the geology of the voyage of the Beagle, under the command of Capt. Fitzroy, R.N. during the years 1832 to 1836. London: Smith Elder and Co. REVISION HISTORY: Transcribed for John van Wyhe 2002, further corrections 2003, 2.2006, extensively corrected by Sue Asscher 3.2007. RN3 See an introduction by Gordon Chancellor. See bibliographical introduction by R. B. Freeman. The copy scanned was kindly provided by The Earth Sciences Library Cambridge. STRUCTURE AND DISTRIBUTION STRUCTURE AND DISTRIBUTION BEING THE FIRST PART OF THE GEOLOGY OF THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE, UNDER THE COMMAND OF CAPT. FITZROY, R.N. DURING THE YEARS 1832 TO 1836. CHARLES DARWIN, M.A., F.R.S., F.G.S., NATURALIST TO THE EXPEDITION. Published with the Approval of the Lords Her Majesty's Treasury. SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL. PRINTED BY STEWART AND MURRAY, I SHALL have occasion, in many parts of the following volume, to acknowledge the valuable information I have received from several persons; but I must more particularly express my obligations to Captain R. Moresby, I.N., who conducted the survey of the Red Sea, and of the archipelagoes of low coral-islands in the Indian Ocean. I beg, also, to be permitted to return my best thanks to Captain Beaufort, R.N., for having given me free access to the charts in the Admiralty, as well as to Captain Beecher, R.N. for most kindly aiding me in consulting them. My thanks are likewise especially due to Captain Washington, R.N. for his invariable desire to assist me in every possible manner. Having in former publications had the pleasure of acknowledging how much I owe to Captain FitzRoy, for having permitted me to volunteer my services on board H.M.S. Beagle, and for his uniform kindness in giving me assistance in my researches, I can here only repeat my obligations to him. The materials for this volume were nearly ready two years ago; but owing to ill health, its publication has been delayed. The two succeeding Parts,—one on the volcanic islands visited during the voyage of the Beagle, and the other on South America,—will appear, as soon as they can be prepared. 2nd May, 1842. DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATES. In the several original surveys, from which the small plans on this plate have been reduced, the coral-reefs are engraved in very different styles. For the sake of uniformity, I have adopted the style used in the charts of the Chagos Archipelago, published by the East Indian Company, from the survey by Capt. Moresby and Lieut. Powell. The surface of the reef, which dries at low water, is represented by a stippled surface with small crosses: the coral-islets on the reef are marked by small linear unstippled spaces, on which a few cocoa-nut trees, out of all proportion too large, have been introduced for the sake of clearness. The entire annular reef, which when surrounding an open expanse of water, forms an 'atoll,' and when surrounding one or more high islands, forms an encircling 'barrier-reef,' has a nearly uniform structure, and has been tinted, in order to catch the eye, of a pale brownish-red colour. The reefs in some of the original surveys are represented merely by a single line with crosses, so that their breadth is not given; I have had such reefs engraved of the width usually attained by coral-reefs. I have not thought it worth while to introduce all those small and very numerous reefs, which occur within the lagoons of most atolls and within the lagoon-channels of most barrier-reefs, and which stand either isolated, or are attached to the shores of the reef or land. At Peros Banhos none of the lagoon-reefs rise to the surface of the water; a few of them have been introduced, and are marked by plain dotted circles. A few of the deepest soundings are laid down within each reef; they are in fathoms, of six English feet. Fig. 1.—VANIKORO, situated in the western part of the S. Pacific; taken from the survey by Capt. D'Urville in the Astrolabe; the scale is ¼ of an inch to a geographical mile; the soundings on the southern side of the island, namely, from 30 to 40 fathoms, are given from the voyage of the Chev. Dillon; the other soundings are laid down from the survey by D'Urville; height of the summit of the island is 3032 feet. The principal small detached reefs within the lagoon- channel have in this instance been represented. The southern shore of the island is narrowly fringed by a reef: if the engraver had carried this reef entirely round both islands, this figure would have served (by leaving out in imagination the barrier-reef) as a good specimen of an abruptly-sided island, surrounded by a reef of the fringing class. Fig. 2.—HOGOLEU, or ROUG, in the Caroline Archipelago; taken from the atlas of the voyage of the Astrolabe, compiled from the surveys of Captains Duperrey and D'Urville; scale 1/20 of an inch to a mile; the depth of the immense lagoon-like space within the reef is not known. Fig. 3.—RAIATEA, in the Society Archipelago; from the map given in the quarto edition of Cook's first voyage; it is probably not accurate; scale 1/20 of an inch to a mile. Fig. 4.—BOW, or HEYOU ATOLL (or lagoon-island), in the Low Archipelago, from the survey by Capt. Beechey, R.N.; scale 1/20 of an inch to a mile; the lagoon is choked up with reefs, but the average greatest depth of about 20 fathoms, is given from the published account of the voyage. Fig. 5.—BOLABOLA, in the Society Archipelago, from the survey of Capt. Duperrey, in the Coquille: scale ¼ of an inch to a mile; the soundings in this and the following figure have been altered from French feet to English fathoms; height of highest point of the island 4026 feet. Fig. 6.—MAURUA, in the Society Archipelago; from the survey by Capt. Duperrey in the Coquille: scale ¼ of an inch to a mile: height of land about 800 feet. Fig. 7.—POUYNIPÈTE, or SENIAVINE, in the Caroline Archipelago; from the survey by Admiral Lutké: scale ¼ of an inch to a mile. Fig. 8.—GAMBIER ISLANDS, in the southern part of the Low Archipelago; from the survey by Capt. Beechey; scale ¼ of an inch to a mile; height of highest island, 1246 feet; the islands are surrounded by extensive and irregular reefs; the reef on the southern side is submerged. Fig. 9.—PEROS BANHOS ATOLL, (or lagoon-island), in the Chagos group in the Indian Ocean; from the survey by Capt. Moresby and Lieut. Powell; scale ¼ of an inch to a mile; not nearly all the small sub- merged reefs in the lagoon are represented; the annular reef on the southern side is submerged. Fig. 10.—KEELING, or COCOS ATOLL, (or lagoon-island), in the Indian Ocean; from the survey by Capt. FitzRoy; scale ¼ of an inch to a mile; the lagoon south of the dotted line is very shallow, and is left almost bare at low water; the part north of the line is choked up with irregular reefs. The annular reef on the N.W. side is broken, and blends into a shoal sand-bank, on which the sea breaks. Fig. 1.—GREAT CHAGOS BANK, in the Indian Ocean; taken from the survey by Capt. Moresby and Lieut. Powell; scale 1/20 of an inch to a mile (same scale as Hogoleu, in Plate I.); the parts which are shaded, with the exception of two or three islets on the western and northern sides, do not rise to the surface, but are submerged from 4 to 10 fathoms; the banks bounded by the dotted lines lie from 15 to 20 fathoms beneath the surface, and are formed of sand; the central space is of mud, and from 30 to 50 fathoms deep. Fig. 2.—A vertical section, on the same scale, in an E. and W. line across the Great Chagos Bank, given for the sake of exhibiting more clearly its structure. Fig. 3.—MENCHICOFF ATOLL (or lagoon-island), in the Marshall Archipelago, northern Pacific Ocean; from Krusenstern's atlas of the Pacific; originally surveyed by Capt. Hagemeister; scale 1/20 of an inch to a mile; the depth within the lagoons is unknown. Fig. 4.—MAHLOS MAHDOO ATOLL, together with Horsburgh atoll, in the Maldiva archipelago; from the survey by Capt. Moresby and Lieut. Powell; scale 1/20 of an inch to a mile; the white spaces in the middle of the separate small reefs, both on the margin and in the middle part, are meant to represent little lagoons; but it was found not possible to distinguish them clearly from the small islets, which have been formed on these same small reefs; many of the smaller reefs could not be introduced; the nautical mark () over the figures 250 and 200 between Mahlos Mahdoo and Horsburgh atoll and Powell's island, signifies that soundings were not obtained at these depths. Fig. 5.—NEW CALEDONIA, in the western part of the Pacific; from Krusenstern's atlas, compiled from several surveys; I have slightly altered the northern point of the reef, in accordance with the atlas of the voyage of the Astrolabe. In Krusenstern's atlas, the reef is represented by a single line with crosses; I have for the sake of uniformity added an interior line; scale 1/60 of an inch to a mile. Fig. 6.—MALDIVA ARCHIPELAGO, in the Indian Ocean; from the survey by Capt. Moresby and Lieut. Powell; scale 1/60 of an inch to a mile. The principles, on which this map is coloured, are explained in the beginning of Chapter VI.; and the authorities for colouring each particular spot are detailed in the Appendix. The names printed in italics in the Index refer to the Appendix. ATOLLS OR LAGOON ISLANDS. SECTION I.—DESCRIPTION OF KEELING ATOLL. Corals on the outer margin—Zone of Nulliporæ—Exterior reef—Islets—Coral-conglomerate—Lagoon—Calcareous sediment—Scari and Holuthuriæ subsisting on corals—Changes in the condition of the reefs and islets—Probable subsidence of the atoll—Future state of the Lagoon . . page 5 to 19 SECTION II.—GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF ATOLLS. General form and size of atolls, their reefs and islets—External slope—Zone of Nulliporæ—Conglomerate—Depth of lagoons —Sediment—Reefs submerged wholly or in part—Breaches in the reef—Ledge-formed shores round certain lagoons—Conversion of lagoons into land…page 19 to 31 SECTION III.—ATOLLS OF THE MALDIVA ARCHIPELAGO—GREAT CHAGOS BANK. Maldiva Archipelago—Ring-formed reefs marginal and central—Great depth in the lagoons of the southern atolls—Reefs in the lagoons all rising to the surface—Position of islets and breaches in the reefs, with respect to the prevalent winds and action of the waves—Destruction of islets—Connection in the position and submarine foundation of distinct atolls—The apparent disseverment of large atolls—The Great Chagos Bank—Its submerged condition and extraordinary structure……page 32 to 40 Closely resemble in general form and structure atoll-reefs—Width and depth of the lagoon-channels—Breaches through the reef in front of valleys, and generally on the leeward side—Checks to the filling up of the lagoon-channels—Size and constitution of the encircled islands—Number of islands within the same reef—Barrier-reefs of New Caledonia and Australia—Position of the reef relative to the slope of the adjoining land—Probable great thickness of barrier-reefs…… page 41 to 50 FRINGING OR SHORE REEFS. Reefs of Mauritius—Shallow channel within the reef—Its slow filling up—Currents of water formed within it—Upraised reefs—Narrow fringing-reefs in deep seas—Reefs on the coast of E. Africa and of Brazil—Fringing reefs in very shallow seas, round banks of sediment and on worn-down islands—Fringing reefs affected by currents of the sea—Coral coating the bottom of the sea, but not forming reefs…. page 51 to 59 ON THE DISTRIBUTION AND GROWTH OF CORAL REEFS. SECTION I.—ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF CORAL REEFS, AND ON THE CONDITIONS FAVOURABLE TO THEIR INCREASE . page 60 to 71 SECTION II.—ON THE RATE OF GROWTH OF CORAL-REEFS . page 71 to 79 SECTION III.—ON THE DEPTHS AT WHICH REEF-BUILDING POLYPIFERS CAN LIVE …. page 80 to 87 THEORY OF THE FORMATION OF THE DIFFERENT CLASSES OF CORAL REEFS. The atolls of the large archipelagoes are not formed on submerged craters, or on banks of sediment—Immense areas interspersed with atolls—Their subsidence—The effects of storms and earthquakes on atolls—Recent changes in their state—The origin of barrier-reefs and of atolls—Their relative forms—The step-formed ledges and walls round the shores of some lagoons—The ring-formed reefs of the Maldiva atolls—The submerged condition of parts or of the whole of some annular reefs—The disseverment of large atolls—The union of atolls by linear reefs—The great Chagos Bank—Objections, from the area and amount of subsidence required by the theory, considered—The probable composition of the lower parts of atolls . . page 88 to 118 ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF CORAL REEFS WITH REFERENCE TO THE THEORY OF THEIR FORMATION. Description of the coloured map—Proximity of atolls and barrier-reefs—Relation in form and position of atolls with ordinary islands—Direct evidence of subsidence difficult to be detected—Proofs of recent elevation where fringing reefs occur—Oscillations of level—Absence of active volcanos in the areas of subsidence—Immensity of the areas which have been elevated and have subsided—Their relation to the present distribution of the land—Areas of subsidence elongated, their intersection and alternation with those of elevation—Amount, and slow rate of the subsidence—Recapitulation . page 119 to 148 Containing a detailed description of the reefs and islands in the coloured map, Plate III……. page 151 to 205 THE object of this volume is to describe from my own observation and the works of others, the principal kinds of coral reefs, more especially those occurring in the open ocean, and to explain the origin of their peculiar forms. I do not here treat of the polypifers, which construct these vast works, except so far as relates to their distribution, and to the conditions favourable to their vigorous growth. Without any distinct intention to classify coral-reefs, most voyagers have spoken of them under the following heads: 'lagoon-islands,' or 'atolls,' 'barrier,' or 'encircling reefs' and 'fringing,' or 'shore reefs.' The lagoon-islands have received much the most attention; and it is not surprising, for every one must be struck with astonishment, when he first beholds one of these vast rings of coral-rock, often many leagues in diameter, here and there surmounted by a low verdant island with dazzling white shores, bathed on the outside by the foaming breakers of the ocean, and on the inside surrounding a calm expanse of water, which, from reflection, is of a bright but pale green colour. The naturalist will feel this astonishment more deeply after having examined the soft and almost gelatinous bodies of these apparently insignificant creatures, and when he knows that the solid reef increases only on the outer edge, which day and night is lashed by the breakers of an ocean never at rest. Well did François Pyrard de Laval, in the year 1605, exclaim, "C'est une merueille de voir chacun de ces atollons, enuironné d'un grand banc de pierre tout autour, n'y ayant point d'artifice humain." The accompanying sketch of Whitsunday Island, in the S. Pacific, taken from Capt. Beechey's admirable Voyage, although excellent of its kind, gives but a faint idea of the singular aspect of one of these lagoon-islands. Whitsunday Island is of small size, and the whole circle has been converted into land, which is a comparatively rare circumstance. As the reef of a lagoon-island generally supports many separate small islands, the word 'island,' applied to the whole, is often the cause of confusion; hence I have invariably used in this volume the term 'atoll,' which is the name given to these circular groups of coral islets by their inhabitants in the Indian Ocean, and is synonymous with 'lagoon-island.' Barrier reefs, when encircling small islands, have been comparatively little noticed by voyagers; but they well deserve attention. In their structure they are little less marvellous than atolls, and they give a singular and most picturesque character to the scenery of the islands they surround. In the accompanying sketch, taken from the voyage of the Coquille, the reef is seen from within, from one of the high peaks of the island of Bolabola.* Here, as in Whitsunday island, the whole of that part of the reef which is * I have taken the liberty of simplifying the foreground, and leaving out a mountainous island in the far distance. visible is converted into land. This is a circumstance of rare occurrence; more usually a snow-white line of great breakers, with here and there an islet crowned by cocoa-nut trees, separates the smooth waters of the lagoon-like channel from the waves of the open sea. The barrier reefs of Australia and of New Caledonia, owing to their enormous dimensions, have excited much attention: in structure and form they resemble those encircling many of the smaller islands in the Pacific Ocean. With respect to fringing, or shore reefs, there is little in their structure which needs explanation; and their name expresses their comparatively small extension. They differ from barrier-reefs in not lying so far from the shore, and in not having within a broad channel of deep water. Reefs also occur around submerged banks of sediment and of worn-down rock; and others are scattered quite irregularly where the sea is very shallow: these in most respects are allied to those of the fringing class, but they are of comparatively little interest. I have given a separate chapter to each of the above classes, and have described some one reef or island, on which I possessed most information, as typical; and have afterwards compared it with others of a like kind. Although this classification is useful from being obvious, and from including most of the coral reefs existing in the open sea, it admits of a more fundamental division into barrier and atoll-formed reefs on the one hand, where there is a great apparent diffi- culty with respect to the foundation on which they must first have grown; and into fringing reefs on the other, where, owing to the nature of the slope of the adjoining land, there is no such difficulty. The two blue tints and the red colour on the map (Plate III.) represent this main division, as explained in the beginning of the last chapter. In the Appendix, every existing coral reef, except some on the coast of Brazil not included in the map, is briefly described in geographical order, as far as I possessed information; and any particular spot may be found by consulting the Index. Several theories have been advanced to explain the origin of atolls or lagoon-islands, but scarcely one to account for barrier-reefs. From the limited depths at which reef-building polypifers can flourish, taken into consideration with certain other circumstances, we are compelled to conclude, as it will be seen, that both in atolls and barrier-reefs, the foundation on which the coral was primarily attached, has subsided; and that during this downward movement, the reefs have grown upwards. This conclusion, it will be further seen, explains most satisfactorily the outline and general form of atolls and barrier-reefs, and likewise certain peculiarities in their structure. The distribution, also, of the different kinds of coral-reefs, and their position with relation to the areas of recent elevation, and to the points subject to volcanic eruptions, fully accord with this theory of their origin.* * A brief account of my views on coral formations, now published in my Journal of Researches, was read May 31, 1837, before the Geological Society, and an abstract has appeared in the Proceedings. ATOLLS OR LAGOON-ISLANDS. SECTION FIRST, KEELING ATOLL. Corals on the outer margin—Zone of Nulliporæ—Exterior reef—Islets—Coral-conglomerate—Lagoon—Calcareous sediment—Scari and Holuthuriæ subsisting on corals—Changes in the condition of the reefs and islets—Probable subsidence of the atoll—Future state of the Lagoon. KEELING or Cocos atoll is situated in the Indian Ocean, in 12° 5' S. and long. 90° 55' E.: a reduced chart of it from the survey of Capt. FitzRoy and the Officers of H.M.S. Beagle, is given in Plate I. fig. 10. The greatest width of this atoll is nine miles and a half. Its structure is in most respects characteristic of the class to which it belongs, with the exception of the shallowness of the lagoon. The accompanying woodcut represents a vertical section, supposed to be drawn at low water from the outer coast across one of the low islets (one being taken of average dimensions) to within the lagoon. A—Level of the sea at low water: where the letter A is placed, the depth is 25 fathoms, and the distance rather more than 150 yards from the edge of the reef. B—Outer edge of that flat part of the reef, which dries at low water: the edge either consists of a convex mound, as represented, or of rugged points, like those a little farther seaward, beneath the water. C—A flat of coral-rock, covered at high water. D—A low projecting ledge of brecciated coral-rock, washed by the waves at high water. E—A slope of loose fragments, reached by the sea only during gales: the upper part, which is from six to twelve feet high, is clothed with vegetation. The surface of the islet gently slopes to the lagoon. F—Level of the lagoon at low-water. The section is true to the scale in a horizontal line, but it could not be made so in a vertical one, as the average greatest height of the land is only between six and twelve feet above high-water mark. I will describe the section, commencing with the outer margin. I must first observe that the reef-building polypifers, not being tidal animals, require to be constantly submerged or washed by the breakers. I was assured by Mr. Liesk, a very intelligent resident on these islands, as well as by some chiefs at Tahiti (Otaheite), that an exposure to the rays of the sun for a very short time invariably causes their destruction. Hence it is possible only under the most favourable circumstances, afforded by an unusually low tide and smooth water, to reach the outer margin, where the coral is alive. I succeeded only twice in gaining this part, and found it almost entirely composed of a living Porites, which forms great irregularly rounded masses (like those of an Astræa, but larger) from four to eight feet broad, and little less in thickness. These mounds are separated from each other by narrow crooked channels, about six feet deep, most of which intersect the line of reef at right angles. On the furthest mound, which I was able to reach by the aid of a leaping-pole, and over which the sea broke with some violence, although the day was quite calm and the tide low, the polypifers in the uppermost cells were all dead, but between three and four inches lower down on its side they were living, and formed a projecting border round the upper and dead surface. The coral being thus checked in its upward growth, extends laterally, and hence most of the masses, especially those a little further inwards, had broad flat dead summits. On the other hand I could see, during the recoil of the breakers, that a few yards further seaward, the whole convex surface of the Porites was alive: so that the point where we were standing was almost on the exact upward and shoreward limit of existence of those corals which form the outer margin of the reef. We shall presently see that there are other organic productions, fitted to bear a somewhat longer exposure to the air and sun. Next, but much inferior in importance to the Porites, is the Millepora complanata.* It grows in thick vertical plates, intersecting each other at various angles, and forms an exceedingly strong honeycombed mass, which generally affects a circular form, the marginal plates alone being alive. Between these plates and in the protected crevices on the reef, a multitude of branching zoophytes and other productions flourish, but the Porites and Millepora alone seem able to resist the fury of the breakers on its upper and outer edge: at the depth of a few fathoms other kinds of stony corals live. Mr. Liesk, who was intimately acquainted with every part of this reef, and likewise with that of North Keeling atoll, assured me that these corals invariably compose the outer margin. The lagoon is inhabited by quite a distinct set of corals, generally brittle and thinly branched; but a Porites, apparently of the same species with that on the outside, is found there, although it does not seem to thrive, and certainly does not attain the thousandth part in bulk of the masses opposed to the breakers. The woodcut shews the form of the bottom off the reef: the water deepens for a space between one and two hundred yards wide, very gradually to 25 fathoms (A in section), beyond which the sides plunge into the unfathomable ocean at an angle of 45°.† To the depth of ten or twelve fathoms, the bottom is exceedingly rugged, and seems formed of great masses of living coral, similar to those on the margin. The arming of the lead here invariably came up quite clean, but deeply indented, and chains and anchors which were lowered, * This Millepora, (Palmipora of Blainville,) as well as the M. alcicornis, possesses the singular property of stinging the skin where it is delicate, as on the face and arm. † The soundings from which this section is laid down were taken with great care by Capt. FitzRoy himself: he used a bell-shaped lead, having a diameter of four inches, and the armings each time were cut off and brought on board for me to examine. The arming is a preparation of tallow, placed in the concavity at the bottom of the lead. Sand, and even small fragments of rock will adhere to it; and if the bottom be of rock, it brings up an exact impression of its surface. in the hopes of tearing up the coral, were broken. Many small fragments, however, of Millepora alcicornis were brought up; and on the arming from an eight-fathom cast, there was a perfect impression of an Astræa, apparently alive. I examined the rolled fragments cast on the beach during gales, in order further to ascertain what corals grew outside the reef. The fragments consisted of many kinds, of which the Porites already mentioned and a Madrepora, apparently the M. corymbosa, were the most abundant. As I searched in vain in the hollows on the reef and in the lagoon, for a living specimen of this Madrepore, I conclude that it is confined to a zone outside, and beneath the surface, where it must be very abundant. Fragments of the Millepora alcicornis and of an Astræa were also numerous; the former is found, but not in proportionate numbers, in the hollows on the reef; but the Astræa I did not see living. Hence we may infer, that these are the kinds of coral which form the rugged sloping surface, (represented in the wood cut by an uneven line) round and beneath the external margin. Between 12 and 20 fathoms the arming came up an equal number of times smoothed with sand, and indented with coral: an anchor and lead were lost at the respective depths of 13 and 16 fathoms. Out of twenty-five soundings, taken at a greater depth than 20 fathoms, every one shewed that the bottom was covered with sand; whereas at a less depth than 12 fathoms, every sounding shewed that it was exceedingly rugged, and free from all extraneous particles. Two soundings were obtained at the depth of 360 fathoms, and several between 200 and 300 fathoms. The sand brought up from these depths consisted of finely triturated fragments of stony zoophytes, but not, as far as I could distinguish, of a particle of any lamelliform genus: fragments of shells were rare. At a distance of 2200 yards from the breakers, Captain FitzRoy found no bottom with a line 7200 feet in length; hence the submarine slope of this coral formation is steeper than that of any volcanic cone. Off the mouth of the lagoon, and likewise off the northern point of the atoll, where the currents act violently, the inclination, owing to the accumulation of sediment, is less. As the arming of the lead from all the greater depths showed a smooth sandy bottom, I at first concluded that the whole consisted of a vast conical pile of calcareous sand, but the sudden increase of depth at some points, and the circumstance of the line having been cut, as if rubbed, when between 500 and 600 fathoms were out, indicate the probable existence of submarine cliffs. On the margin of the reef, close within the line where the upper surface of the Porites and of the Millepora is dead, three species of Nullipora flourish. One grows in thin sheets, like a lichen on old trees; the second in stony knobs, as thick as a man's finger, radiating from a common centre; and the third, which is less common, in a moss-like reticulation of thin, but perfectly rigid branches.* The three species occur either separately or mingled together; and they form by their successive growth a layer two or three feet in thickness, which in some cases is hard, but where formed of the lichen-like kind, readily yields an impression to the hammer: the surface is of a reddish colour. These Nulliporæ, although able to exist above the limit of true corals, seem to require to be bathed during the greater part of each tide by breaking water, for they are not found in any abundance in the protected hollows on the back part of the reef, where they might be immersed either during the whole or an equal proportional time of each tide. It is remarkable that organic productions of such extreme simplicity, for the Nulliporæ undoubtedly belong to one of the lowest classes of the vegetable kingdom, should be limited to a zone so peculiarly circumstanced. Hence the layer composed by their growth, merely fringes the reef for a * This last species is of a beautiful bright peach blossom colour. Its branches are about as thick as crow-quills; they are slightly flattened and knobbed at the extremities. The extremities only are alive and brightly coloured. The two other species are of a dirty purplish white. The second species is extremely hard; its short knob-like branches are cylindrical, and do not grow thicker at their extremities. space of about 20 yards in width, either under the form of separate mammillated projections, where the outer masses of coral are separate, or more commonly, where the corals are united into a solid margin, as a continuous smooth convex mound, (B in wood-cut,) like an artificial breakwater. Both the mound and mammillated projections stand about three feet higher than any other part of the reef, by which term I do not include the islets, formed by the accumulation of rolled fragments. We shall hereafter see that other coral reefs are protected by a similar thick growth of Nulliporæ on the outer margin, the part most exposed to the breakers, and this must effectually aid in preserving it from being worn down. The wood-cut represents a section across one of the islets on the reef, but if all that part which is above the level of C were removed, the section would be that of the simple reef, as it occurs where no islet has been formed. It is this reef which essentially forms the atoll. It is a ring, enclosing the lagoon on all sides except at the northern end, where there are two open spaces, through one of which ships can enter. The reef varies in width from 250 to 500 yards; its surface is level, or very slightly inclined towards the lagoon, and at high-tide the sea breaks entirely over it: the water at low tide thrown by the breakers on the reef, is carried by the many narrow and shoal gullies or channels on its surface, into the lagoon: a return stream sets out of the lagoon through the main entrance. The most frequent coral in the hollows on the reef is Pocillopora verrucosa, which grows in short sinuous plates, or branches, and when alive is of a beautiful pale lake-red: a Madrepora, closely allied or identical with M. pocillifera is also common. As soon as an islet is formed, and the waves are prevented breaking entirely over the reef, the channels and hollows in it become filled up with cemented fragments, and its surface is converted into a hard smooth floor, (C of wood-cut), like an artificial one of freestone. This flat surface varies in width from 100 to 200, or even 300 yards, and is strewed with a few large fragments of coral torn up during gales: it is uncovered only at low water. I could with difficulty, and only by the aid of a chisel, procure chips of rock from its surface, and therefore could not ascertain how much of it is formed by the aggregation of detritus, and how much by the outward growth of mounds of corals, similar to those now living on the margin. Nothing can be more singular than the appearance at low-tide of this 'flat' of naked stone, especially where it is externally bounded by the smooth convex mound of Nulliporæ, appearing like a breakwater built to resist the waves, which are constantly throwing over it sheets of foaming water. The characteristic appearance of this 'flat' is shown in the foregoing wood-cut of Whitsunday Atoll. The islets on the reef are first formed between 200 and 300 yards from its outer edge, through the accumulation of a pile of fragments, thrown together by some unusually strong gale. Their ordinary width is under a quarter of a mile, and their length varies from a few yards to several miles. Those on the S.E. and windward side of the atoll, increase solely by the addition of fragments on their outer side; hence the loose blocks of coral, of which their surface is composed, as well as the shells mingled with them, almost exclusively consist of those kinds which live on the outer coast. The highest part of the islets (excepting hillocks of blown sand, some of which are 30 feet high), is close to the outer beach (E of the wood-cut) and averages from six to ten feet above ordinary high-water mark. From the outer beach the surface slopes gently to the shores of the lagoon, which no doubt has been caused by the breakers, the further they have rolled over the reef, having had less power to throw up fragments. The little waves of the lagoon heap up sand and fragments of thinly-branched corals on the inner side of the islets on the leeward side of the atoll; and these islets are broader than those to windward, some being even 800 yards in width; but the land thus added is very low. The fragments be- neath the surface are cemented into a solid mass, which is exposed as a ledge (D of the wood-cut), projecting some yards in front of the outer shore, and from two to four feet high. This ledge is just reached by the waves at ordinary high-water: it extends in front of all the islets, and everywhere has a water-worn and scooped appearance. The fragments of coral which are occasionally cast on the 'flat' are during gales of unusual violence swept together on the beach, where the waves each day at high-water tend to remove and gradually wear them down; but the lower fragments having become firmly cemented together by the percolation of calcareous matter, resist the daily tides longer, and hence project as a ledge. The cemented mass is generally of a white colour, but in some few parts reddish from ferruginous matter: it is very hard, and is sonorous under the hammer: it is obscurely divided by seams, dipping at a small angle seaward: it consists of fragments of the corals which grow on the outer margin, some quite and others partially rounded, some small and others between two and three feet across; and of masses of previously-formed conglomerate, torn up, rounded, and re-cemented: or it consists of a calcareous sandstone, entirely composed of rounded particles, generally almost blended together, of shells, corals, the spines of echini, and other such organic bodies;—rocks, of this latter kind, occur on many shores, where there are no coral-reefs. The structure of the coral in the conglomerate has generally been much obscured by the infiltration of spathose calcareous matter; and I collected a very interesting series, beginning with fragments of unaltered coral, and ending with others, where it was impossible to discover with the naked eye any trace of organic structure. In some specimens I was unable, even with the aid of a lens, and by wetting them, to distinguish the boundaries of the altered coral and spathose limestone. Many even of the blocks of coral lying loose on the beach, had their central parts altered and infiltrated. The lagoon alone remains to be described; it is much shallower than that of most atolls of considerable size. The southern part is almost filled up with banks of mud and fields of coral, both dead and alive; but there are considerable spaces, between three and four fathoms, and smaller basins from eight to ten fathoms deep. Probably about half its area consists of sediment, and half of coral-reefs. The corals composing these reefs have a very different aspect from those on the outside: they are very numerous in kind, and most of them are thinly branched. Meandrina, however, lives in the lagoon, and great rounded masses of this coral are numerous, lying quite or almost loose on the bottom. The other commonest kinds consist of three closely allied species of true Madrepora in thin branches; of Seriatapora subulata; two species of Porites* with cylindrical branches, one of which forms circular clumps, with the exterior branches only alive; and lastly, a coral something like an Explanaria, but with stars on both surfaces, growing in thin, brittle, stony, foliaceous expansions, especially in the deeper basins of the lagoon. The reefs on which these corals grow are very irregular in form, are full of cavities, and have not a solid flat surface of dead rock, like that surrounding the lagoon; nor can they be nearly so hard, for the inhabitants made with crowbars a channel of considerable length through these reefs, in which a schooner, built on the S.E. islet was floated out. It is a very interesting circumstance, pointed out to us by Mr. Liesk, that this channel, although made less than ten years before our visit, was then, as we saw, almost choked up with living coral, so that fresh excavations would be absolutely necessary to allow another vessel to pass through it. The sediment from the deepest parts in the lagoon, when wet, appeared chalky, but when dry, like very fine * This Porites has somewhat the habit of P. clavaria, but the branches are not knobbed at their ends. When alive it is of a yellow colour, but after having been washed in fresh water and placed to dry, a jet-black slimy substance exuded from the entire surface, so that the specimen now appears as if it had been dipped in ink. sand. Large soft banks of similar, but even finer grained mud, occur on the S.E. shore of the lagoon, affording a thick growth of a Fucus, on which turtle feed: this mud, although discoloured by vegetable matter, appears from its entire solution in acids to be purely calcareous. I have seen in the Museum of the Geological Society, a similar but more remarkable substance, brought by Lieut. Nelson from the reefs of Bermuda, which, when shewn to several experienced geologists, was mistaken by them for true chalk. On the outside of the reef much sediment must be formed by the action of the surf on the rolled fragments of coral; but, in the calm waters of the lagoon, this can take place only in a small degree. There are, however, other and unexpected agents at work here: large shoals of two species of Scarus, one inhabiting the surf outside the reef and the other the lagoon, subsist entirely, as I was assured by Mr. Liesk the intelligent resident before referred to, by browsing on the living polypifers. I opened several of these fish, which are very numerous and of considerable size, and I found their intestines distended by small pieces of coral, and finely ground calcareous matter. This must daily pass from them as the finest sediment; much also must be produced by the infinitely numerous vermiform and molluscous animals, which make cavities in almost every block of coral. Dr. J. Allan of Forres, who has enjoyed the best means of observation, informs me in a letter, that the Holuthuriæ (a family of Radiata), subsist on living coral; and the singular structure of bone within the anterior extremity of their bodies, certainly appears well adapted for this purpose. The number of the species of Holuthuria, and of the individuals which swarm on every part of these coral-reefs, is extraordinarily great; and many ship-loads are annually freighted, as is well known, for China with the trepang, which is a species of this genus. The amount of coral yearly consumed, and ground down into the finest mud, by these several creatures, and probably by many other kinds, must be immense. These facts are, however, of more im- portance in another point of view, as showing us that there are living checks to the growth of coral-reefs, and that the almost universal law of 'consume and be consumed,' holds good even with the polypifers forming those massive bulwarks, which are able to withstand the force of the open ocean. Considering that Keeling atoll, like other coral formations, has been entirely formed by the growth of organic beings, and the accumulation of their detritus, one is naturally led to enquire, how long it has continued, and how long it is likely to continue, in its present state. Mr. Liesk informed me that he had seen an old chart in which the present long island on the S.E. side was divided by several channels into as many islets; and he assures me that the channels can still be distinguished by the smaller size of the trees on them. On several islets, also, I observed that only young cocoa-nut trees were growing on the extremities; and that older and taller trees rose in regular succession behind them; which shows that these islets have very lately increased in length. In the upper and south-eastern part of the lagoon, I was much surprised by finding an irregular field of at least a mile square of branching corals, still upright, but entirely dead. They consisted of the species already mentioned; they were of a brown colour, and so rotten, that in trying to stand on them, I sank half way up the leg, as it through decayed brushwood. The tops of the branches were barely covered by water at the time of lowest tide. Several facts having led me to disbelieve in any elevation of the whole atoll, I was at first unable to imagine what cause could have killed so large a field of coral. Upon reflection, however, it appeared to me that the closing up of the above mentioned channels would be a sufficient cause; for before this, a strong breeze by forcing water through them into the head of the lagoon, would tend to raise its level. But now this cannot happen, and the inhabitants observe that the tide rises to a less height, during a high S.E. wind, at the head than at the mouth of the lagoon. The corals, which, under the former condition of things, had attained the utmost possible limit of upward growth, would thus occasionally be exposed for a short time to the sun, and be killed. Besides the increase of dry land, indicated by the foregoing facts, the exterior solid reef appears to have grown outwards. On the western side of the atoll, the 'flat' lying between the margin of the reef and the beach, is very wide: and in front of the regular beach with its conglomerate basis, there is, in most parts, a bed of sand and loose fragments with trees growing out of it, which apparently is not reached even by the spray at high water. It is evident some change has taken place since the waves formed the inner beach: that they formerly beat against it with violence was evident, from a remarkably thick and water-worn point of conglomerate at one spot, now protected by vegetation and a bank of sand; that they beat against it in the same peculiar manner in which the swell from windward now obliquely curls round the margin of the reef, was evident from the conglomerate having been worn into a point projecting from the beach in a similarly oblique manner. This retreat in the line of action of the breakers might result, either from the surface of the reef in front of the islets having been submerged at one time, and afterward having grown upwards, or from the mounds of coral on the margin having continued to grow outwards. That an outward growth of this part is in process, can hardly be doubted from the fact already mentioned of the mounds of Porites with their summits apparently lately killed, and their sides only three or four inches lower down thickened by a fresh layer of living coral. But there is a difficulty on this supposition which I must not pass over. If the whole, or a large part of the 'flat,' had been formed by the outward growth of the margin, each successive margin would naturally have been coated by the Nulliporæ, and so much of the surface would have been of equal height with the existing zone of living Nulliporæ: this is not the case, as may be seen in the wood-cut. It is, however, evident from the abraded state of the 'flat,' with its original inequalities filled up, that its surface has been much modified; and it is possible that the hinder portions of the zone of Nulliporæ, perishing as the reef grows outwards, might be worn down by the surf. If this has not taken place, the reef can in no part have increased outwards in breadth since its formation, or at least since the Nulliporæ formed the convex mound on its margin: for the zone thus formed, and which stands between two and three feet above the other parts of the reef, is nowhere much above twenty yards in width. Thus far we have considered facts, which indicate, with more or less probability, the increase of the atoll in its different parts: there are others having an opposite tendency. On the S.E. side, Lieut. Sulivan, to whose kindness I am indebted for many interesting observations, found the conglomerate projecting on the reef nearly fifty yards in front of the beach: we may infer from what we see in all others parts of the atoll, that the conglomerate was not originally so much exposed but formed the base of an islet, the front and upper part of which has since been swept away. The degree to which the conglomerate, round nearly the whole atoll, has been scooped, broken up and the fragments cast on the beach, is certainly very surprising, even on the view that it is the office of occasional gales to pile up fragments, and of the daily tides to wear them away. On the western side, also, of the atoll, where I have described a bed of sand and fragments with trees growing out of it, in front of an old beach, it struck both Lieut. Sulivan and myself, from the manner in which the trees were being washed down, that the surf had lately recommenced an attack on this line of coast. Appearances indicating a slight encroachment of the water on the land, are plainer within the lagoon: I noticed in several places, both on its windward and leeward shores, old cocoa-nut trees falling with their roots undermined, and the rotten stumps of others on the beach, where the inhabitants assured us the cocoa-nut could not now grow. Capt. FitzRoy pointed out to me, near the settlement, the foundation posts of a shed, now washed by every tide, but which the inhabitants stated, had seven years before stood above high water-mark. In the calm waters of the lagoon, directly connected with a great, and therefore stable ocean, it seems very improbable that a change in the currents, sufficiently great to cause the water to eat into the land on all sides, should have taken place within a limited period. From these considerations I inferred, that probably the atoll had lately subsided to a small amount; and this inference was strengthened by the circumstance, that in 1834, two years before our visit, the island had been shaken by a severe earthquake, and by two slighter ones during the ten previous years. If, during these subterranean disturbances, the atoll did subside, the downward movement must have been very small, as we must conclude from the fields of dead coral still lipping the surface of the lagoon, and from the breakers on the western shore not having yet regained the line of their former action. The subsidence must, also, have been preceded by a long period of rest, during which the islets extended to their present size, and the living margin of the reef grew either upwards, or as I believe outwards, to its present distance from the beach. Whether this view be correct or not, the above facts are worthy of attention, as showing how severe a struggle is in progress on these low coral-formations between the two nicely balanced powers of land and water. With respect to the future state of Keeling atoll, if left undisturbed, we can see that the islets may still extend in length; but as they cannot resist the surf until broken by rolling over a wide space, their increase in breadth must depend on the increasing breadth of the reef; and this must be limited by the steepness of the submarine flanks, which can be added to only by sediment derived from the wear and tear of the coral. From the rapid growth of the coral in the channel cut for the schooner, and from the several agents at work in producing fine sediment, it might be thought that the lagoon would necessarily become quickly filled up. Some of this sediment, however, is transported into the open sea, as appears from the soundings off the mouth of the lagoon, instead of being deposited within it. The deposition, moreover, of sediment, checks the growth of coral reefs, so that these two agencies cannot act together with full effect in filling it up. We know so little of the habits of the many different species of corals, which form the lagoon-reefs, that we have no more reason for supposing that their whole surface would grow up as quickly as the coral did in the schooner-channel, than for supposing that the whole surface of a peat-moss would increase as quickly as parts are known to do in holes, where the peat has been cut away. These agencies, nevertheless, tend to fill up the lagoon; but in proportion as it becomes shallower, so must the polypifers be subject to many injurious agencies, such as impure water and loss of food. For instance, Mr. Liesk informed me, that some years before our visit unusually heavy rain killed nearly all the fish in the lagoon, and probably the same cause would likewise injure the corals. The reefs also, it must be remembered, cannot possibly rise above the level of the lowest spring-tide, so that the final conversion of the lagoon into land must be due to the accumulation of sediment; and in the midst of the clear water of the ocean, and with no surrounding high land, this process must be exceedingly slow. General form and size of atolls, their reefs and islets—External slope—Zone of Nulliporæ—Conglomerate—Depth of Lagoons—Sediment—Reefs submerged wholly or in part—Breaches in the reef—Ledge-formed shores round certain lagoons—Conversion of lagoons into land. I WILL here give a sketch of the general form and structure of many atolls and atoll-formed reefs which occur in the Pacific and Indian oceans, comparing them with Keeling atoll. The Maldiva atolls and the Great Chagos Bank differ in so many respects, that I shall devote to them, besides occasional references, a third section of this chapter. Keeling atoll may be considered as of moderate dimensions and of regular form. Of the thirty-two islands surveyed by Capt. Beechey in the Low Archipelago, the longest was found to be thirty miles, and the shortest less than a mile; but Vliegen atoll, situated in another part of the same group, appears to be sixty miles long and twenty broad. Most of the atolls in this group are of an elongated form; thus Bow Island is thirty miles in length, and on an average only six in width (See Fig. 4, Plate I.), and Clermont Tonnere has nearly the same proportions. In the Marshall Archipelago (the Ralick and Radack group of Kotzebue) several of the atolls are more than thirty miles in length, and Rimsky Korsacoff is fifty-four long, and twenty wide at the broadest part of its irregular outline. Most of the atolls in the Maldiva Archipelago are of great size, one of them (which, however, bears a double name) measured in a medial and slightly curved line, is no less than eighty-eight geographical miles long, its greatest width being under twenty, and its least only nine-and-a-half miles. Some atolls have spurs projecting from them; and in the Marshall group there are atolls united together by linear reefs, for instance Menchioff Island, (See Fig. 3, Plate II.) which is sixty miles in length, and consists of three loops tied together. In far the greater number of cases an atoll consists of a simple elongated ring, with its outline moderately regular. The average width of the annular reef may be taken at about a quarter of a mile. Capt. Beechey* says that in the atolls of the Low Archipelago it exceeded in no instance half a mile. The description given of the structure and proportional dimensions of the reef and islets of Keeling atoll, appears to apply perfectly to nearly all the atolls in the Pacific and Indian oceans. The islets are first formed some way back either on the projecting points of the reef, especially if its form be angular, or on the sides of the main entrances into the lagoon—that is in both cases, on points where the breakers can act during gales of wind in somewhat different * Beechey's Voyage to the Pacific and Beering's Straits, chap. viii. directions, so that the matter thrown up from one side may accumulate against that before thrown up from another. In Lutkè's chart of the Caroline atolls, we see many instances of the former case; and the occurrence of islets, as if placed for beacons, on the points where there is a gateway or breach through the reef, has been noticed by several authors. There are some atoll-formed reefs, rising to the surface of the sea and partly dry at low water, on which from such cause islets have never been formed; and there are others, on which they have been formed, but have subsequently been worn away. In atolls of small dimensions the islets frequently become united into a single horse-shoe or ring-formed strip; but Diego Garcia, although an atoll of considerable size, being thirteen miles and a half in length, has its lagoon entirely surrounded, except at the northern end, by a belt of land, on an average a third of a mile in width. To show how small the total area of the annular reef and the land is in islands of this class, I may quote a remark from the voyage of Lutkè, namely, that if the forty-three rings, or atolls, in the Caroline Archipelago, were put one within another, and over a steeple in the centre of St. Petersburg, the whole would not cover that city and its suburbs. The form of the bottom off Keeling atoll, which gradually slopes to about twenty fathoms at the distance of between one and two hundred yards from the edge of the reef, and then plunges at an angle of 45° into unfathomable depths, is exactly the same* with that of the sections of the atolls in the Low Archipelago given by Capt. Beechey. The nature, however, of the bottom seems to differ, for this officer† informs * The form of the bottom round the Marshall atolls in the Northern Pacific is probably similar: Kotzebue (First Voyage, vol. ii. p. 16.) says, "We had at a small distance from the reef, forty fathoms depth, which increased a little further so much that we could find no bottom." † I must be permitted to express my obligation to Captain Beechey, for the very kind manner in which he has given me information on several points, and to own the great assistance I have derived from his excellent published work. me that all the soundings, even the deepest, were on coral, but he does not know whether dead or alive. The slope round Christmas atoll, (Lat. 1° 4' N., 157° 45' W.) described by Cook,* is considerably less; at about half a mile from the edge of the reef, the average depth was about fourteen fathoms on a fine sandy bottom, and at a mile, only between twenty and forty fathoms. It has no doubt been owing to this gentle slope, that the strip of land surrounding its lagoon, has increased in one part to the extraordinary width of three miles: it is formed of successive ridges of broken shells and corals, like those on the beach. I know of no other instance of such width in the reef of an atoll; but Mr. F. D. Bennett informs me that the inclination of the bottom round Caroline atoll in the Pacific, is like that off Christmas island, very gentle. Off the Maldiva and Chagos atolls, the inclination is much more abrupt; thus at Heawandoo Pholo, Lieut. Powell† found 50 and 60 fathoms close to the edge of the reef, and at 300 yards distance there was no bottom with a 300 yard line. Capt. Moresby informs me, that at 100 fathoms from the mouth of the lagoon of Diego Garcia, he found no bottom with 150 fathoms: this is the more remarkable, as the slope is generally less abrupt in front of channels through a reef, owing to the accumulation of sediment. At Egmont Island, also, at 150 fathoms from the reef, soundings were struck with 150 fathoms. Lastly, at Cardoo atoll, only sixty yards from the reef, no bottom was obtained, as I am informed by Capt. Moresby, with a line of two hundred fathoms! The currents run with great force round these atolls, and where they are strongest, the inclination appears to be most abrupt. I am informed by the same authority, that wherever soundings were obtained off these islands, the bottom was invariably sandy: nor was there any reason to suspect the existence * Cook's Third Voyage, vol. ii. chap. 10. † This fact is taken from a MS. account of these groups lent me by Capt. Moresby. See also Capt. Moresby's paper on the Maldiva atolls in the Geographical Journal, vol. v. p. 401. of submarine cliffs, as there was at Keeling Island.* Here then occurs a difficulty;—can sand accumulate on a slope, which, in some cases, appears to exceed fifty-five degrees? It must be observed, that I speak of slopes where soundings were obtained, and not of such cases, as that of Cardoo, where the nature of the bottom is unknown, and where its inclination must be nearly vertical. M. Élie de Beaumont† has argued, and there is no higher authority on this subject, from the inclination at which snow slides down in avalanches, that a bed of sand or mud cannot be formed at a greater angle than thirty degrees. Considering the number of soundings on sand, obtained round the Maldiva and Chagos atolls, which appear to indicate a greater angle, and the extreme abruptness of the sand-banks in the West Indies as will be mentioned in the Appendix, I must conclude that the adhesive property of wet sand counteracts its gravity, in a much greater ratio than has been allowed for by M. Élie de Beaumont. From the facility with which calcareous sand becomes agglutinated, it is not necessary to suppose that the bed of loose sand is thick. Capt. Beechey has observed, that the submarine slope is much less at the extremities of the more elongated atolls in the Low Archipelago, than at their sides; in speaking of Ducie's Island he says‡ the buttress, as it may be called, which "has the most powerful enemy (the S.W. swell) to oppose, is carried out much further, and with less abruptness, than the other." In some cases, the less inclination of a certain part of the external slope, for instance of the * Off some of the islands in the Low Archipelago the bottom appears to descend by ledges. Off Elizabeth Island, which, however, consists of raised coral, Capt. Beechey (p. 45, quarto ed.) describes three ledges: the first had an easy slope from the beach to a distance of about fifty yards; the second extended two hundred yards with twenty-five fathoms on it, and then ended abruptly, like the first; and immediately beyond this there was no bottom with two hundred fathoms. † Mémoires pour servir à une description Géolog. de France, tome iv. p. 216. ‡ Beechey's Voyage, 4to ed. p. 44. northern extremities of the two Keeling atolls, is caused by a prevailing current which there accumulates a bed of sand. Where the water is perfectly tranquil, as within a lagoon, the reefs generally grow up perpendicularly, and sometimes even overhang their bases: on the other hand, on the leeward side of Mauritius, where the water is generally tranquil although not invariably so, the reef is very gently inclined. Hence it appears that the exterior angle varies much; nevertheless, in the close similarity in form between the sections of Keeling atoll and of the atolls in the Low Archipelago, in the general steepness of the reefs of the Maldiva and Chagos atolls, and in the perpendicularity of those rising out of water always tranquil, we may discern the effects of uniform laws; but from the complex action of the surf and currents, on the growing powers of the coral and on the deposition of sediment, we can by no means follow out all the results. Where islets have been formed on the reef, that part which I have sometimes called the 'flat,' and which is partly dry at low water, appears similar in every atoll. In the Marshall group in the N. Pacific, it may be inferred from Chamisso's description, that the reef, where islets have not been formed on it, slopes gently from the external margin to the shores of the lagoon: Flinders states that the Australian barrier has a similar inclination inwards, and I have no doubt it is of general occurrence, although, according to Ehrenberg, the reefs of the Red Sea offer an exception. Chamisso observes that "the red colour of the reef (at the Marshall atolls) under the breakers is caused by a Nullipora, which covers the stone wherever the waves beat; and, under favourable circumstances, assumes a stalactitical form,"—a description perfectly applicable to the margin of Keeling atoll.* Although Chamisso * Kotzebue's First Voyage, vol. iii. p. 142. Near Porto Praya, in the Cape de Verd Islands, some basaltic rocks, lashed by no inconsiderable surf, were completely enveloped with a layer of Nullipora. The entire surface over many square inches, was coloured of a peach-blossom red; the layer, however, was of no greater thickness than paper. Another does not state that the masses of Nulliporæ form points or a mound, higher than the flat, yet I believe that this is the case; for Kotzebue,* in another part, speaks of the rocks on the edge of the reef "as visible for about two feet at low water," and these rocks we may feel quite certain are not formed of true coral.† Whether a smooth convex mound of Nulliporæ, like that which appears as if artificially constructed to protect the margin of Keeling Island, is of frequent occurrence round atolls, I know not; but we shall presently meet with it, under precisely the same form, on the outer edge of the 'barrier reefs' which encircle the Society Islands. There appears to be scarcely a feature in the structure of Keeling reef, which is not of common, if not of universal occurrence, in other atolls. Thus Chamisso describes‡ a layer of coarse conglomerate, outside the islets round the Marshall atolls, which "appears on its upper surface uneven and eaten away." From drawings, with appended remarks, of Diego Garcia in the Chagos group and of several of the Maldiva atolls, shown me by Captain Moresby§, it is evident that their outer coasts are subject to the same round of decay and renovation as those of Keeling atoll. From the description of the atolls in the Low Archipelago, given in Capt. kind, in the form of projecting knobs, grew in the same situation. These Nulliporæ are closely related to those described on the coral-reefs, but I believe are of different species. * Kotzebue's First Voyage, vol. ii. p. 16. Lieut. Nelson in his excellent memoir in the Geological Transactions, (vol. ii p. 105.) alludes to the rocky points mentioned by Kotzebue, and infers that they consist of Serpulæ, which compose incrusting masses on the reefs of Bermudas, as they likewise do on a sandstone bar off the coast of Brazil, (which I have described in London Phil. Journ. Oct. 1841). These masses of Serpulæ hold the same position, relatively to the action of the sea, with the Nulliporæ on the coral-reefs in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. † Capt. Moresby, in his valuable paper "on the Northern Atolls of Maldivas," (Geographical Journal, vol. v.), says that the edges of the reefs there stand above water at low spring tides. ‡ Kotzebue's First Voyage, vol. iii p. 144. § See also Moresby on the Northern atolls of the Maldivas, Geographical Journal, vol. v. p. 400. Beechey's Voyage, it is not apparent that any conglomerate coral-rock was there observed. The lagoon in Keeling atoll is shallow: in the atolls of the Low Archipelago the depth varies from 20 to 38 fathoms, and in the Marshal Group, according to Chamisso, from 30 to 35: in the Caroline atolls it is only a little less. Within the Maldiva atolls there are large spaces with 45 fathoms, and some soundings are laid down of 49 fathoms. The greater part of the bottom in most lagoons, is formed of sediment; large spaces have exactly the same depth, or the depth varies so insensibly, that it is evident that no other means, excepting aqueous deposition, could have levelled the surface so equally. In the Maldiva atolls this is very conspicuous, and likewise in some of the Caroline and Marshall Islands. In the former large spaces consist of sand and soft clay; and Kotzebue speaks of clay having been found within one of the Marshall atolls. No doubt this clay is calcareous mud, similar to that at Keeling Island, and to that at Bermuda already referred to, as undistinguishable from disintegrated chalk, and which Lieut. Nelson says is called there pipe-clay.* Where the waves act with unequal force on the two sides of an atoll, the islets appear to be first formed, and are generally of greater continuity on the more exposed shore. The islets, also, which are placed to leeward, are in most parts of the Pacific liable to be occasionally swept entirely away by gales, equalling hurricanes in violence, which blow in an opposite direction to the ordinary trade-wind. The absence of the * I may here observe that on the coast of Brazil, where there is much coral, the soundings near the land are described by Admiral Roussin, in the Pilote du Brésil, as siliceous sand, mingled with much finely comminuted particles of shells and coral. Further in the offing, for a space of 1300 miles along the coast, from the Abrolhos islands to Maranham, the bottom in many places is composed of "tuf blanc, mêlé ou formé de madrépores broyés." This white substance, probably is analogous to that which occurs within the above-mentioned lagoons; it is sometimes, according to Roussin, firm, and he compares it to mortar. islets on the leeward side of atolls, or when present their lesser dimensions compared with those to windward, is a comparatively unimportant fact; but in several instances the reef itself on the leeward side, retaining its usual defined outline, does not rise to the surface by several fathoms. This is the case with the southern side of Peros Banhos (Plate I. fig. 9) in the Chagos group, with Mourileu atoll*, in the Caroline Archipelago, and with the barrier reef (Plate I., fig. 8) of the Gambier Islands. I allude to the latter reef, although belonging to another class, because Captain Beechey was first led by it to observe the peculiarity in the question. At Peros Banhos the submerged part is nine miles in length, and lies at an average depth of about 5 fathoms; its surface is nearly level, and consists of hard stone, with a thin covering of loose sand. There is scarcely any living coral on it, even on the outer margin, as I have been particularly assured by Capt. Moresby: it is in fact a wall of dead coral-rock, having the same width and transverse section with the reef in its ordinary state, of which it is a continuous portion. The living and perfect parts terminate abruptly, and abut on the submerged portions, in the same manner as on the sides of an ordinary passage through the reef. The reef to leeward in other cases is nearly or quite obliterated, and one side of the lagoon is left open; for instance at Oulleay (Caroline Archipelago), where a crescent-formed reef is fronted by an irregular bank, on which the other half of the annular reef probably once stood. At Namonouïto, in the same Archipelago, both these modifications of the reef concur; it consists of a great flat bank, with from 20 to 25 fathoms water on it; for a length of more than 40 miles on its southern side it is open and without any reef, whilst on the other sides it is bounded by a reef, in parts rising to the surface and perfectly characterized, in parts lying some fathoms submerged. In the Chagos group there are annular reefs, entirely submerged, * Frederic Lutkè's Voyage autour du Monde, vol. ii. p. 291. See also his account of Namonouïto, at pp. 97 and 105, and the chart of Oulleay in the Atlas. which have the same structure as the submerged and defined portions just described. The Speaker's Bank offers an excellent example of this structure; its central expanse, which is about 22 fathoms deep, is 24 miles across; the external rim is of the usual width of annular reefs, and is well-defined; it lies between 6 and 8 fathoms beneath the surface, and at the same depth there are scattered knolls in the lagoon. Capt. Moresby believes the rim consists of dead rock, thinly covered with sand, and he is certain this is the case with the external rim of the Great Chagos Bank, which is also essentially a submerged atoll. In both these cases, as in the submerged portion of the reef at Peros Banhos, Capt. Moresby feels sure that the quantity of living coral, even on the outer edge overhanging the deep-sea water, is quite insignificant. Lastly, in several parts of the Pacific and Indian Oceans there are banks, lying at greater depths than in the cases just mentioned, of the same form and size with the neighbouring atolls, but with their atoll-like structure wholly obliterated. It appears from the survey of Freycinet, that there are banks of this kind in the Caroline Archipelago, and, as is reported, in the Low Archipelago. When we discuss the origin of the different classes of coral formations, we shall see that the submerged state of the whole of some atoll-formed reefs, and of portions of others, generally but not invariably on the leeward side, and the existence of more deeply submerged banks now possessing little or no signs of their original atoll-like structure, are probably the effects of a uniform cause,—namely, the death of the coral, during the subsidence of the area, in which the atolls or banks are situated. There is seldom, with the exception of the Maldiva atolls, more than two or three channels, and generally only one leading into the lagoon, of sufficient depth for a ship to enter. In small atolls, there is usually not even one. Where there is deep water, for instance above twenty fathoms, in the middle of the lagoon, the channels through the reef are seldom as deep as the centre,—it may be said that the rim only of the saucer-shaped hollow forming the lagoon is notched. Mr. Lyell* has observed that the growth of the coral would tend to obstruct all the channels through a reef, except those kept open by discharging the water, which during high tide and the greater part of each ebb is thrown over its circumference. Several facts indicate that a considerable quantity of sediment is likewise discharged through these channels; and Captain Moresby informs me that he has observed, during the change of the monsoon, the sea discoloured to a distance off the entrances into the Maldiva and Chagos atolls. This, probably, would check the growth of the coral in them, far more effectually than a mere current of water. In the many small atolls without any channel, these causes have not prevented the entire ring attaining the surface. The channels, like the submerged and effaced parts of the reef, very generally though not invariably occur on the leeward side of the atoll, or on that side, according to Beechey,† which, from running in the same direction with the prevalent wind, is not fully exposed to it. Passages between the islets on the reef, through which boats can pass at high-water, must not be confounded with ship-channels, by which the annular reef itself is breached. The passages between the islets occur, of course, on the windward as well as on the leeward side; but they are more frequent and broader to leeward, owing to the lesser dimensions of the islets on that side. At Keeling atoll the shores of the lagoon shelve gradually, where the bottom is of sediment, and irregularly or abruptly where there are coral reefs; but this is by no means the universal structure in other atolls. Chamisso,‡ speaking in general terms of the lagoons in the Marshall atolls, says the lead generally sinks "from a depth of two or three fathoms to twenty or twenty-four, and you may pursue a line in which on one side of the boat you may see the bottom, and on the other the azure blue deep water." The shores of the * Principles of Geology, vol. iii. p. 289. † Beechey's Voyage, 4to. ed. vol. i. p. 189. ‡ Kotzebue's First Voyage, vol. iii. p. 142. lagoon-like channel within the barrier-reef at Vanikoro have a similar structure. Captain Beechey has described a modification of this structure (and he believes it is not uncommon) in two atolls in the Low Archipelago, in which the shores of the lagoon descend by a few, broad, slightly inclined, ledges or steps: thus at Matilda atoll,* the great exterior reef, the surface of which is gently inclined towards and beneath the surface of the lagoon, ends abruptly in a little cliff three fathoms deep; at its foot, a ledge forty yards wide extends, shelving gently inwards like the surface-reef, and terminated by a second little cliff five fathoms deep; beyond this, the bottom of the lagoon slopes to twenty fathoms, which is the average depth of its centre. These ledges seem to be formed of coral rock; and Captain Beechey says that the lead often descended several fathoms through holes in them. In some atolls, all the coral reefs or knolls in the lagoon come to the surface at low-water; in other cases of rarer occurrence, all lie at nearly the same depth beneath it, but most frequently they are quite irregular,—some with perpendicular, some with sloping sides,—some rising to the surface, and others lying at all intermediate depths from the bottom upwards. I cannot, therefore, suppose that the union of such reefs could produce even one uniformly sloping ledge, and much less two or three, one beneath the other, and each terminated by an abrupt wall. At Matilda Island, which offers the best example of the step-like structure, Captain Beechey observes that the coral knolls within the lagoon are quite irregular in their height. We shall hereafter see that the theory which accounts for the ordinary form of atolls, apparently includes this occasional peculiarity in their structure. In the midst of a group of atolls, there sometimes occur small, flat, very low islands of coral formation, which probably once included a lagoon, since filled up with sediment and coral- * Beechey's Voyage, 4to. ed. vol. i. p. 160. At Whitsunday Island the bottom of the lagoon slopes gradually towards the centre, and then deepens suddenly, the edge of the bank being nearly perpendicular. This bank is formed of coral and dead shells. reefs. Captain Beechey entertains no doubt that this has been the case with the two small islands, which alone of thirty-one surveyed by him in the Low Archipelago, did not contain lagoons. Romanzoff Island (in lat. 15° S.) is described by Chamisso* as formed by a dam of madreporitic rock inclosing a flat space, thinly covered with trees, into which the sea on the leeward side occasionally breaks. North Keeling atoll appears to be in a rather less forward stage of conversion into land: it consists of a horse-shoe shaped strip of land surrounding a muddy flat, one mile in its longest axis, which is covered by the sea only at high water. When describing South Keeling atoll, I endeavoured to show how slow the final process of filling up a lagoon must be; nevertheless, as all causes do tend to produce this effect, it is very remarkable that not one instance, as I believe, is known of a moderately-sized lagoon being filled up even to the low water-line at spring-tides, much less of such a one being converted into land. It is, likewise, in some degree remarkable, how few atolls, except small ones, are surrounded by a single linear strip of land, formed by the union of separate islets. We cannot suppose that the many atolls in the Pacific and Indian oceans all have had a late origin, and yet should they remain at their present level, subjected only to the action of the sea and to the growing powers of the coral, during as many centuries as must have elapsed since any of the earlier tertiary epochs, it cannot, I think, be doubted that their lagoons and the islets on their reef, would present a totally different appearance from what they now do. This consideration leads to the suspicion that some renovating agency (namely subsidence) comes into play at intervals, and perpetuates their original structure. * Kotzebue's First Voyage, vol. iii. p. 221. Maldiva Archipelago—Ring-formed reefs marginal and central—Great depth in the lagoons of the S. atolls—Reefs in the lagoons all rising to the surface—Position of islets, and breaches in the reefs with respect to the prevalent winds and action of the waves—Destruction of islets—Connection in the position and submarine foundation of distinct atolls—The apparent disseverment of large atolls—The Great Chagos Bank—Its submerged condition and extraordinary structure. ALTHOUGH occasional references have been made to the Maldiva atolls, and to the banks in the Chagos group, some points of their structure deserve further consideration. My description is derived from an examination of the admirable charts lately published from the survey of Captain Moresby and Lieut. Powell, and more especially from information which Captain Moresby has communicated to me in the kindest manner. The Maldiva Archipelago is 470 miles in length, with an average breadth of about 50 miles. The form and dimensions of the atolls, and their singular position in a double line, may be seen, but not well, in the greatly reduced chart (Fig. 6.) in Plate II. The dimensions of the longest atoll in the group, (called by the double name of Milla-dou-Madou and Tilla-dou-Matte) has already been given; it is 88 miles in a medial and slightly curved line, and is less than 20 miles in its broadest part. Suadiva, also, is a noble atoll, being 44 miles across in one direction, and 34 in another, and the great included expanse of water has a depth of between 250 and 300 feet. The smaller atolls in this group differ in no respect from ordinary ones; but the larger ones are remarkable from being breached by numerous deep-water channels leading into the lagoon; for instance, there are 42 channels, through which a ship could enter the lagoon of Suadiva. In the three southern large atolls, the separate portions of reef between these channels have the ordinary structure, and are linear; but in the other atolls, especially the more northern ones, these portions are ring-formed, like miniature atolls. Other ring-formed reefs rise out of the lagoons, in the place of those irregular ones which ordinarily occur there. In the reduction of the chart of Mahlos Mahdoo (Plate II. fig. 4), it was not found easy to define the islets and the little lagoons within each reef, so that the ring-formed structure is very imperfectly shown: in the large published charts of Tilla-dou-Matte, the appearance of these rings, from standing further apart from each other, is very remarkable. The rings on the margin are generally elongated; many of them are three, and some even five miles, in diameter; those within the lagoon are usually smaller, few being more than two miles across, and the greater number rather less than one. The depth of the little lagoon within these small annular reefs is generally from five to seven fathoms, but occasionally more; and in Ari atoll many of the central ones are twelve, and some even more than twelve fathoms deep. These rings rise abruptly from the platform or bank, on which they are placed; their outer margin is invariably bordered by living coral,* within which there is a flat surface of coral-rock; on this flat, sand and fragments have in many cases accumulated and been converted into islets, clothed with vegetation. I can, in fact, point out no essential difference between these little ring-formed reefs (which, however, are larger, and contain deeper lagoons than many true atolls that stand in the open sea), and the most perfectly characterized atolls, excepting that the ring-formed reefs are based on a shallow foundation, instead of on the floor of the open sea, and that instead of being scattered irregularly, they are grouped closely together on one large platform, with the marginal rings arranged in a rudely-formed circle. The perfect series which can be traced from portions of simple linear reef, to others including long linear lagoons, * Capt. Moresby informs me that Millepora complanata, is one of the commonest kinds on the outer margin, as it is at Keeling atoll. and from these again to oval or almost circular rings, renders it probable that the latter are merely modifications of the linear or normal state. It is conformable with this view, that the ring-formed reefs on the margin, even where most perfect and standing furthest apart, generally have their longest axes directed in the line which the reef would have held, if the atoll had been bounded by an ordinary wall. We may also infer that the central ring-formed reefs are modifications of those irregular ones, which are found in the lagoons of all common atolls. It appears from the charts on a large scale, that the ring-like structure is contingent on the marginal channels or breaches being wide; and, consequently, on the whole interior of the atoll being freely exposed to the waters of the open sea. When the channels are narrow or few in number, although the lagoon be of great size and depth (as in Suadiva), there are no ring-formed reefs; where the channels are somewhat broader, the marginal portions of reef, and especially those close to the larger channels, are ring-formed, but the central ones are not so; where they are broadest, almost every reef throughout the atoll is more or less perfectly ring-formed. Although their presence is thus contingent on the openness of the marginal channels, the theory of their formation, as we shall hereafter see, is included in that of the parent atolls, of which they form the separate portions. The lagoons of all the atolls in the southern part of the Archipelago are from ten to twenty fathoms deeper than those in the northern part. This is well exemplified in the case of Addoo, the southernmost atoll in the group, for although only 9 miles in its longest diameter; it has a depth of 39 fathoms, whereas all the other small atolls have comparatively shallow lagoons; I can assign no adequate cause for this difference in depth. In the central and deepest part of the lagoons, the bottom consists, as I am informed by Capt. Moresby, of stiff clay (probably a calcareous mud); nearer the border it consists of sand, and in the channels through the reef, of hard sand-banks, sandstone, conglo- merate rubble, and a little live coral. Close outside the reef and the line joining its detached portions (where intersected by many channels), the bottom is sandy, and it slopes abruptly into unfathomable depths. In most lagoons the depth is considerably greater in the centre than in the channels; but in Tilla-dou-Matte, where the marginal ring-formed reefs stand far apart, the same depth is carried across the entire atoll, from the deep-water line on one side to that on the other. I cannot refrain from once again remarking on the singularity of these atolls,—a great sandy and generally concave disk rises abruptly from the unfathomable ocean, with its central expanse studded and its border symmetrically fringed with oval basons of coral-rock, just lipping the surface of the sea, sometimes clothed with vegetation, and each containing a little lake of clear water! In the southern Maldiva atolls, of which there are nine large ones, all the small reefs within the lagoons come to the surface, and are dry at low water spring-tides; hence in navigating them, there is no danger from submarine banks. This circumstance is very remarkable, as within some atolls, for instance those of the neighbouring Chagos group, not a single reef comes to the surface, and in most other cases a few only do, and the rest lie at all intermediate depths from the bottom upwards. When treating of the growth of coral I shall again refer to this subject. Although in the neighbourhood of the Maldiva Archipelago the winds, during the monsoons, blow during nearly an equal time from opposite quarters, and although, as I am informed by Capt. Moresby, the westerly winds are the strongest, yet the islets are almost all placed on the eastern side of the northern atolls, and on the south-eastern side of the southern atolls. That the formation of the islets is due to detritus thrown up from the outside, as in the ordinary manner, and not from the interior of the lagoons, may, I think, be safely inferred from several considerations, which it is hardly worth while to detail. As the easterly winds are not the strongest, their action probably is aided by some prevailing swell or current. In groups of atolls, exposed to a trade wind, the ship-channels into the lagoons are almost invariably situated on the leeward or less exposed side of the reef, and the reef itself is sometimes either wanting there, or is submerged. A strictly analogous, but different, fact, may be observed at the Maldiva atolls—namely, that where two atolls stand in front of each other, the breaches in the reef are the most numerous on their near, and therefore less exposed, sides. Thus on the near sides of Ari and the two Nillandoo atolls, which face S. Male, Phaleedoo, and Moloque atolls, there are seventy-three deep-water channels, and only twenty-five on their outer sides; on the near side of the three latter-named atolls there are fifty-six openings, and only thirty-seven on their outsides. It is scarcely possible to attribute this difference to any other cause than the somewhat different action of the sea on the two sides, which would ensue from the protection afforded by the two rows of atolls to each other. I may here remark that in most cases, the conditions favourable to the greater accumulation of fragments on the reef and to its more perfect continuity, on one side of the atoll than on the other, have concurred, but this has not been the case with the Maldivas; for we have seen that the islets are placed on the eastern or south eastern sides, whilst the breaches in the reef occur indifferently on any side, where protected by an opposite atoll. The reef being more continuous on the outer and more exposed sides of those atolls which stand near each other, accords with the fact, that the reef of the southern atolls is more continuous than that of the northern ones; for the former, as I am informed by Capt. Moresby, are more constantly exposed than the northern atolls, to a heavy surf. The date of the first formation of some of the islets in this Archipelago is known to the inhabitants; on the other hand, several islets, and even some of those which are believed to be very old, are now fast wearing away. The work of destruction has, in some instances, been completed in ten years. Capt. Moresby found on one water-washed reef the marks of wells and graves, which were excavated when it supported an islet. In South Nillandoo atoll, the natives say that three of the islets were formerly larger: in North Nillandoo there is one now being washed away; and in this latter atoll Lieut. Prentice found a reef, about six hundred yards in diameter, which the natives positively affirmed was lately an island covered with cocoa-nut trees. It is now only partially dry at low water spring tides, and is, (in Lieut. Prentice's words) "entirely covered with live coral and madrepore." In the northern part, also, of the Maldiva Archipelago and in the Chagos group, it is known that some of the islets are disappearing. The natives attribute these effects to variations in the currents of the sea. For my own part I cannot avoid suspecting, that there must be some further cause, which gives rise to such a cycle of change in the action of the currents of the great and open ocean. Several of the atolls in this Archipelago are so related to each other in form and position, that at the first glance one is led to suspect that they have originated in the disseverment of a single one. Male consists of three perfectly characterized atolls, of which the shape and relative position are such, that a line drawn closely round all three, gives a symmetrical figure: to see this clearly, a larger chart is required than that of the Archipelago in Plate II.: the channel separating the two northern Male atolls is only little more than a mile wide, and no bottom was found in it with 100 fathoms. Powell's Island is situated at the distance of two miles and a half off the northern end of Mahlos Mahdoo, (see fig. 4. Plate II.), at the exact point where the two sides of the latter, if prolonged, would meet: no bottom, however, was found in the channel with 200 fathoms: in the wider channel between Horsburgh atoll and the southern end of Mahlos Mahdoo, no bottom was found with 250 fathoms. In these and similar cases, the relation consists only in the form and position of the atolls. But in the channel between the two Nillandoo atolls, although three miles and a quarter wide, soundings were struck at the depth of 200 fathoms: the channel between Ross and Ari atolls is four miles wide, and only 150 fathoms deep. Here then we have, besides the relation of form, a submarine connection. The fact of soundings having been obtained between two separate and perfectly characterized atolls is in itself interesting, as it has never, I believe, been effected in any of the many other groups of atolls in the Pacific and Indian seas. In continuing to trace the connection of adjoining atolls, if a hasty glance be taken at the chart (fig. 4. Plate II.) of Mahlos Mahdoo and the line of unfathomable water be followed, no one will hesitate to consider it as one atoll. But a second look will shew that it is divided by a bifurcating channel, of which the northern arm is about one mile and three quarters in width, with an average depth of 125 fathoms, and the southern one three quarters of a mile wide, and rather less deep. These channels resemble in the slope of their sides and general form, those which separate atolls in every respect distinct; and the northern arm is wider than that dividing two of the Male atolls. The ring-formed reefs on the sides of this bifurcating channel are elongated, so that the northern and southern portions of Mahlos Mahdoo may claim, as far as their external outline is concerned, to be considered as distinct and perfect atolls. But the intermediate portion, lying in the fork of the channel, is bordered by reefs less perfect than those, which surround any other atoll in the group of equally small dimensions. Mahlos Mahdoo, therefore, is in every respect in so intermediate a condition, that it may be considered either as a single atoll nearly dissevered into three portions, or as three atolls almost perfect and intimately connected. This is an instance of a very early stage of the apparent disseverment of an atoll, but a still earlier one in many respects is exhibited at Tilla-dou-matte. In one part of this atoll, the ring-formed reefs stand so far apart from each other, that the inhabitants have given different names to the northern and southern halves: nearly all the rings, moreover, are so perfect and stand so separate, and the space from which they rise is so level and unlike a true lagoon, that we can easily imagine the conversion of this one great atoll, not into two or three portions, but into a whole group of miniature atolls. A perfect series, such as we have here traced, impresses the mind with an idea of actual change; and it will hereafter be seen, that the theory of subsidence, with the upward growth of the coral, modified by accidents of probable occurrence, will account for the occasional disseverment of large atolls. The great Chagos Bank alone remains to be described. In the Chagos group there are some ordinary atolls, some annular reefs rising to the surface but without any islets on them, and some atoll-formed banks, either quite submerged, or nearly so. Of the latter, the Great Chagos Bank is much the largest, and differs in its structure from the others: a plan of it is given in Plate II., fig. 1, in which, for the sake of clearness, I have had the parts under ten fathoms deep finely shaded: an east and west vertical section is given in fig. 2, in which the vertical scale has been necessarily exaggerated. Its longest axis is ninety nautical miles, and another line drawn at right angles to the first, across the broadest part, is seventy. The central part consists of a level muddy flat, between forty and fifty fathoms deep, which is surrounded on all sides, with the exception of some breaches, by the steep edges of a set of banks, rudely arranged in a circle. These banks consist of sand, with a very little live coral; they vary in breadth from five to twelve miles, and on an average lie about sixteen fathoms beneath the surface; they are bordered by the steep edges of a third narrow and upper bank, which forms the rim to the whole. This rim is about a mile in width, and with the exception of two or three spots where islets have been formed, is submerged between five and ten fathoms. It consists of smooth hard rock, covered with a thin layer of sand, but with scarcely any live coral; it is steep on both sides, and outwards slopes abruptly into unfathomable depths. At the distance of less than half a mile from one part, no bottom was found with 190 fathoms; and off another point, at a somewhat greater distance, there was none with 210 fathoms. Small steep-sided banks or knolls, covered with luxuriantly-growing coral, rise from the interior expanse to the same level with the external rim, which, as we have seen, is formed only of dead rock. It is impossible to look at the plan (Fig. 1. Plate II.), although reduced to so small a scale, without at once perceiving that the Great Chagos Bank is, in the words of Capt. Moresby,* "nothing more than a half-drowned atoll." But of what great dimensions, and of how extraordinary an internal structure! We shall hereafter have to consider both the cause of its submerged condition, a state common to other banks in the group, and the origin of the singular submarine terraces, which bound the central expanse: these, I think, it can be shown, have resulted from a cause analogous to that, which has produced the bifurcating channel across Mahlos Mahdoo. * This officer has had the kindness to lend me an excellent MS. account of the Chagos Islands; from this paper, from the published charts, and from verbal information communicated to me by Capt. Moresby, the above account of the Great Chagos Bank is taken. Closely resemble in general form and structure atoll-reefs—Width and depth of the lagoon-channels—Breaches through the reef in front of valleys, and generally on the leeward side—Checks to the filling up of the lagoon-channels—Size and constitution of the encircled islands—Number of islands within the same reef—Barrier-reefs of New Caledonia and Australia—Position of the reef relative to the slope of the adjoining land—Probable great thickness of barrier-reefs. THE term 'barrier' has been generally applied to that vast reef which fronts the N.E. shore of Australia, and by most voyagers likewise to that on the western coast of New Caledonia. At one time I thought it convenient thus to restrict the term, but as these reefs are similar in structure, and in position relatively to the land, to those, which, like a wall with a deep moat within, encircle many smaller islands, I have classed them together. The reef, also, on the west coast of New Caledonia, circling round the extremities of the island, is an intermediate form between a small encircling reef and the Australian barrier, which stretches for a thousand miles in nearly a straight line. The geographer Balbi has in effect described those barrier-reefs, which encircle moderately sized islands, by calling them atolls with high land rising from within their central expanse. The general resemblance between the reefs of the barrier and atoll classes may be seen in the small, but accurately reduced charts on Plate I.,* and this resemblance can be * The authorities from which these charts have been reduced, together with some remarks on them, are given in a separately appended page, descriptive of the Plates. further shown to extend to every part of their structure. Beginning with the outside of the reef; many scattered soundings off Gambier, Oualan, and some other encircled islands, show that close to the breakers there exists a narrow shelving margin, beyond which the ocean becomes suddenly unfathomable: but off the west coast of New Caledonia, Capt. Kent* found no bottom with 150 fathoms, at two ships' length from the reef; so that the slope here must be nearly as precipitous as off the Maldiva atolls. I can give little information regarding the kinds of corals which live on the outer margin. When I visited the reef at Tahiti, although it was low water, the surf was too violent for me to see the living masses; but, according to what I heard from some intelligent native chiefs, they resemble in their rounded and branchless forms, those on the margin of Keeling atoll. The extreme verge of the reef, which was visible between the breaking waves at low water, consisted of a rounded, convex, artificial-like breakwater, entirely coated with Nulliporæ, and absolutely similar to that which I have described at Keeling atoll. From what I heard when at Tahiti, and from the writings of the Revs. W. Ellis and J. Williams, I conclude that this peculiar structure is common to most of the encircled islands of the Society Archipelago. The reef within this mound or breakwater, has an extremely irregular surface, even more so than between the islets on the reef of Keeling atoll, with which alone (as there are no islets on the reef of Tahiti) it can properly be compared. At Tahiti, the reef is very irregular in width; but round many other encircled islands, for instance Vanikoro or Gambier islands, (Figs. 1. and 8. Plate I.) it is quite as regular, and of the same average width, as in true atolls. Most barrier-reefs on the inner side slope irregularly into the lagoon-channel, (as the space of deep water separating the reef from the included land may be called,) but at Vanikoro the reef slopes only for a short distance, and then terminates abruptly in a submarine wall, forty feet high,—a structure * Dalrymple, Hydrog. Mem. vol. iii. absolutely similar to that described by Chamisso in the Marshall atolls. In the Society Archipelago, Ellis* states, that the reefs generally lie at the distance of from one to one and a half miles, and, occasionally, even at more than three miles, from the shore. The central mountains are generally bordered by a fringe of flat, and often marshy, alluvial land, from one to four miles in width. This fringe consists of coral-sand and detritus thrown up from the lagoon-channel, and of soil washed down from the hills; it is an encroachment on the channel, analogous to that low and inner part of the islets in many atolls, which is formed by the accumulation of matter from the lagoon. At Hogoleu (fig. 2. Plate I.) in the Caroline Archipelago,† the reef on the south side is no less than 20 miles; on the east side, five; and on the north side, 14 miles from the encircled high islands. The lagoon-channels may be compared in every respect with true lagoons. In some cases they are open, with a level bottom of fine sand; in others they are choked up with reefs of delicately branched corals, which have the same general character as those within Keeling atoll. These internal reefs either stand separately, or more commonly skirt the shores of the included high islands. The depth of the lagoon-channel round the Society Islands varies from two or three, to thirty fathoms; in Cook's‡ chart of Ulietea, however, there is one sounding laid down of 48 fathoms: at Vanikoro there are several of 54 and one of 56½ fathoms (English), a depth which even exceeds by a little that of the interior of the great Maldiva atolls. Some barrier-reefs have very few islets on them; whilst others are surmounted by numerous ones; and those round part of Bolabola (Plate I. fig. 5.) form a single linear strip. The * Consult, on this and other points, the Polynesian Researches by the Rev. W. Ellis, an admirable work, full of curious information. † See Hydrographical Mem. and the Atlas of the Voyage of the Astrolabe, by Capt. Dumont D'Urville, p. 428. ‡ See the chart in vol. I. of Hawkesworth's 4to ed. of Cook's First Voyage. islets first appear either on the angles of the reef, or on the sides of the breaches through it, and are generally most numerous on the windward side. The reef to leeward retaining its usual width, sometimes lies submerged several fathoms beneath the surface; I have already mentioned Gambier Island as an instance of this structure. Submerged reefs, having a less defined outline, dead, and covered with sand, have been observed (see Appendix) off some parts of Huaheine and Tahiti. The reef is more frequently breached to leeward than to windward; thus I find in Krusenstern's Memoir on the Pacific, that there are passages through the encircling reef on the leeward side of each of the seven Society Islands, which possess ship-harbours; but that there are openings to windward through the reef of only three of them. The breaches in the reef are seldom as deep as the interior lagoon-like channel; they generally occur in front of the main valleys, a circumstance which can be accounted for, as will be seen in the fourth chapter, without much difficulty. The breaches being situated in front of the valleys, which descend indifferently on all sides, explains their more frequent occurrence through the windward side of barrier-reefs than through the windward side of atolls,—for in atolls there is no included land to influence the position of the breaches. It is remarkable, that the lagoon-channels round mountainous islands have not in every instance been long ago filled up with coral and sediment; but it is more easily accounted for than appears at first sight. In cases like that of Hogoleu and the Gambier Islands, where a few small peaks rise out of a great lagoon, the conditions scarcely differ from those of an atoll; and I have already shown, at some length, that the filling up of a true lagoon must be an extremely slow process. Where the channel is narrow, the agency, which on unprotected coasts is most productive of sediment, namely the force of the breakers, is here entirely excluded, and the reef being breached in the front of the main valleys, much of the finer mud from the rivers must be transported into the open sea. As a current is formed by the water thrown over the edge of atoll-formed reefs, which carries sediment with it through the deepwater breaches, the same thing probably takes place in barrier-reefs, and this would greatly aid in preventing the lagoon-channel from being filled up. The low alluvial border, however, at the foot of the encircled mountains, shows that the work of filling up is in progress; and at Maurua (Plate I. fig. 6.) in the Society group, it has been almost effected, so that there remains only one harbour for small craft. If we look at a set of charts of barrier-reefs, and leave out in imagination the encircled land, we shall find that besides the many points already noticed of resemblance, or rather of identity in structure with atolls, there is a close general agreement in form, average dimensions, and grouping. Encircling barrier-reefs, like atolls, are generally elongated, with an irregularly rounded, though sometimes angular outline. There are atolls of all sizes, from less than two miles in diameter to sixty miles, (excluding Tilla-dou-Matte, as it consists of a number of almost independent atoll-formed reefs); and there are encircling barrier-reefs from three miles and a half to forty-six miles in diameter,—Turtle Island being an instance of the former, and Hogoleu of the latter. At Tahiti the encircled island is 36 miles in its longest axis, whilst at Maurua it is only a little more than two miles. It will be shown, in the last chapter in this volume, that there is the strictest resemblance in the grouping of atolls and of common islands, and consequently there must be the same resemblance in the grouping of atolls and of encircling barrier-reefs. The islands lying within reefs of this class, are of very various heights. Tahiti* is 7,000 feet; Maurua about 800; Aituaki 360, and Manouai only 50. The geological nature * The height of Tahiti is given from Capt. Beechey; Maurua from Mr. F. D. Bennett (Geograph. Journ. vol. viii. p. 220); Aitutaki from measurements made on board the Beagle; and Manouai, or Harvey Island, from an estimate by the Rev. J. Williams. The two latter islands, however, are not in some respects well characterized examples of the encircled class. of the included land varies; in most cases it is of ancient volcanic origin, owing apparently to the fact that islands of this nature are most frequent within all great seas: some, however, are of madreporitic limestone, and others of primary formation, of which latter kind New Caledonia offers the best example. The central land consists either of one island, or of several; thus in the Society group, Eimeo stands by itself; while Taha and Raiatea, (fig. 3. Plate I.) both moderately large islands, of nearly equal size, are included in one reef. Within the reef of the Gambier group there are four large and some smaller islands (fig. 8. Plate I.); within that of Hogoleu (fig. 2. Plate I.) nearly a dozen small islands are scattered over the expanse of one vast lagoon. After the details now given, it may be asserted, that there is not one point of essential difference between encircling barrier-reefs and atolls;—the latter enclose a simple sheet of water, the former encircle an expanse with one or more islands rising from it. I was much struck with this fact, when viewing, from the heights of Tahiti, the distant island of Eimeo standing within smooth water, and encircled by a ring of snow-white breakers. Remove the central land, and an annular reef like that of an atoll in an early stage of its formation is left; remove it from Bolabola, and there remains a circle of linear coral-islets, crowned with tall cocoa-nut trees, like one of the many atolls scattered over the Pacific and Indian oceans. The barrier-reefs of Australia and of New Caledonia, deserve a separate notice from their great dimensions. The reef on the west coast of New Caledonia (fig. 5. Plate II.) is 400 miles in length; and for a length of many leagues it seldom approaches within eight miles of the shore; and near the southern end of the island, the space between the reef and the land is sixteen miles in width. The Australian barrier extends, with a few interruptions, for nearly a thousand miles: its average distance from the land is between twenty and thirty miles, and in some parts from fifty to seventy. The great arm of the sea thus included, is from ten to twenty-five fathoms deep, with a sandy bottom; but towards the southern end, where the reef is further from the shore, the depth gradually increases to forty, and in some parts to more than sixty fathoms. Flinders* has described the surface of this reef as consisting of a hard white agglomerate of different kinds of coral, with rough projecting points. The outer edge is the highest part; it is traversed by narrow gullies, and at rare intervals is breached by ship-channels. The sea close outside is profoundly deep; but, in front of the main breaches, soundings can sometimes be obtained. Some low islets have been formed on the reef. There is one important point in the structure of barrier-reefs which must here be considered. The accompanying diagrams represent north and south vertical sections, taken through the highest points of Vanikoro, Gambier, and Maurua islands, and through their encircling reefs. The scale both in the horizontal and vertical direction is the same, namely, a quarter of an inch to a nautical mile. The height and width of these islands is known; and I have attempted to represent the form of the land from the shading of the hills in the large published charts. It has long been remarked, even from the time of Dampier, that a considerable degree of relation subsists between the inclination of that part of the land which is beneath water and that above it: hence the dotted line in the three sections, probably, does not widely differ in inclination from the actual submarine prolongation of the land. If we now look at the outer edge of the reef (A A), and bear in mind that the plummet on the right hand represents a depth of 1200 feet, we must conclude that the vertical thickness of these barrier coral reefs is very great. * Flinders' Voyage to Terra Australis, vol. ii. p. 88. 1—Vanikoro, from the Atlas of the voyage of the Astrolabe, by D. D'Urville. 2—Gambier Island, from Beechey. 3—Maurua, from the atlas of the voyage of the Coquille, by Duperrey. The horizontal line is the level of the sea, from which on the right hand a plummet descends, representing a depth of 200 fathoms, or 1200 feet. The vertical shading shows the section of the land, and the horizontal shading that of the encircling barrier-reef; from the smallness of the scale, the lagoon-channel could not be represented. A A—Outer edge of the coral-reefs, where the sea breaks. B B—The shore of the encircled islands. I must observe, that if the sections had been taken in any other direction across these islands, or across other encircled islands,* the result would have been the same. In the succeeding chapter it will be shown that reef-building polypifers cannot flourish at great depths,—for instance, it is highly improbable that they could exist at a quarter of the depth represented by the plummet on the right hand of the woodcut. Here then is a great apparent difficulty—how were the basal parts of these barrier-reefs formed. It will, perhaps, occur to some, that the actual reefs formed of coral * In the fifth chapter an East and West section across the Island of Bolabola and its barrier-reefs is given, for the sake of illustrating another point. The unbroken line in it (woodcut No. 5) is the section referred to. The scale is .57 of an inch to a mile; it is taken from the Atlas of the Voyage of the Coquille by Duperrey. The depth of the lagoon-channel is exaggerated. are not of great thickness, but that before their first growth, the coasts of these encircled islands were deeply eaten into, and a broad but shallow submarine ledge thus left, on the edge of which the coral grew; but if this had been the case, the shore would have been invariably bounded by lofty cliffs, and not have sloped down to the lagoon-channel, as it does in many instances. On this view,* moreover, the cause of the reef springing up at such a great distance from the land, leaving a deep and broad moat within, remains altogether unexplained. A supposition of the same nature, and appearing at first more probable, is, that the reefs sprung up from banks of sediment, which had accumulated round the shore previously to the growth of the coral; but the extension of a bank to the same distance round an unbroken coast, and in front of those deep arms of the sea, (as in Raiatea, see Plate II. fig. 3.) which penetrate nearly to the heart of some encircled islands, is exceedingly improbable. And why, again, should the reef spring up, in some cases steep on both sides like a wall, at a distance of two, three, or more miles from the shore, leaving a channel often between 200 and 300 feet deep, and rising, from a depth which we have reason to believe is destructive to the growth of coral? An admission of this nature cannot possibly be made. The existence, also, of the deep channel, utterly precludes the idea of the reef having grown outwards, on a foundation slowly formed on its outside, by the accumulation of sediment and coral detritus. Nor, again, can it be asserted, that the reef-building corals will not grow, excepting at a great distance from the land; for, as we shall soon see, there is a whole class of reefs, which take their name from growing closely attached (especially where the sea is deep) to the beach. At New Caledonia, (see Plate II. fig. 5.) the reefs which run in front of the west coast, are prolonged in the same line 150 miles beyond the northern extremity of * The Rev. D. Tyerman and Mr. Bennett (Journ. of Voyage and Travels, vol. i. p. 215) have briefly suggested this explanation of the origin of the encircling reefs of the Society Islands. the island, and this shows that some explanation, quite different from any of those just suggested, is required. The continuation of the reefs on each side of the submarine prolongation of New Caledonia, is an exceedingly interesting fact; if this part formerly existed as the northern extremity of the island, and before the attachment of the coral had been worn down by the action of the sea, or if it originally existed at its present height, with or without beds of sediment on each flank, how can we possibly account for the reefs, not growing on the crest of this submarine portion, but fronting its sides, in the same line with the reefs which front the shores of the lofty island? We shall hereafter see, that there is one, and I believe only one, solution of this difficulty. One other supposition to account for the position of encircling barrier-reefs remains, but it is almost too preposterous to be mentioned;—namely, that they rest on enormous submarine craters, surrounding the included islands. When the size, height, and form of the islands in the Society group are considered, together with the fact that all are thus encircled, such a notion will be rejected by almost every one. New Caledonia, moreover, besides its size, is composed of primitive formations, as are some of the Comoro Islands;* and Aitutaki consists of calcareous rock. We must, therefore, reject these several explanations, and conclude that the vertical thickness of barrier-reefs, from their outer edges to the foundation on which they rest (from AA in the section to the dotted lines) is really great: but in this, there is no difficulty, for it is not necessary to suppose that the coral has sprung up from an immense depth, as will be evident when the theory of the upward growth of coral reefs, during the slow subsidence of their foundations, is discussed. * I have been informed that this is the case by Dr. Allan of Forres, who has visited this group. FRINGING OR SHORE REEFS. Reefs of Mauritius—Shallow channel within the reef—Its slow filling up—Currents of water formed within it—Upraised reefs—Narrow fringing-reefs in deep seas—Reefs on the coast of E. Africa and of Brazil—Fringing reefs in very shallow seas, round banks of sediment and on worn-down islands—Fringing reefs affected by currents of the sea—Coral coating bottom of the sea, but not forming reefs. FRINGING reefs, or, as they have been called by some voyagers, shore reefs, whether skirting an island or part of a continent, might at first be thought to differ little, except in generally being of less breadth, from barrier-reefs. As far as the superficies of the actual reef is concerned this is the case; but the absence of an interior deep-water channel, and the close relation in their horizontal extension with the probable slope beneath the sea of the adjoining land, present essential points of difference. The reefs which fringe the island of Mauritius offer a good example of this class. They extend round its whole circumference, with the exception of two or three parts,* where the coast is almost precipitous, and where, if as is probable the bottom of the sea has a similar inclination, the coral would have no foundation on which to become attached. A similar fact may sometimes be observed even in reefs of the barrier class, which follow much less closely the * This fact is stated on the authority of the Officier du Roi, in his extremely interesting "Voyage à l'isle de France," undertaken in 1768. According to Capt. Carmichael (Hooker's Bot. Misc. vol. ii. p. 316.) on one part of the coast there is a space for 16 miles without a reef. outline of the adjoining land; as, for instance, on the S.E. and precipitous side of Tahiti, where the encircling reef is interrupted. On the western side of the Mauritius, which was the only part I visited, the reef generally lies at the distance of about half a mile from the shore; but in some parts it is distant from one to two, and even three miles. But even in this last case, as the coast-land is gently inclined from the foot of the mountains to the sea-beach, and as the soundings outside the reef indicate an equally gentle slope beneath the water, there is no reason for supposing that the basis of the reef, formed by the prolongation of the strata of the island, lies at a greater depth than that, at which the polypifers could begin constructing the reef. Some allowance, however, must be made for the outward extension of the corals on a foundation of sand and detritus, formed from their own wear, which would give to the reef a somewhat greater vertical thickness, than would otherwise be possible. The outer edge of the reef on the western or leeward side of the island, is tolerably well defined, and is a little higher than any other part. It chiefly consists of large strongly branched corals, of the genus Madrepora, which also form a sloping bed some way out to sea: the kinds of coral growing in this part will be described in the ensuing chapter. Between the outer margin and the beach, there is a flat space with a sandy bottom and a few tufts of living coral; in some parts it is so shallow, that people, by avoiding the deeper holes and gullies, can wade across it at low water; in other parts it is deeper, seldom however exceeding ten or twelve feet, so that it offers a safe coasting channel for boats. On the eastern and windward side of the island, which is exposed to a heavy surf, the reef described to me as having a hard smooth surface, very slightly inclined inwards, just covered at low-water, and traversed by gullies; it appears to be quite similar in structure to the reefs of the barrier and atoll classes. The reef of Mauritius, in front of every river and streamlet, is breached by a straight passage: at Grand Port, however, there is a channel like that within a barrier-reef: it extends parallel to the shore for four miles, and has an average depth of 10 or 12 fathoms; its presence may probably be accounted for by two rivers which enter at each end of the channel, and bend towards each other. The fact of reefs of the fringing class being always breached in front of streams, even of those which are dry during the greater part of the year, will be explained, when the conditions unfavourable to the growth of coral are considered. Low coral-islets, like those on barrier-reefs and atolls, are seldom formed on reefs of this class, owing apparently in some cases to their narrowness, and in others to the gentle slope of the reef outside not yielding many fragments to the breakers. On the windward side, however, of the Mauritius, two or three small islets have been formed. It appears, as will be shewn in the ensuing chapter, that the action of the surf is favourable to the vigorous growth of the stronger corals, and that sand or sediment, if agitated by the waves, is injurious to them. Hence it is probable that a reef on a shelving shore, like that of Mauritius, would at first grow up, not attached to the actual beach, but at some little distance from it; and the corals on the outer margin would be the most vigorous. A shallow channel would thus be formed within the reef, and as the breakers are prevented acting on the shores of the island, and as they do not ordinarily tear up many fragments from the outside, and as every streamlet has its bed prolonged in a straight line through the reef, this channel could be filled up only very slowly with sediment. But a beach of sand and of fragments of the smaller kinds of coral seems, in the case of Mauritius, to be slowly encroaching on the shallow channel. On many shelving and sandy coasts, the breakers tend to form a bar of sand a little way from the beach, with a slight increase of depth within it: for instance, Capt. Grey* states that the west coast of Australia, in lat. 24°, is fronted by a sand bar, about 200 yards in width, on which there is only two feet of water; but within * Capt. Grey's Journal of Two Expeditions, vol. i. p. 369. it the depth increases to two fathoms. Similar bars, more or less perfect, occur on other coasts. In these cases I suspect that the shallow channel (which no doubt during storms is occasionally obliterated) is scooped out by the flowing away of the water thrown beyond the line, on which the waves break with the greatest force. At Pernambuco a bar of hard sandstone,* which has the same external form and height as a coral-reef, extends nearly parallel to the coast; within this bar currents, apparently caused by the water thrown over it during the greater part of each tide, run strongly, and are wearing away its inner wall. From these facts it can hardly be doubted, that within most fringing reefs, especially within those lying some distance from the land, a return stream must carry away the water thrown over the outer edge; and the current thus produced, would tend to prevent the channel being filled up with sediment, and might even deepen it under certain circumstances. To this latter belief I am led, by finding that channels are almost universally present within the fringing reefs of those islands, which have undergone recent elevatory movements; and this could hardly have been the case, if the conversion of the very shallow channel into land had not been counteracted to a certain extent. A fringing reef, if elevated in a perfect condition above the level of the sea, ought to present the singular appearance of a broad dry moat within a low mound. The author† of an interesting pedestrian tour round the Mauritius, seems to have met with a structure of this kind: he says "j'observai que là, où la mer étale, indépendamment des rescifs du large, il y a à terre une espèce d'effoncement, ou chemin couvert naturel. On y pourrait mettre du canon," &c. In another place he adds, "Avant de passer le Cap, on remarque un gros banc de corail elévé de plus de quinze pieds: c'est une espèce de rescif, que la mer a abandonné: il regne au pied * I have described this singular structure in the Lond. and Edin. Phil. Mag. Oct. 1841. † Voyage à l'Isle de France, par un Officier du Roi, Part. i. pp. 192, 200. une longue flaque d'eau, dont on pourrait faire un bassin pour de petits vaisseaux." But the margin of the reef, although the highest and most perfect part, from being most exposed to the surf, would generally during a slow rise of the land be either partially or entirely worn down to that level, at which corals could renew their growth on its upper edge. On some parts of the coast-land of Mauritius there are little hillocks of coral-rock, which are either the last remnants of a continuous reef, or of low islets formed on it. I observed two such hillocks between Tamarin Bay and the Great Black River, they were nearly 20 feet high, about 200 yards from the present beach, and about 30 feet above its level. They rose abruptly from a smooth surface, strewed with worn fragments of coral. They consisted in their lower part of hard calcareous sandstone, and in their upper of great blocks of several species of Astræa and Madrepora, loosely aggregated: they were divided into irregular beds, dipping seaward, in one hillock at an angle of 8°, and in the other at 18°. I suspect that the superficial parts of the reefs, which have been upraised together with the islands they fringe, have generally been much more modified by the wearing action of the sea, than those of Mauritius. Many islands* 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, * 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. 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 a hundred yards wide; and Mauti and Elizabeth* Islands, where it is only 50 yards in width: the sea round these islands is very deep. Fringing-reefs, like barrier-reefs, both surround islands, and front the shores of continents. In the charts of the eastern coast of Africa, by Capt. Owen, many extensive fringing reefs are laid down;—thus, for a space of nearly forty miles, from lat. 1° 15' to 1° 45' S., a reef fringes the shore at an average distance of rather more than one mile, and therefore at a greater distance than is usual in reefs of this class; but as the coast-land is not lofty, and as the bottom shoals very gradually (the depth being only from 8 to 14 fathoms at a mile and a half outside the reef) its extension thus far from the land offers no difficulty. The external margin of this reef is described, as formed of projecting points, within which there is a space, from six to twelve feet deep, with patches of living coral on it. At Mukdeesha (lat. 2° 1' N.) "the port is formed," it is said,† "by a long reef extending eastward four or five miles, within which there is a narrow channel, with ten to twelve feet water at low spring tides:" it lies at the distance of a quarter of a mile from the shore. Again, in the plan of Mombas (lat. 4° S.) a reef extends for thirty-six miles, at the distance of from half a mile to one mile and a quarter from the shore; within it, there is a channel navigable "for canoes and small craft," between six and fifteen feet deep: outside the reef the depth is about 30 fathoms at the distance of nearly half * Mauti is described by Lord Byron in the voyage of H.M.S. Blonde, and Elizabeth Island by Capt. Beechey. † Owen's Africa, vol. i. p. 357, from which work the foregoing facts are likewise taken. a mile. Part of this reef is very symmetrical, and has a uniform breadth of 200 yards. The coast of Brazil is in many parts fringed by reefs. Of these, some are not of coral formation; for instance those near Bahia, and in front of Pernambuco; but a few miles south of this latter city, the reef follows* so closely every turn of the shore, that I can hardly doubt it is of coral: it runs at the distance of three quarters of a mile from the land, and within it the depth is from ten to fifteen feet. I was assured by an intelligent pilot, that at Ports Frances and Maceio, the outer part of the reef consists of living coral, and the inner of a white stone, full of large irregular cavities, communicating with the sea. The bottom of the sea off the coast of Brazil shoals gradually to between 30 and 40 fathoms, at the distance of between nine and ten leagues from the land. From the description now given, we must conclude, that the dimensions and structure of fringing reefs depend entirely on the greater or less inclination of the submarine slope, conjoined with the fact, that reef-building polypifers can exist only at limited depths. It follows from this, that where the sea is very shallow, as in the Persian Gulf and in parts of the East Indian Archipelago, the reefs lose their fringing character, and appear as separate and irregularly scattered patches, often of considerable area. From the more vigorous growth of the coral on the outside, and from the conditions being less favourable in several respects within, such reefs are generally higher and more perfect in their marginal than in their central parts: hence these reefs sometimes assume, (and this circumstance ought not to be overlooked,) the appearance of atolls; but they differ from atolls in their central expanse being much less deep, in their form being less defined, and in being based on a shallow foundation. But when in a deep sea reefs fringe banks of sediment, which have accumulated beneath the surface, round either * See Baron Roussin's Pilote de Brésil, and accompanying hydrographical memoir. islands or submerged rocks, they are distinguished with difficulty on the one hand from encircling barrier-reefs, and on the other from atolls. In the West Indies there are reefs, which I should probably have arranged under both these classes, had not the existence of large and level banks, lying a little beneath the surface, ready to serve as the basis for the attachment of coral, been occasionally brought into view by the entire or partial absence of reefs on them,—and had not the formation of such banks, through the accumulation of sediment now in progress, been sufficiently evident. Fringing reefs sometimes coat, and thus protect the foundations of islands, which have been worn down by the surf to the level of the sea. According to Ehrenberg, this has been extensively the case with the islands in the Red Sea, which formerly ranged parallel to the shores of the mainland, with deep water within them: hence the reefs now coating their bases, are situated relatively to the land like barrier-reefs, although not belonging to that class;—but there are, as I believe, in the Red Sea some true barrier-reefs. The reefs of this sea and of the West Indies will be described in the Appendix. In some cases, fringing reefs appear to be considerably modified in outline by the course of the prevailing currents; Dr. J. Allan informs me that on the east coast of Madagascar almost every headland and low point of sand, has a coral-reef extending from it in a S.W. and N.E. line, parallel to the currents on that shore. I should think the influence of the currents chiefly consisted in causing an extension, in a certain direction, of a proper foundation for the attachment of the coral. Round many intertropical islands, for instance the Abrolhos on the coast of Brazil surveyed by Capt. FitzRoy, and, as I am informed by Mr. Cuming, round the Philippines, the bottom of the sea is entirely coated by irregular masses of coral, which although often of large size, do not reach the surface and form proper reefs. This must be owing either to insufficient growth, or to the absence of those kinds of corals which can withstand the breaking of the waves. The three classes, atoll-formed, barrier, and fringing reefs, together with the modifications just described of the latter, include all the most remarkable coral-formations anywhere existing. At the commencement of the last chapter in the volume, where I detail the principles on which the map (Plate III.) is coloured, the exceptional cases will be enumerated. ON THE GROWTH OF CORAL REEFS. IN this chapter I will give all the facts, which I have collected, relating to the distribution of coral-reefs,—to the conditions favourable to their increase,—to the rate of their growth,—and to the depth at which they are formed. These subjects have an important bearing on the theory of the origin of the different classes of coral-reefs. On the distribution of Coral-Reefs, and on the Conditions favourable to their Increase. WITH regard to the limits of latitude, over which coral-reefs extend, I have nothing new to add. The Bermuda Islands, in 32° 15' N. is the point furthest removed from the equator, in which they appear to exist; and it has been suggested, that their extension so far northward in this instance is owing to the warmth of the Gulf stream. In the Pacific, the Loo Choo islands, in lat. 27° N. have reefs on their shores, and there is an atoll in 28° 30', situated N.W. of the Sandwich Archipelago. In the Red Sea there are coral-reefs in lat. 30°. In the southern hemisphere coral-reefs do not extend so far from the equatorial sea. In the Southern Pacific there are only a few reefs beyond the line of the tropic, but Houtmans Abrolhos on the western shores of Australia in lat. 29° S., are of coral-formation. The proximity of volcanic land, owing to the lime generally evolved from it, has been thought to be favourable to the increase of coral-reefs. There is, however, not much foundation for this view; for no where are coral-reefs more extensive than on the shores of New Caledonia, and of north-eastern Australia, which consist of primary formations; and in the largest groups of atolls, namely the Maldiva, Chagos, Marshall, Gilbert, and Low Archipelagoes, there is no volcanic or other kind of rock, excepting that formed of coral. The entire absence of coral reefs in certain large areas within the tropical seas, is a remarkable fact. Thus no coral-reefs were observed, during the surveying voyages of the Beagle and her Tender on the west coast of South America south of the equator, or round the Galapagos Islands. It appears, also, that there are none* north of the Equator; Mr. Lloyd, who surveyed the isthmus of Panama, remarked to me, that although he had seen corals living in the Bay of Panama, yet he had never observed any reefs formed by them. I at first attributed this absence of reefs on the coasts of Peru and of the Galapagos Islands†, to the coldness of the currents from the south, but the Gulf of Panama is one of the hottest pelagic districts in the world.‡ In the central parts of the Pacific there are islands, entirely free from reefs; in some few of these cases I have thought, that this was owing to recent volcanic action; but the existence of reefs round the * I have been informed that this is the case, by Lieut. Ryder, R.N. and others who have had ample opportunities for observation. † The mean temperature of the surface sea from observations made by the direction of Capt. FitzRoy on the shores of the Galapagos Islands, between the 16th of September and the 20th of October, 1835, was 68° Fahr. The lowest temperature observed was 58°.5 at the S.W. end of Albemarle Island; and on the west coast of this island, it was several times 62° and 63°. The mean temperature of the sea in the Low Archipelago of atolls, and near Tahiti, from similar observations made on board the Beagle, was (although further from the equator) 77°.5, the lowest any day being 76°.5. Therefore we have here a difference of 9°.5 in mean temperature, and 18° in extremes; a difference doubtless quite sufficient to affect the distribution of organic beings in the two areas. ‡ Humboldt's Personal Narrative, vol. vii. p. 434. greater part of Hawaii, one of the Sandwich Islands, shows that recent volcanic action does not necessarily prevent their growth. In the last chapter I stated that the bottom of the sea round some islands is thickly coated with living corals, which nevertheless do not form reefs, either from insufficient growth, or from the species not being adapted to contend with the breaking waves. I have been assured by several people, that there are no coral-reefs on the west coast of Africa,* or round the islands in the Gulf of Guinea. This perhaps may be attributed, in part, to the sediment brought down by the many rivers debouching on that coast, and to the extensive mud-banks, which line great part of it. But the islands of St. Helena, Ascension, the Cape Verdes, St. Paul's, and Fernando Noronha, are, also, entirely without reefs, although they lie far out at sea, are composed of the same ancient volcanic rocks, and have the same general form, with those islands in the Pacific, the shores of which are surrounded by gigantic walls of coral-rock. With the exception of Bermuda, there is not a single coral reef in the central expanse of the Atlantic ocean. It will, perhaps, be suggested, that the quantity of carbonate of lime in different parts of the sea, may regulate the presence of reefs. But this cannot be the case, for at Ascension, the waves charged to excess precipitate a thick layer of calcareous matter on the tidal rocks; and at St. Jago, in the Cape Verdes, carbonate of lime, not only is abundant on the shores, but it forms the chief part of some upraised post-tertiary strata. The apparently capricious distribution, therefore, of coral-reefs, cannot be explained by any of these obvious causes: but, as the study of the terres- * It might be concluded, from a paper by Capt. Owen (Geograph. Jour. vol. ii. p. 89.) that the reefs off Cape St. Anne and the Sherboro' Islands were of coral, although the author states that they are not purely corralline. But I have been assured by Lieut. Holland, R.N. that these reefs are not of coral, or at least they do not at all resemble those in the West Indies. trial and better known half of the world, must convince every one that no station capable of supporting life is lost,—nay more, that there is a struggle for each station, between the different orders of nature,—we may conclude that in those parts of the intertropical sea, in which there are no coral-reefs, there are other organic bodies, supplying the place of the reef-building polypifers. It has been shown in the chapter on Keeling atoll that there are some species of large fish, and the whole tribe of Holothuriæ which prey on the tenderer parts of the corals. On the other hand, the polypifers in their turn must prey on some other organic beings; the decrease of which from any cause, would cause a proportionate destruction of the living coral. The relations, therefore, which determine the formation of reefs on any shore, by the vigorous growth of the efficient kinds of coral, must be very complex, and with our imperfect knowledge quite inexplicable. From these considerations, we may infer that changes in the condition of the sea, not obvious to our senses, might destroy all the coral-reefs in one area, and cause them to appear in another: thus, the Pacific or Indian ocean might become as barren of coral-reefs as the Atlantic now is, without our being able to assign any adequate cause for such a change. It has been a question with some naturalists, which part of a reef is most favourable to the growth of coral. The great mounds of living Porites and of Millepora round Keeling atoll occur exclusively on the extreme verge of the reef, which is washed by a constant succession of breakers; and living coral no where else forms solid masses. At the Marshall islands the larger kinds of coral (chiefly species of Astræa, a genus closely allied to Porites) "which form rocks measuring several fathoms in thickness," prefer, according to Chamisso*, the most violent surf. I have stated that the outer margin of the Maldiva atolls consists of living corals (some of which, if not all, are of the same species with those at Keeling atoll), and here the surf is so tremendous, that even large ships have * Kotzebue's First Voyage, (Eng. Transl.), vol. iii. pp. 142, 143, 331. been thrown, by a single heave of the sea, high and dry on the reef, all on board thus escaping with their lives. Ehrenberg* remarks, that in the Red Sea the strongest corals live on the outer reefs, and appear to love the surf; he adds, that the more branched kinds abound a little way within, but that even these in still more protected places, become smaller. Many other facts having a similar tendency might be adduced.† It has, however, been doubted by MM. Quoy and Gaimard, whether any kind of coral can even withstand, much less flourish in, the breakers of an open sea:‡ they affirm that the saxigenous lithophytes flourish only where the water is tranquil, and the heat intense. This statement has passed from one geological work to another; nevertheless, the protection of the whole reef undoubtedly is due to those kinds of coral, which cannot exist in the situations thought by these naturalists to be most favourable to them. For should the outer and living margin perish, of any one of the many low coral-islands, round which a line of great breakers is incessantly foaming, the whole, it is scarcely possible to doubt, would be washed away and destroyed, in less than half a century. But the vital energies of the corals conquer the mechanical power of the waves; and the large fragments of reef torn up by every storm, are replaced by the slow but steady growth of the innumerable polypifers, which form the living zone on its outer edge. From these facts, it is certain, that the strongest and most massive corals flourish, where most exposed. The less perfect state of the reef of most atolls on the leeward and less exposed side, compared with its state to windward; and the analogous * Ehrenberg, über die Nätur und Bildung der Corallen Bänke im rothen Meere, p. 49. † In the West Indies, as I am informed by Capt. Bird Allen, R.N., it is the common belief of those, who are best acquainted with the reefs, that the coral flourishes most, where freely exposed to the swell of the open sea. ‡ Annales des Sciences Naturelles, tom. vi. pp. 276, 278.—"Là où les ondes sont agitées, les Lytophytés ne peuvent travailler, parce qu'elles détruraient leurs fragiles édifices," &c. case of the greater number of breaches on the near sides of those atolls in the Maldiva Archipelago, which afford some protection to each other, are obviously explained by this circumstance. If the question had been, under what conditions the greater number of species of coral, not regarding their bulk and strength, were developed, I should answer,—probably in the situations described by MM. Quoy and Gaimard, where the water is tranquil and the heat intense. The total number of species of coral in the circumtropical seas must be very great: in the Red Sea alone, 120 kinds, according to Ehrenberg,* have been observed. The same author has observed that the recoil of the sea from a steep shore is injurious to the growth of coral, although waves breaking over a bank are not so. Ehrenberg also states, that where there is much sediment, placed so as to be liable to be moved by the waves, there is little or no coral; and a collection of living specimens placed by him on a sandy shore died in the course of a few days.† An experiment, however, will presently be related, in which some large masses of living coral increased rapidly in size, after having been secured by stakes on a sand-bank. That loose sediment should be injurious to the living polypifers, appears, at first sight, probable; and accordingly, in sounding off Keeling atoll, and (as will hereafter be shown) off Mauritius, the arming of the lead invariably came up clean, where the coral was growing vigorously. This same circumstance has probably given rise to a strange belief, which, according to Capt. Owen,‡ is general amongst the inhabitants of the Maldiva atolls, namely, that corals have roots, and therefore that if merely broken down to the surface, they grow up again; but if rooted out, they are permanently destroyed. By this means, the inhabitants keep their harbours clear; and thus the French Governor of St. Mary's, in Madagascar, * Ehrenberg, über die Nätur, &c. &c. p. 46. † Ibid. p. 49. ‡ Capt. Owen on the Geography of the Maldiva Islands, Geograph. Journal, vol. ii. p. 88. "cleared out and made a beautiful little port at that place." For it is probable that sand would accumulate in the hollows formed by tearing out the corals, but not on the broken and projecting stumps, and therefore, in the former case, the fresh growth of the coral might be thus prevented. In the last chapter I remarked, that fringing reefs are almost universally breached, where streams enter the sea.* Most authors have attributed this fact to the injurious effects of the fresh water, even where it enters the sea only in small quantity, and during a part of the year. No doubt brackish water would prevent or retard the growth of coral; but I believe that the mud and sand, which is deposited, even by rivulets when flooded, is a much more efficient check. The reef, on each side of the channel leading into Port Louis at Mauritius, ends abruptly in a wall, at the foot of which I sounded, and found a bed of thick mud. This steepness of the sides appears to be a general character in such breaches: Cook,† speaking of one at Raiatea, says: "like all the rest, it is very steep on both sides." Now, if it were the fresh water mingling with the salt, which prevented the growth of coral, the reef certainly would not terminate abruptly; but as the polypifers nearest the impure stream would grow less vigorously than those farther off, so would the reef gradually thin away. On the other hand, the sediment brought down from the land would only prevent the growth of the coral in the line of its deposition, but would not check it on the side, so that the reefs might increase till they overhung the bed of the channel. The breaches are much fewer in number, and front only the larger valleys in reefs of the encircling barrier class. They probably are kept open in the * Lieut. Wellstead and others have remarked that this is the case in the Red Sea: Dr. Rüppell (Reise. in Abyss. Band. i. p. 142) says that there are pear-shaped harbours in the upraised coral-coast, into which periodical streams enter. From this circumstance, I presume, we must infer that before the upheaval of the strata now forming the coast-land, fresh water and sediment entered the sea at these points; and the coral being thus prevented growing, the pear-shaped harbours were produced. † Cook's First Voyage, vol. ii. p. 271.—(Hawkesworth's Edit.) same manner, as those into the lagoon of an atoll, namely, by the force of the currents and the drifting outwards of fine sediment. Their position in front of valleys, although often separated from the land by deep-water lagoon-channels, which it might be thought would entirely remove the injurious effects both of the fresh water and the sediment, will receive a simple explanation when we discuss the origin of barrier-reefs. In the vegetable kingdom every different station has its peculiar group of plants, and similar relations appear to prevail with corals. We have already described the great difference between the corals within the lagoon of an atoll and those on its outer margin. The corals, also, on the margin of Keeling Island occurred in zones: thus the Porites and Millepora complanata grow to a large size, only where they are washed by a heavy sea, and are killed by a short exposure to the air; whereas, three species of Nullipora also live amidst the breakers, but are able to survive uncovered for a part of each tide: at greater depths, a strong Madrepora and Millepora alcicornis are the commonest kinds; the former appearing to be confined to this part: beneath the zone of massive corals, minute encrusting corallines and other organic bodies live. If we compare the external margin of the reef at Keeling atoll with that on the leeward side of Mauritius, which are very differently circumstanced, we shall find a corresponding difference in the appearance of the corals. At the latter place, the genus Madrepora is preponderant over every other kind; and beneath the zone of massive corals, there are large beds of Seriatopora. There is also a marked difference, according to Captain Moresby,* between the great branching corals of the Red Sea, and those on the reefs of the Maldiva atolls. These facts, which in themselves are deserving of notice, bear, perhaps, not very remotely on a remarkable circumstance which has been pointed out to me by Capt. Moresby, * Capt. Moresby on the Northern Maldiva Atolls, Geograph. Journ. vol. v. p. 401. namely, that, with very few exceptions, none of the coral-knolls within the lagoons of Peros Banhos, Diego Garcia and the Great Chagos Bank, (all situated in the Chagos group,) rise to the surface of the water; whereas all those, with equally few exceptions, within Solomon and Egmont atolls in the same group, and likewise within the large southern Maldiva atolls, reach the surface. I make these statements, after having examined the charts of each atoll. In the lagoon of Peros Banhos, which is nearly twenty miles across, there is only one single reef which rises to the surface: in Diego Garcia there are seven, but several of these lie close to the margin of the lagoon, and need scarcely have been reckoned: in the great Chagos Bank there is not one. On the other hand, in the lagoons of some of the great southern Maldiva atolls, although thickly studded with reefs, every one without exception, rises to the surface; and on an average there are less than two submerged reefs in each atoll: in the northern atolls, however, the submerged lagoon-reefs are not quite so rare. The submerged reefs in the Chagos atolls generally have from one to seven fathoms water on them, but some have from seven to ten. Most of them are small, with very steep sides:* at Peros Banhos they rise from a depth of about thirty fathoms, and some of them in the Great Chagos Bank from above forty fathoms: they are covered, Capt. Moresby informs me, with living and healthy coral, two and three feet high, consisting of several species. Why then have not these lagoon-reefs reached the surface, like the innumerable ones in the atolls above named? If we attempt to assign any difference in their external conditions, as the cause of this diversity, we are at once baffled: the lagoon of Diego Garcia is not deep, and is most wholly surrounded by its reef; Peros Banhos is very deep, much larger, with many wide passages communicating with the open sea. On the other hand, of those atolls, in which all, or nearly all * Some of these statements were not communicated to me verbally by Capt. Moresby, but are taken from the MS. account, before alluded to, of the Chagos Group. the lagoon-reefs have reached the surface, some are small, others large, some shallow, others deep, some well enclosed, and others open. Capt. Moresby informs me that he has seen a French chart of Diego Garcia made eighty years before his survey, and apparently very accurate; and from it he infers, that during this interval there has not been the smallest change in the depth on any of the knolls within the lagoon. It is, also, known that during the last fifty-one years, the eastern channel into the lagoon, has neither become narrower, nor decreased in depth; and as there are numerous small knolls of living coral within it, some change might have been anticipated. Moreover, as the whole reef round the lagoon of this atoll has been converted into land—an unparalleled case, I believe, in an atoll of such large size,—and as the strip of land is for considerable spaces more than half a mile wide—also a very unusual circumstance,—we have the best possible evidence, that Diego Garcia has remained at its present level for a very long period. With this fact, and with the knowledge, that no sensible change has taken place during eighty years in the coral knolls, and considering that every single reef has reached the surface in other atolls, which do not present the smallest appearance of being older that Diego Garcia and Peros Banhos, and which are placed under the same external conditions with them, one is led to conclude that these submerged reefs, although covered with luxuriant coral, have no tendency to grow upwards, and that they would remain at their present levels for an almost indefinite period. From the number of these knolls, from their position, size, and form,—many of them being only one or two hundred yards across, with a rounded outline, and precipitous sides,—it is indisputable that they have been formed by the growth of coral; and this makes the case much more remarkable. In Peros Banhos and in the Great Chagos bank, some of these almost columnar masses are 200 feet high, and their summits lie only from two to eight fathoms beneath the surface; there- fore, a small proportional amount more of growth would cause them to attain the surface, like those numerous knolls, which rise from an equally great depth within the Maldiva atolls. We can hardly suppose that time has been wanting for the upward growth of the coral, whilst in Diego Garcia, the broad annular strip of land, formed by the continued accumulation of detritus, shows how long this atoll has remained at its present level. We must look to some other cause than the rate of growth; and I suspect it will be found in the reefs being formed of different species of corals, adapted to live at different depths. The Great Chagos bank is situated in the centre of the Chagos group, and the Pitt and Speaker banks at its two extreme points. These banks resemble atolls, except in their external rim being about eight fathoms submerged, and in being formed of dead rock, with very little living coral on it: a portion nine miles long of the annular reef of Peros Banhos atoll is in the same condition. These facts, as will hereafter be shown, render it very probable that the whole group at some former period subsided seven or eight fathoms; and that the coral perished on the outer margin of those atolls which are now submerged, but that it continued alive, and grew up to the surface on those which are now perfect. If these atolls did subside, and if from the suddenness of the movement or from any other cause, those corals which are better adapted to live at a certain depth than at the surface, once got possession of the knolls, supplanting the former occupants, they would exert little or no tendency to grow upwards. To illustrate this, I may observe, that if the corals of the upper zone on the outer edge of Keeling atoll were to perish, it is improbable that those of the lower zone would grow to the surface, and thus become exposed to conditions for which they do not appear to be adapted. The conjecture, that the corals on the submerged knolls within the Chagos atolls have analogous habits with those of the lower zone outside Keeling atoll, received some support from a remark by Captain Moresby, namely, that they have a different appearance from those on the reefs in the Maldiva atolls, which, as we have seen, all rise to the surface: he compares the kind of difference to that of the vegetation under different climates. I have entered at considerable length into this case, although unable to throw much light on it, in order to show that an equal tendency to upward growth ought not to be attributed to all coral-reefs,—to those situated at different depths,—to those forming the ring of an atoll or those on the knolls within a lagoon,—to those in one area and those in another. The inference, therefore, that one reef could not grow up to the surface within a given time, because another, not known to be covered with the same species of corals, and not known to be placed under conditions exactly the same, has not within the same time reached the surface, is unsound. On the Rate of Growth of Coral-reefs. THE remark made at the close of the last section, naturally leads to this division of our subject, which has not, I think, hitherto been considered under a right point of view. Ehrenberg* has stated, that in the Red Sea, the corals only coat other rocks in a layer from one to two feet in thickness, or at most to a fathom and a half; and he disbelieves that, in any case, they form, by their own proper growth, great masses, stratum over stratum. A nearly similar observation has been made by MM. Quoy and Gaimard,† with respect to the thickness of some upraised beds of coral, which they examined at Timor and some other places. Ehrenberg‡ saw certain large massive corals in the Red Sea, which he imagines to be of such vast antiquity, that they might have been beheld by Pharaoh; and according to Mr. Lyell§ there are certain corals * Ehrenberg, as before cited, pp. 39, 46, and 50. † Annales des Sciences, Nat. tom. vi. p. 28. ‡ Ehrenberg, ut sup. p. 42. § Lyell's Principles of Geology, Book iii. ch. xviii. at Bermuda, which are known by tradition, to have been living for centuries. To show how slowly coral-reefs grow upwards, Captain Beechey* has adduced the case of the Dolphin Reef off Tahiti, which has remained at the same depth beneath the surface, namely, about two fathoms and a half, for a period of sixty-seven years. There are reefs in the Red Sea, which certainly do not appear† to have increased in dimensions during the last half century, and from the comparison of old charts with recent surveys, probably not during the last two hundred years. These, and other similar facts, have so strongly impressed many with the belief of the extreme slowness of the growth of corals, that they have even doubted the possibility of islands in the great oceans having been formed by their agency. Others again, who have not been overwhelmed by this difficulty, have admitted that it would require thousands, and tens of thousands of years, to form a mass even of inconsiderable thickness: but the subject has not, I believe, been viewed in the proper light. That masses of considerable thickness have been formed by the growth of coral, may be inferred with certainty from the following facts. In the deep lagoons of Peros Banhos and of the Great Chagos bank, there are, as already described, small steep-sided knolls covered with living coral. There are similar knolls in the southern Maldiva atolls, some of which, as Captain Moresby assures me, are less than a hundred yards in diameter, and rise to the surface from a depth of between 250 and 300 feet. Considering their number, form and position, it would be preposterous to suppose that they are based on pinnacles of any rock, not of coral formation; or that sediment could have been heaped up into such small and steep isolated cones. As no kind of living coral grows above the height of a few feet, we are compelled to suppose that these knolls have been formed by the successive growth and death of many individuals,—first one being broken off or killed by some accident, and then another, and * Beechey's Voyage to the Pacific, ch. viii. † Ehrenberg, ut sup. p. 43. one set of species being replaced by another set with different habits, as the reef rose nearer the surface, or as other changes supervened. The spaces between the corals would become filled up with fragments and sand, and such matter would probably soon be consolidated, for we learn from Lieut. Nelson,* that at Bermuda a process of this kind takes place beneath water, without the aid of evaporation. In reefs, also, of the barrier class, we may feel sure, as I have shown, that masses of great thickness have been formed by the growth of coral: in the case of Vanikoro, judging only from the depth of the moat between the land and the reef, the wall of coral-rock must be at least 300 feet in vertical thickness. It is unfortunate that the upraised coral islands in the Pacific have not been examined by a geologist. The cliffs of Elizabeth Island, in the Low Archipelago, are eighty feet high, and appear from Captain Beechey's description, to consist of a homogeneous coral rock. From the isolated position of this island we may safely infer that it is an upraised atoll, and therefore that it has been formed by masses of coral, grown together: Savage Island seems, from the description of the younger Forster,† to have a similar structure, and its shores are about forty feet high: some of the Cook Islands also appear‡ to be similarly composed. Capt. Belcher, R.N. in a letter, which Capt. Beaufort showed me at the Admiralty, speaking of Bow atoll, says, "I have succeeded in boring forty-five feet through coral-sand, when the auger became jammed by the falling in of the surrounding creamy matter." On one of the Maldiva atolls, Capt. Moresby bored to a depth of twenty-six feet, when his auger also broke: he has had the kindness to give me the matter brought up; it is perfectly white, and like finely triturated coral-rock. In my description of Keeling atoll, I have given some facts, which show that the reef probably has grown out- * Geological Transactions, vol. v. p. 113. † Forster's Voyage round the World with Cook, vol. ii. pp. 163, 167. ‡ Williams' Narrative of Missionary Enterprize, p. 30. wards; and I found, just within the outer margin, the great mounds of Porites and of Millepora, with their summits lately killed, and their sides subsequently thickened by the growth of the coral: a layer, also, of Nullipora had already coated the dead surface. As the external slope of the reef, is the same round the whole of this atoll, and round many other atolls, the angle of inclination must result from an adaption between the growing powers of the coral, and the force of the breakers, and their action on the loose sediment. The reef, therefore, could not increase outwards, without a nearly equal addition to every part of the slope, so that the original inclination might be preserved, and this would require a large amount of sediment, all derived from the wear of corals and shells, to be added to the lower part. Moreover, at Keeling atoll, and probably in many other cases, the different kinds of corals would have to encroach on each other; thus the Nulliporæ cannot increase outwards without encroaching on the Porites and Millepora complanata, as is now taking place; nor these latter without encroaching on the strongly branched Madrepora, the Millepora alcicornis, and some Astræas; nor these again without a foundation being formed for them within the requisite depth, by the accumulation of sediment. How slow, then, must be the ordinary lateral or outward growth of such reefs. But off Christmas atoll, where the sea is much more shallow than is usual, we have good reason to believe that, within a period not very remote, the reef has increased considerably in width. The land has the extraordinary breadth of three miles; it consists of parallel ridges of shells and broken corals, which furnish "an incontestable proof," as observed by Cook,* "that the island has been produced by accessions from the sea, and is in a state of increase." The land is fronted by a coral-reef, and from the manner in which islets are known to be formed, we may feel confident that the reef was not three miles wide, when the first, or most backward ridge, was * Cook's Third Voyage, Book iii. ch. x. thrown up; and, therefore, we must conclude that the reef has grown outwards during the accumulation of the successive ridges. Here then, a wall of coral-rock of very considerable breadth has been formed by the outward growth of the living margin, within a period, during which ridges of shells and corals, lying on the bare surface, have not decayed. There can be little doubt, from the account given by Capt. Beechey, that Matilda atoll, in the Low Archipelago, has been converted in the space of thirty-four years, from being, as described by the crew of a wrecked whaling vessel, a "reef of rocks," into a lagoon island, fourteen miles in length, with "one of its sides covered nearly the whole way with high trees."* The islets, also, on Keeling atoll, it has been shown, have increased in length, and since the construction of an old chart, several of them have become united into one long islet: but in this case, and in that of Matilda atoll, we have no proof, and can only infer as probable, that the reef, that is the foundation of the islets, has increased as well as the islets themselves. After these considerations, I attach little importance, as indicating the ordinary and still less the possible rate of outward growth of coral-reefs, to the fact that certain reefs in the Red Sea have not increased during a long interval of time; or to other such cases, as that of Ouluthy atoll in the Caroline group, where every islet, described a hundred years before by Cantova, was found in the same state by Lutkè,†—without it could be shown that, in these cases, the conditions were favourable to the vigorous and unopposed growth of the corals living in the different zones of depth, and that a proper basis for the extension of the reef was present. The former conditions must depend on many contingencies, and in the deep oceans where coral formations most abound, * Beechey's Voyage to the Pacific, ch. vii. and viii. † F. Lutkè's Voyage autour du monde. In the group Elato, however, it appears that what is now the islet Falipi, is called in Cantova's Chart, the Banc de Falipi. It is not stated whether this has been caused by the growth of coral, or by the accumulation of sand. a basis within the requisite depth can rarely be present. Nor do I attach any importance to the fact of certain submerged reefs, as those off Tahiti or those within Diego Garcia, not now being nearer the surface than they were many years ago, as an indication of the rate under favourable circumstances of the upward growth of reefs; after it has been shown, that all the reefs have grown to the surface in some of the Chagos atolls, but that in neighbouring atolls, which appear to be of equal antiquity and to be exposed to the same external conditions, every reef remains submerged; for we are almost driven to attribute this to a difference, not in the rate of growth, but in the habits of the corals in the two cases. In an old-standing reef, the corals, which are so different in kind on different parts of it, are probably all adapted to the stations they occupy, and hold their places, like other organic beings, by a struggle one with another, and with external nature; hence we may infer that their growth would generally be slow, except under peculiarly favourable circumstances. Almost the only natural condition, allowing a quick upward growth of the whole surface of a reef, would be a slow subsidence of the area in which it stood;—if, for instance, Keeling atoll were to subside two or three feet, can we doubt that the protecting margin of live coral, about half an inch in thickness, which surrounds the dead upper surfaces of the mounds of Porites, would in this case form a concentric layer over them, and the reef thus increase upwards, instead of, as at present, outwards? The Nulliporæ are now encroaching on the Porites and Millepora, but in this case might we not confidently expect that the latter would, in their turn, encroach on the Nulliporæ? After a subsidence of this kind, the sea would gain on the islets, and the great fields of dead but upright corals in the lagoon, would be covered by a sheet of clear water; and might we not then expect that these reefs would rise to the surface, as they anciently did when the lagoon was less confined by islets, and as they did within a period of ten years in the schooner- channel, cut by the inhabitants. In one of the Maldiva atolls, a reef, which within a very few years existed as an islet bearing cocoa-nut trees, was found by Lieut. Prentice "entirely covered with live coral and Madrepore." The natives believe that the islet was washed away by a change in the currents, but if, instead of this, it had quietly subsided, surely every part of the island which offered a solid foundation, would in a like manner have become coated with living coral. Through steps such as these, any thickness of rock, composed of a singular intermixture of various kinds of corals, shells, and calcareous sediment, might be formed; but without subsidence, the thickness would necessarily be determined by the depth at which the reef-building polypifers can exist. If it be asked, at what rate in years I suppose a reef of coral favourably circumstanced could grow up from a given depth; I should answer, that we have no precise evidence on this point, and comparatively little concern with it. We see, in innumerable points over wide areas, that the rate has been sufficient, either to bring up the reefs from various depths to the surface, or, as is more probable, to keep them at the surface, during progressive subsidences; and this is a much more important standard of comparison than any cycle of years. It may, however, be inferred from the following facts, that the rate in years under favourable circumstances would be very far from slow. Dr. Allan of Forres has, in his MS. Thesis deposited in the library of the Edinburgh University, (extracts from which I owe to the kindness of Dr. Malcolmson,) the following account of some experiments, which he tried during his travels in the years 1830 to 1832 on the East Coast of Madagascar. "To ascertain the rise and progress of the coral family, and fix the number of species met with at Foul Point (Lat. 17° 40') twenty species of coral were taken off the reef and planted apart on a sand-bank three feet deep at low water. Each portion weighed ten pounds, and was kept in its place by stakes. Similar quantities were placed in a clump and secured as the rest. This was done in December 1830. In July following, each detached mass was nearly level with the sea at low water, quite immoveable, and several feet long, stretching, as the parent reef, with the coast current from north to south. The masses accumulated in a clump were found equally increased, but some of the species in such unequal ratios, as to be growing over each other." The loss of Dr. Allan's magnificent collection by shipwreck, unfortunately prevents its being known to what genera these corals belonged; but from the numbers experimented on, it is certain that all the more conspicuous kinds must have been included. Dr. Allan informs me, in a letter, that he believes it was a Madrepora, which grew most vigorously. One may be permitted to suspect that the level of the sea might possibly have been somewhat different at the two stated periods; nevertheless, it is quite evident that the growth of the ten-pound masses, during the six or seven months, at the end of which they were found immoveably fixed* and several feet in length, must have been very great. The fact of the different kinds of coral, when placed in one clump, having increased in extremely unequal ratios, is very interesting, as it shows the manner in which a reef, supporting many species of coral, would probably be affected by a change in the external conditions favouring one kind more than another. The growth of the masses of coral in N. and S. lines parallel to the prevailing currents, whether due to the drifting of sediment or to the simple movement of the water, is, also, a very interesting circumstance. A fact, communicated to me by Lieut. Wellstead, I.N., in some degree corroborates the result of Dr. Allan's experiments: it is, that in the Persian Gulf a ship had her copper bottom encrusted in the course of twenty months with a layer of coral, two feet in thickness, which it required great force to remove, when the vessel was docked: it was not ascertained * It is stated by Mr. De la Beche (Geological Manual, p. 143.) on the authority of Mr. Lloyd, who surveyed the Isthmus of Panama, that some specimens of Polypifers, placed by him in a sheltered pool of water, were found in the course of a few days firmly fixed by the secretion of a stony matter, to the bottom. to what order this coral belonged. The case of the schooner-channel, choked up with coral in an interval of less than ten years, in the lagoon of Keeling atoll, should be here borne in mind. We may also infer, from the trouble which the inhabitants of the Maldiva atolls take to root out, as they express it, the coral-knolls from their harbours, that their growth can hardly be very slow.* From the facts given in this section, it may be concluded, first, that considerable thicknesses of rock have certainly been formed within the present geological æra by the growth of coral and the accumulation of its detritus; and, secondly, that the increase of individual corals and of reefs, both outwards or horizontally and upwards or vertically, under the peculiar conditions favourable to such increase, is not slow, when referred either to the standard of the average oscillations of level in the earth's crust, or to the more precise but less important one of a cycle of years. * Mr. Stuchbury (West of England Journal, No. I. p. 50.) has described a specimen of Agaricia, "weighing 2 lbs. 9 oz. which surrounds a species of oyster, whose age could not be more than two years, and yet is completely enveloped by this dense coral." I presume that the oyster was living when the specimen was procured; otherwise the fact tells nothing. Mr. Stuchbury also mentions an anchor, which had become entirely encrusted with coral in fifty years; other cases, however, are recorded of anchors which have long remained amidst coral reefs without having become coated. The anchor of the Beagle, in 1832, after having been down exactly one month at Rio de Janeiro, was so thickly coated by two species of Tubularia, that large spaces of the iron were entirely concealed; the tufts of this horny zoophyte were between two and three inches in length. It has been attempted to compute, but I believe erroneously, the rate of growth of a reef, from the fact mentioned by Capt. Beechey of the Chama gigas being embedded in coral rock. But it should be remembered, that some species of this genus invariably live, both whilst young and old, in cavities, which the animal has the power of enlarging with its growth. I saw many of these shells thus embedded in the outer 'flat' of Keeling atoll, which is composed of dead rock; and therefore the cavities in this case had no relation whatever with the growth of coral. M. Lesson, also, speaking of this shell (Partie Zoolog. Voyage de la Coquille) has remarked, "que constamment ses valves étaient engagés complètement dans la masse des Madrepores." On the Depths at which Reef-building Polypifers live. I HAVE already described in detail, which might have appeared trivial, the nature of the bottom of the sea immediately surrounding Keeling atoll; and I will now describe with almost equal care the soundings off the fringing reefs of Mauritius. I have preferred this arrangement, for the sake of grouping together facts of a similar nature. I sounded with the wide bell-shaped lead which Capt. FitzRoy used at Keeling Island, but my examination of the bottom was confined to a few miles of coast (between Port Louis and Tomb Bay) on the leeward side of the island. The edge of the reef is formed of great shapeless masses of branching Madrepores, which chiefly consist of two species,—apparently M. corymbosa and pocillifera,—mingled with a few other kinds of coral. These masses are separated from each other by the most irregular gullies and cavities, into which the lead sinks many feet. Outside this irregular border of Madrepores, the water deepens gradually to twenty fathoms, which depth generally is found at the distance of from half to three quarters of a mile from the reef. A little further out the depth is thirty fathoms, and thence the bank slopes rapidly into the depths of the ocean. This inclination is very gentle compared with that outside Keeling and other atolls, but compared with most coasts it is steep. The water was so clear outside the reef, that I could distinguish every object forming the rugged bottom. In this part, and to a depth of eight fathoms, I sounded repeatedly, and at each cast pounded the bottom with the broad lead, nevertheless the arming invariably came up perfectly clean, but deeply indented. From eight to fifteen fathoms a little calcareous sand was occasionally brought up, but more frequently the arming was simply indented. In all this space the two Madrepores above mentioned, and two species of Astræa, with rather large* stars, seemed the commonest kinds; and it must be noticed that twice at the depth of 15 fathoms, the arming was marked with a clean impression of an Astræa. Besides these lithophytes, some fragments of the Millepora alcicornis, which occurs in the same relative position at Keeling Island, were brought up; and in the deeper parts there were large beds of a Seriatopora, different from S. subulata, but closely allied to it. On the beach within the reef, the rolled fragments consisted chiefly of the corals just mentioned, and of a massive Porites, like that at Keeling atoll, of a Meandrina, Pocillopora verrucosa and of numerous fragments of Nullipora. From fifteen to twenty fathoms the bottom was, with few exceptions, either formed of sand, or thickly covered with Seriatopora: this delicate coral seems to form at these depths extensive beds, unmingled with any other kind. At 20 fathoms, one sounding brought up a fragment of Madrepora apparently M. pocillifera, and I believe it is the same species (for I neglected to bring specimens from both stations) which mainly forms the upper margin of the reef; if so, it grows in depths varying from 0 to 20 fathoms. Between twenty and thirty-three fathoms I obtained several soundings and they all showed a sandy bottom, with one exception * Since the preceding pages were printed off, I have received from Mr. Lyell a very interesting pamphlet, entitled Remarks upon Coral-Formations, &c., by J. Couthouy, Boston, United States, 1842. There is a statement (p. 6), on the authority of the Rev. J. Williams, corroborating the remarks made by Ehrenberg and Lyell, (p. 71 of this volume,) on the antiquity of certain individual corals in the Red Sea and at Bermuda; namely, that at Upolu, one of the Navigator islands, "particular clumps of coral are known to the fishermen by name, derived from either some particular configuration or tradition attached to them, and handed down from time immemorial." With respect to the thickness of masses of coral-rock, it clearly appears, from the descriptions given by Mr. Couthouy (pp. 34, 58), that Mangaia and Aurora islands are upraised atolls, composed of coral-rock: the level summit of the former is about 300 feet, and that of Aurora island is 200 feet above the sea-level. at 30 fathoms, when the arming came up scooped out, as if by the margin of a large Caryophyllia. Beyond 33 fathoms I sounded only once; and from 86 fathoms, at the distance of one mile and a third from the edge of the reef, the arming brought up calcareous sand with a pebble of volcanic rock. The circumstance of the arming having invariably come up quite clean, when sounding within a certain number of fathoms off the reefs of Mauritius and Keeling atoll (eight fathoms in the former case, and twelve in the latter), and of its having always come up (with one exception) smoothed and covered with sand, when the depth exceeded 20 fathoms, probably indicates a criterion, by which the limits of the vigorous growth of coral might in all cases be readily ascertained. I do not, however, suppose that if a vast number of soundings were obtained round these islands, the limit above assigned would be found never to vary, but I conceive the facts are sufficient to show, that the exceptions would be few. The circumstance of a gradual change, in the two cases, from a field of clean coral to a smooth sandy bottom, is far more important in indicating the depth at which the larger kinds of coral flourish, than almost any number of separate observations on the depth, at which certain species have been dredged up. For we can understand the gradation, only as a prolonged struggle against unfavourable conditions. If a person were to find the soil clothed with turf on the banks of a stream of water, but on going to some distance on one side of it, he observed the blades of grass growing thinner and thinner, with intervening patches of sand, until he entered a desert of sand, he would safely conclude, especially if changes of the same kind were noticed in other places, that the presence of the water was absolutely necessary to the formation of a thick bed of turf: so may we conclude, with the same feeling of certainty, that thick beds of coral are formed only at small depths beneath the surface of the sea. I have endeavoured to collect every fact, which might either invalidate or corroborate this conclusion. Capt. Mores- by, whose opportunities for observation during his survey of the Maldiva and Chagos Archipelagoes have been unrivalled, informs me, that the upper part or zone of the steep-sided reefs, on the inner and outer coasts of the atolls in both groups, invariably consists of coral, and the lower parts of sand. At seven or eight fathoms depth, the bottom is formed, as could be seen through the clear water, of great living masses of coral, which at about ten fathoms generally stand some way apart from each other, with patches of white sand between them, and at a little greater depth these patches become united into a smooth steep slope, without any coral. Capt. Moresby, also, informs me in support of his statement, that he found only decayed coral on the Padua Bank (northern part of the Laccadive group) which has an average depth between 25 and 35 fathoms, but that on some other banks in the same group with only ten or twelve fathoms water on them, (for instance, the Tillacapeni bank), the coral was living. With regard to the coral-reefs in the Red Sea, Ehrenberg has the following passage. "The living corals do not descend there into great depths. On the edges of islets and near reefs, where the depth was small, very many lived; but we found no more even at six fathoms. The pearl-fishers at Yemen and Massaua asserted that there was no coral near the pearl-banks at nine fathoms depth, but only sand. We were not able to institute any more special researches."* I am, however, assured both by Captain Moresby and Lieut. Wellstead, that in the more northern parts of the Red Sea, there are extensive beds of living coral at a depth of 25 fathoms, in which the anchors of their vessels were frequently entangled. Captain Moresby attributes the less depth, at which the corals are able to live in the places mentioned by Ehrenberg, to the greater quantity of sediment there; and the situations, where they were flourishing at the depth of 25 fathoms, were protected, and the water was extraordinarily limpid. On the leeward side * Ehrenberg über die Natur, &c. p. 50. of Mauritius where I found the coral growing at a somewhat greater depth than at Keeling atoll, the sea, owing apparently to its tranquil state, was likewise very clear. Within the lagoons of some of the Marshall atolls, where the water can be but little agitated, there are, according to Kotzebue, living beds of coral in 25 fathoms. From these facts, and considering the manner in which the beds of clean coral off Mauritius, Keeling Island, the Maldiva and Chagos atolls, graduated into a sandy slope, it appears very probable that the depth, at which reef-building polypifers can exist, is partly determined by the extent of inclined surface, which the currents of the sea and the recoiling waves have the power to keep free from sediment. MM. Quoy and Gaimard* believe that the growth of coral is confined within very limited depths; and they state that they never found any fragment of an Astræa, (the genus they consider most efficient in forming reefs) at a depth above 25 or 30 feet. But we have seen that in several places the bottom of the sea is paved with massive corals at more than twice this depth; and at 15 fathoms (or thrice this depth) off the reefs of Mauritius, the arming was marked with the distinct impression of a living Astræa. Millepora alcicornis lives in from 0 to 12 fathoms, and the genera Madrepora and Seriatopora from 0 to 20 fathoms. Capt. Moresby has given me a specimen of Sideropora scabra (Porites of Lamarck) brought up alive from 17 fathoms. Mr. Couthouy† states that he has dredged up on the Bahama banks considerable masses of Meandrina from 16 fathoms, and he has seen this coral growing in 20 fathoms. A Caryophyllia, half an inch in diameter, was dredged up alive from 80 fathoms off Juan Fernandez (Lat. 33° S.) by Capt. P. P. King:‡ this is the most remarkable fact with which I am acquainted, shewing the depth at which a genus of corals often found on reefs, * Annales des Sci. Nat. tom. vi. † Remarks on Coral Formations, p. 12. ‡ I am indebted to Mr. Stokes for having kindly communicated this fact to me, together with much other valuable information. can exist.* We ought, however, to feel less surprise at this fact, as Caryophyllia alone of the lamelliform genera, ranges * I will record in the form of a note all the facts that I have been able to collect on the depths, both within and without the tropics, at which those corals and corallines can live, which there is no reason to suppose ever materially aid in the construction of a reef. |NAME OF ZOOPHYTE.||Depth in fathoms||COUNTRY AND S. LATITUDE||AUTHORITY.| |Sertularia||40||Cape Horn 66°||[Where none is given, the observation is my own.]| |,, A minute scarlet encrusting species, found living||190||Keeling At. 12°| |,, An allied, small stony subgeneric form||48||S. Cruz Riv. 50°| |A coral allied to Vincularia, with eight rows of cells||40||Cape Horn| |Tubulipora, near to T. patina||ditto||Ditto| |Do. do.||94||East Chiloe 43°| |Cellepora, several species, and allied sub-generic forms||40||Cape Horn| |Ditto||40 and 57||Chonos Arch. 45°| |Ditto||48||S. Cruz 50°| |Eschara||30||Tierra del Fuego 53°| |Ditto||48||S. Cruz R. 50°| |Ditto||100||C. Good Hope 34°||Quoy and Gaimard, Ann. Scien. Nat., t. vi. p. 284.| |Millepora, a strong coral with cylindrical branches, of a pink colour, about two inches high, resembling in the form of its orifices M. aspera of Lamarck||94 and 30||East Chiloe 43° Tierra del Fuego 53°| |Coralium||120||Barbary 33° N.||Peyssonel in paper read to Royal Society May, 1752.| |Gorgonia (or an allied form)||160||Abrolhos on the coast of Brazil 18°||Capt. Beechey informed me of this fact in a letter.| Ellis (Nat. Hist. of Coralline, p. 96) states that Ombellularia was procured in lat. 79° N. sticking to a line from the depth of 236 fathoms; far beyond the tropic; it is found in Zetland* in Lat. 60° N. in deep water, and I procured a small species from Tierra del Fuego in Lat. 53° S. Capt. Beechey informs me, that branches of pink and yellow coral were frequently brought up from between 20 and 25 fathoms off the Low atolls; and Lieut. Stokes writing to me from the N.W. coast of Australia, says that a strongly branched coral was procured there from 30 fathoms: unfortunately it is not known to what genera these corals belong. Although the limit of depth, at which each particular kind of coral ceases to exist, is far from being accurately known; yet when we bear in mind the manner in which the clumps of coral gradually became infrequent at about the same depth, and wholly disappeared at a greater depth than 20 fathoms, on the slope round Keeling atoll, on the leeward side of the Mauritius, and at rather less depth, both without and within the atolls of the Maldiva and Chagos Archipelagoes; and when we know that the reefs round these islands do not differ from other coral formations in their form and structure, we may, I think, conclude that in ordinary cases, reef-building polypifers do not flourish at greater depths than between 20 and 30 fathoms. hence this coral either must have been floating loose, or was entangled in stray line at the bottom. Off Keeling atoll a compound Ascidia (Sigillina) was brought up from 39 fathoms, and a piece of sponge, apparently living, from 70, and a fragment of Nullipora also apparently living from 92 fathoms. At a greater depth than 90 fathoms off this coral-island, the bottom was thickly strewed with joints of Halimeda and small fragments of other Nulliporæ, but all dead. Capt. B. Allen, R.N., informs me that in the survey of the West Indies it was noticed, that between the depth of 10 and 200 fathoms, the sounding-lead very generally came up, coated with the dead joints of a Halimeda, of which he shewed me specimens. Off Pernambuco, in Brazil, in about 12 fathoms, the bottom was covered with fragments dead and alive of a dull red Nullipora, and I infer from Roussin's chart, that a bottom of this kind extends over a wide area. On the beach, within the coral-reefs of Mauritius, vast quantities of fragments of Nulliporæ were piled up. From these facts it appears, that these simply organized bodies are amongst the most abundant productions of the sea. * Fleming's British Animals, genus Caryophyllia. It has been argued* that reefs may possibly rise from very great depths through the means of small corals, first making a platform for the growth of the stronger kinds. This, however, is an arbitrary supposition: it is not always remembered, that in such cases there is an antagonist power in action, namely, the decay of organic bodies, when not protected by a covering of sediment, or by their own rapid growth. We have, moreover, no right to calculate on unlimited time for the accumulation of small organic bodies into great masses. Every fact in geology proclaims that neither the land, nor the bed of the sea retain for indefinite periods the same level. As well might it be imagined that the British Seas would in time become choked up with beds of oysters, or that the numerous small corallines off the inhospitable shores of Tierra del Fuego would in time form a solid and extensive coral-reef. * Journal of the Royal Geograph. Soc. 1831, p. 218. THEORY OF THE FORMATION OF THE DIFFERENT CLASSES OF CORAL REEFS. The atolls of the larger archipelagoes are not formed on submerged craters, or on banks of sediment—Immense areas interspersed with atolls—Their subsidence—The effects of storms and earthquakes on atolls—Recent changes in their state—The origin of barrier-reefs and of atolls—Their relative forms—The step-formed ledges and walls round the shores of some lagoons—The ring-formed reefs of the Maldiva atolls—The submerged condition of parts or of the whole of some annular reefs—The disseverment of large atolls—The union of atolls by linear reefs—The great Chagos Bank—Objections from the area and amount of subsidence required by the theory, considered—The probable composition of the lower parts of atolls. THE naturalists who have visited the Pacific, seem to have had their attention rivetted by the lagoon-islands, or atolls,—those singular rings of coral-land which rise abruptly out of the unfathomable ocean,—and have passed over, almost unnoticed, the scarcely less wonderful encircling barrier-reefs. The theory most generally received on the formation of atolls, is that they are based on submarine craters: but where we can find a crater of the shape of Bow atoll, which is five times as long as it is broad, (Plate I. fig. 4); or like that of Menchicoff Island, (Plate II. fig. 3.) with its three loops, together sixty miles in length; or like Rimsky Korsacoff, narrow, crooked, and fifty-four miles long; or like the northern Maldiva atolls, made up of numerous ring-formed reefs, placed on the margin of a disk,—one of which disks is eighty-eight miles in length, and only from ten to twenty in breadth. It is, also, not a little improbable, that there should have existed as many craters of immense size crowded together beneath the sea, as there are now in some parts atolls. But this theory lies under a great difficulty, as will be evident, when we consider on what foundations the atolls of the larger archipelagoes rest: nevertheless, if the rim of a crater afforded a basis at the proper depth, I am far from denying that a reef like a perfectly characterized atoll might not be formed; some such, perhaps, now exist; but I cannot believe in the possibility of the greater number having thus originated. An earlier and better theory was proposed by Chamisso;* he supposes that as the more massive kinds of corals prefer the surf, the outer portions, in a reef rising from a submarine basis, would first reach the surface and consequently form a ring. But on this view it must be assumed, that in every case the basis consists of a flat bank; for if it were conically formed, like a mountainous mass, we can see no reason why the coral should spring up from the flanks, instead of from the central and highest parts: considering the number of the atolls in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, this assumption is very improbable. As the lagoons of atolls are sometimes even more than forty fathoms deep, it must, also, be assumed on this view, that at a depth at which the waves do not break, the coral grows more vigorously on the edges of a bank than on its central part: and this is an assumption without any evidence in support of it. I remarked in the third chapter, that a reef, growing on a detached bank, would tend to assume on an atoll-like structure; if, therefore, corals were to grow up from a bank with a level surface some fathoms submerged, having steep sides and being situated in a deep sea, a reef not to be distinguished from an atoll, might be formed: I believe some such exist in the West Indies. But a difficulty of the same kind with that affecting the crater theory, renders, as we shall presently see, this view inapplicable to the greater number of atolls. No theory worthy of notice has been advanced to account for those barrier-reefs, which encircle islands of moderate * Kotzebue's First Voyage, vol. iii. p. 331. dimensions. The great reef which fronts the coast of Australia has been supposed, but without any special facts, to rest on the edge of a submarine precipice, extending parallel to the shore. The origin of the third class or of fringing reefs presents, I believe, scarcely any difficulty, and is simply consequent on the polypifers not growing up from great depths, and their not flourishing close to gently shelving beaches where the water is often turbid. What cause, then, has given to atolls and barrier-reefs their characteristic forms? Let us see whether an important deduction will not follow from the consideration of these two circumstances,—first, the reef-building corals flourishing only at limited depths,—and secondly, the vastness of the areas interspersed with coral-reefs and coral-islets, none of which rise to a greater height above the level of the sea, than that attained by matter thrown up by the waves and winds. I do not make this latter statement vaguely; I have carefully sought for descriptions of every island in the intertropical seas; and my task has been in some degree abridged by a map of the Pacific, corrected in 1834 by M.M. D'Urville and Lottin, in which the low islands are distinguished from the high ones (even from those much less than a hundred feet in height) by being written without a capital letter: I have detected a few errors in this map, respecting the heights of some of the islands, which will be noticed in the Appendix, where I treat of coral-formations in geographical order. To the Appendix, also, I must refer for a more particular account of the data on which the statements on the next page are grounded. I have ascertained, and chiefly from the writings of Cook, Kotzebue, Bellinghausen, Duperrey, Beechey, and Lutké, regarding the Pacific; and from Moresby* with respect to the Indian Ocean, that in the fol- * See also Capt. Owen's and Lieut. Wood's papers in the Geographical Journal, on the Maldiva and Laccadive Archipelagoes. These officers particularly refer to the lowness of the islets; but I chiefly ground my assertion respecting these two groups, and the Chagos group, from information communicated to me by Capt. Moresby. lowing cases the term "low island" strictly means land of the height, commonly attained by matter thrown up by the winds and the waves of an open sea. If we draw a line (the plan I have always adopted) joining the external atolls of that part of the Low Archipelago in which the islands are numerous, the figure will be a pointed ellipse (reaching from Hood to Lazaref island), of which the longer axis is 840 geographical miles, and the shorter 420 miles: in this space,* none of the innumerable islets, united into great rings, rise above the stated level. The Gilbert group is very narrow, and 300 miles in length. In a prolonged line from this group, at the distance of 240 miles, is the Marshall archipelago, the figure of which is an irregular square, one end being broader than the other; its length is 520 miles, with an average width of 240: these two groups together are 1040 miles in length, and all their islets are low. Between the southern end of the Gilbert and the northern end of Low Archipelago, the ocean is thinly strewed with islands, all of which, as far as I have been able to ascertain, are low: so that from nearly the southern end of the Low Archipelago to the northern end of the Marshall Archipelago, there is a narrow band of ocean, more than 4000 miles in length, containing a great number of islands, all of which are low. In the Western part of the Caroline Archipelago, there is a space of 480 miles in length, and about 100 broad, thinly interspersed with low islands. Lastly, in the Indian ocean, the archipelago of the Maldivas is 470 miles in length, and 60 in breadth; that of the Laccadives is 150 by 100 miles: as there is a low island between these two groups, they may be consi- * I find from Mr. Couthouy's pamphlet, p. 58, that Aurora island is about 200 feet in height; it consists of coral rock, and seems to have been formed by the elevation of an atoll. It lies N.E. of Tahiti, close without the line bounding the space coloured dark blue in the map appended to this volume. Honden island, which is situated in the extreme N.W. part of the Low Arch., according to measurements made on board the Beagle, whilst sailing by, is 114 feet from the summit of the trees to the water's edge. This island appeared to resemble the other atolls of the group. dered as one group of a thousand miles in length. To this may be added the Chagos group of low islands, situated 280 miles distant, in a line prolonged from the southern extremity of the Maldivas. This group, including the submerged banks, is 170 miles in length and 80 in breadth. So striking is the uniformity in direction of these three archipelagoes, all the islands of which are low, that Captain Moresby, in one of his papers, speaks of them as parts of one great chain, nearly 1500 miles long. I am, then, fully justified, in repeating, that enormous spaces, both in the Pacific and Indian oceans, are interspersed with islands, of which not one rises above that height, to which the waves and winds in an open sea can heap up matter. On what foundations, then, have these reefs and islets of coral been constructed? A foundation must originally have been present beneath each atoll at that limited depth, which is indispensable for the first growth of the reef-building polypifers. A conjecture will perhaps be hazarded, that the requisite bases might have been afforded by the accumulation of great banks of sediment, which owing to the action of superficial currents, (aided possibly by the undulatory movement of the sea) did not quite reach the surface,—as actually appears to have been the case in some parts of the West Indian Sea. But in the form and disposition of the groups of atolls, there is nothing to countenance this notion; and the assumption without any proof, that a number of immense piles of sediment have been heaped on the floor of the great Pacific and Indian Oceans, in their central parts far remote from land, and where the dark blue colour of the limpid water bespeaks its purity, cannot for one moment be admitted. The many widely-scattered atolls must, therefore, rest on rocky bases. But we cannot believe that the broad summit of a mountain lies buried at the depth of a few fathoms beneath every atoll, and nevertheless throughout the immense areas above-named, with not one point of rock projecting above the level of the sea; for we may judge with some accuracy of mountains beneath the sea, by those on the land; and where can we find a single chain several hundred miles in length and of considerable breadth, much less several such chains, with their many broad summits attaining the same height, within from 120 to 180 feet? If the data be thought insufficient, on which I have grounded my belief, respecting the depth at which the reef-building polypifers can exist, and it be assumed that they can flourish at a depth of even 100 fathoms, yet the weight of the above argument is but little diminished, for it is almost equally improbable, that as many submarine mountains, as there are low islands in the several great and widely-separated areas above-specified, should all rise within 600 feet of the surface of the sea and not one above it, as that they should be of the same height within the smaller limit of one or two hundred feet. So highly improbable is this supposition, that we are compelled to believe, that the bases of the many atolls did never at any one period all lie submerged within the depth of a few fathoms beneath the surface, but that they were brought into the requisite position or level, some at one period and some at another, through movements in the earth's crust. But this could not have been effected by elevation, for the belief that points so numerous and so widely-separated were successively uplifted to a certain level, but that not one point was raised above that level, is quite as improbable as the former supposition, and indeed differs little from it. It will probably occur to those who have read Ehrenberg's account of the reefs of the Red Sea, that many points in these great areas have been elevated, but that as soon as raised, the protuberant parts were cut off by the destroying action of the waves: a moment's reflection, however, on the bason-like form of the atolls, will show that this is impossible; for the upheaval and subsequent abrasion of an island would leave a flat disk, which might become coated with coral, but not a deeply concave surface; moreover, we should expect to see, in some parts at least, the rock of the foundation brought to the surface. If, then, the foundations of the many atolls were not uplifted into the requisite position, they must of necessity have subsided into it; and this at once solves every difficulty,* for we may safely infer, from the facts given in the last chapter, that during a gradual subsidence the corals would be favourably circumstanced for building up their solid frameworks and reaching the surface, as island after island slowly disappeared. Thus areas of immense extent in the central and most profound parts of the great oceans, might become interspersed with coral-islets, none of which would rise to a greater height than that attained by detritus heaped up by the sea, and nevertheless they might all have been formed by corals, which absolutely required for their growth a solid foundation within a few fathoms of the surface. It would be out of place here to do more than allude to the many facts, showing that the supposition of a gradual subsidence over large areas is by no means improbable. We have the clearest proof that a movement of this kind is possible, in the upright trees buried under strata many thousand * The additional difficulty on the crater hypothesis before alluded to, will now be evident; for on this view the volcanic action must be supposed to have formed within the areas specified a vast number of craters, all rising within a few fathoms of the surface, and not one above it. The supposition that the craters were at different times upraised above the surface, and were there abraded by the surf and subsequently coated by corals, is subject to nearly the same objections with those given at the bottom of the last page; but I consider it superfluous to detail all the arguments opposed to such a notion. Chamisso's theory, from assuming the existence of so many banks, all lying at the proper depth beneath the water, is also vitally defective. The same observation applies to an hypothesis of Lieut. Nelson's (Geolog. Trans. vol. v. p. 122), who supposes that the ring-formed structure is caused by a greater number of germs of corals becoming attached to the declivity, than to the central plateau of a submarine bank: it likewise applies to the notion formerly entertained, (Forster's Observ. p. 151) that lagoon-islands owe their peculiar form to the instinctive tendencies of the polypifers. According to this latter view, the corals on the outer margin of the reef instinctively expose themselves to the surf in order to afford protection to corals living in the lagoon, which belong to other genera, and to other families! feet in thickness; we have also every reason for believing that there are now large areas gradually sinking, in the same manner as others are rising. And when we consider how many parts of the surface of the globe have been elevated within recent geological periods, we must admit that there have been subsidences on a corresponding scale, for otherwise the whole globe would have swollen. It is very remarkable that Mr. Lyell,* even in the first edition of his Principles of Geology, inferred that the amount of subsidence in the Pacific must have exceeded that of elevation, from the area of land being very small relatively to the agents there tending to form it, namely, the growth of coral and volcanic action. But it will be asked, are there any direct proofs of a subsiding movement in those areas, in which subsidence will explain a phenomenon otherwise inexplicable? This, however, can hardly be expected, for it must ever be most difficult, excepting in countries long civilized, to detect a movement, the tendency of which is to conceal the part affected. In barbarous and semi-civilized nations how long might not a slow movement, even of elevation such as that now affecting Scandinavia, have escaped attention! Mr. Williams† insists strongly that the traditions of the natives, which he has taken much pains in collecting, do not indicate the appearance of any new islands: but on the theory of a gradual subsidence, all that would be apparent would be, the water sometimes encroaching slowly on the land, and the land again recovering by the accumulation of detritus its former extent, and perhaps sometimes the conversion of an atoll with coral islets on it, into a bare or into a sunken annular reef. Such changes would naturally take place at the periods when the sea rose above its usual limits, during a gale of more than ordinary strength; and the effects of the two causes would be hardly distinguishable. In Kotzebue's Voyage there are accounts of islands, both in the Caroline and Marshall Archipelagoes, which have been * Principles of Geology, sixth edition, vol. iii. p. 386. † Williams's Narrative of Missionary Enterprise, p. 31. partly washed away during hurricanes; and Kadu, the native who was on board one of the Russian vessels, said "he saw the sea at Radack rise to the feet of the cocoa-nut trees; but it was conjured in time."* A storm lately entirely swept away two of the Caroline islands, and converted them into shoals; it partly, also, destroyed two other islands.† According to a tradition which was communicated to Capt. FitzRoy, it is believed in the Low Archipelago, that the arrival of the first ship caused a great inundation, which destroyed many lives. Mr. Stuchbury relates, that in 1825, the western side of Chain Atoll, in the same group, was completely devastated by a hurricane, and not less than 300 lives lost: "in this instance it was evident, even to the natives, that the hurricane alone was not sufficient to account for the violent agitation of the ocean."‡ That considerable changes have taken place recently in some of the atolls in the Low Archipelago, appears certain from the case already given of Matilda Island: with respect to Whitsunday and Gloucester Islands in this same group, we must either attribute great inaccuracy to their discoverer, the famous circumnavigator Wallis, or believe that they have undergone a considerable change in the period of fifty-nine years, between his voyage and that of Capt. Beechey's. Whitsunday Island is described by Wallis as "about four miles long, and three wide," now it is only one mile and a half long. The appearance of Gloucester Island, in Capt. Beechey's words,§ "has been accurately described by its discoverer, but its present form and extent differ materially." Blenheim reef, in the Chagos group, consists of a water-washed annular reef, thirteen miles in circumference, surrounding a lagoon ten fathoms deep; on its surface there were a few worn patches of conglomerate coral-rock, of about the size of hovels; and these * Kotzebue's First Voyage, vol. iii. p. 168. † M. Desmoulins in Comptes Rendus, 1840, p. 837. ‡ West of England Journal, No. 1, p. 35. § Beechey's Voyage to the Pacific, chap. vii., and Wallis's Voyage in the Dolphin, chap. iv. Capt. Moresby considered, as being, without doubt, the last remnants of islets; so that here an atoll has been converted into an atoll-formed reef. The inhabitants of the Maldiva Archipelago, as long ago as 1605, declared, "that the high tides and violent currents were always diminishing the number of the islands:"* and I have already shown, on the authority of Capt. Moresby, that the work of destruction is still in progress; but that on the other hand the first formation of some islets is known to the present inhabitants. In such cases, it would be exceedingly difficult to detect a gradual subsidence of the foundation, on which these mutable structures rest. Some of the archipelagoes of low coral-islands are subject to earthquakes: Capt. Moresby informs me that they are frequent, though not very strong, in the Chagos group, which occupies a very central position in the Indian ocean, and is far from any land not of coral formation. One of the islands in this group was formerly covered by a bed of mould, which, after an earthquake, disappeared, and was believed by the resident to have been washed by the rain through the broken masses of underlying rock: the island was thus rendered unproductive. Chamisso† states, that earthquakes are felt in the Marshall atolls, which are far from any high land, and likewise in the islands of the Caroline Archipelago. On one of the latter, namely Oulleay atoll, Admiral Lutké, as he had the kindness to inform me, observed several straight fissures about a foot in width, running for some hundred yards obliquely across the whole width of the reef. Fissures indicate a stretching of the earth's crust, and, therefore, probably changes in its level; but these coral-islands, which have been shaken and fissured, certainly have not been elevated, and, therefore, probably they have subsided. In the chapter on Keeling atoll, I attempted to show by direct evidence, that * See an extract from Pyrard's Voyage in Capt. Owen's paper on the Maldiva Archipelago, in the Geographical Journal, vol. ii. p. 84. † See Chamisso, in Kotzebue's First Voyage, vol. iii. p. 182 and 136. the island underwent a movement of subsidence, during the earthquakes lately felt there. The facts stand thus;—there are many large tracts of ocean, without any high land, interspersed with reefs and islets, formed by the growth of those kinds of corals, which cannot live at great depths; and the existence of these reefs and low islets, in such numbers and at such distant points, is quite inexplicable, excepting on the theory, that the bases on which the reefs first became attached, slowly and successively sank beneath the level of the sea, whilst the corals continued to grow upwards. No positive facts are opposed to this view, and some general considerations render it probable. There is evidence of change in form, whether or not from subsidence, on some of these coral-islands; and there is evidence of subterranean disturbances beneath them. Will then the theory, to which we have thus been led, solve the curious problem,—what has given to each class of reef its peculiar form? Let us in imagination place within one of the subsiding areas, an island surrounded by a "fringing reef,"—that kind, which alone offers no difficulty in the explanation of its origin. Let the unbroken lines and the oblique shading in the woodcut A A—Outer edge of the reef at the level of the sea. B B—Shores of the island. A'A'—Outer edge of the reef, after its upward growth during a period of subsidence. C C—The lagoon-channel between the reef and the shores of the now encircled land. B'B'—The shores of the encircled island. N.B. In this, and the following wood-cut, the subsidence of the land could only be represented by an apparent rise in the level of the sea. (No. 4.) represent a vertical section through such an island; and the horizontal shading will represent the section of the reef. Now, as the island sinks down, either a few feet at a time or quite insensibly, we may safely infer from what we know of the conditions favourable to the growth of coral, that the living masses bathed by the surf on the margin of the reef, will soon regain the surface. The water, however, will encroach, little by little, on the shore, the island becoming lower and smaller, and the space between the edge of the reef and the beach proportionally broader. A section of the reef and island in this state, after a subsidence of several hundred feet, is given by the dotted lines: coral-islets are supposed to have been formed on the new reef, and a ship is anchored in the lagoon-channel. This section is in every respect that of an encircling barrier-reef; it is, in fact, a section taken* E. and W. through the highest point of the encircled island of Bolabola; of which a plan is given in Plate I. fig. 5. The same section is more clearly shown in the following woodcut (No. 5) by the unbroken lines. The width of the reef, and its slope both on the outer and inner side, will have been determined by the growing powers of the coral, under the conditions, (for instance the force of the breakers and of the currents) to which it has been exposed; and the lagoon-channel will be deeper or shallower, in proportion to the growth of the delicately branched corals within the reef, and to the accumulation of sediment, relatively, also, to the rate of subsidence and the length of the intervening stationary periods. It is evident in this section, that a line drawn perpendicularly down from the outer edge of the new reef to the foundation of solid rock, exceeds by as many feet as there have been feet of subsidence, that small limit of depth at which the effective polypifers can live,—the corals having grown up, as * The section has been made from the chart given in the Atlas of the Voyage of the Coquille. The scale is .57 of an inch to a mile. The height of the island, according to M. Lesson, is 4026 feet. The deepest part of the lagoon-channel is 162 feet; its depth is exaggerated in the woodcut for the sake of clearness. the whole sank down, from a basis formed of other corals and their consolidated fragments. Thus the difficulty on this head, which before seemed so great, disappears. As the space between the reef and the subsiding shore continued to increase in breadth and depth, and as the injurious effects of the sediment and fresh water borne down from the land were consequently lessened, the greater number of the channels, with which the reef in its fringing state must have been breached, especially those which fronted the smaller streams, will have become choked up by the growth of coral: on the windward side of the reef, where the coral grows most vigorously, the breaches will probably have first been closed. In barrier-reefs, therefore, the breaches kept open by draining the tidal waters of the lagoon-channel, will generally be placed on the leeward side, and they will still face the mouths of the larger streams, although removed beyond the influence of their sediment and fresh-water;—and this, it has been shown, is commonly the case. Referring to the following diagram, in which the newly-formed barrier-reef is represented by unbroken lines, instead of by dots as in the former woodcut, let the work of subsidence go on, and the doubly-pointed hill will form two small A'A'—Outer edges of the barrier-reef at the level of the sea. The cocoa-nut trees represent coral-islets formed on the reef. B'B'—The shores of the island, generally formed of low alluvial land and of coral detritus from the lagoon-channel. A"A"—The outer edges of the reef now forming an atoll. C'—The lagoon of the newly-formed atoll. According to the scale, the depth of the lagoon and of the lagoon-channel is exaggerated. islands (or more, according to the number of the hills) included within one annular reef. Let the island continue subsiding, and the coral-reef will continue growing up on its own foundation, whilst the water gains inch by inch on the land, until the last and highest pinnacle is covered, and there remains a perfect atoll. A vertical section of this atoll is shown in the woodcut by the dotted lines;—a ship is anchored in its lagoon, but islets are not supposed yet to have been formed on the reef. The depth of the lagoon and the width and slope of the reef, will depend on the circumstances just referred to under barrier-reefs. Any further subsidence will produce no change in the atoll, except perhaps a diminution in its size, from the reef not growing vertically upwards; but should the currents of the sea act violently on it, and should the corals perish on part or on the whole of its margin, changes would result during subsidence which will be presently noticed. I may here observe, that a bank either of rock or of hardened sediment, level with the surface of the sea, and fringed with living coral, would (if not so small as to allow the central space to be quickly filled up with detritus) by subsidence be converted immediately into an atoll, without passing, as in the case of a reef fringing the shore of an island, through the intermediate form of a barrier-reef. If such a bank lay a few fathoms submerged, the simple growth of the coral (as remarked in the third chapter) without the aid of subsidence, would produce a structure scarcely to be distinguished from a true atoll; for in all cases the corals on the outer margin of a reef, from having space and being freely exposed to the open sea, will grow vigorously and tend to form a continuous ring, whilst the growth of the less massive kinds on the central expanse, will be checked by the sediment formed there, and by that washed inwards by the breakers; and as the space becomes shallower, their growth will, also, be checked by the impurities of the water, and probably by the small amount of food brought by the enfeebled currents, in proportion to the surface of living reefs studded with innumerable craving mouths: the subsi- dence of a reef based on a bank of this kind, would give depth to its central expanse or lagoon, steepness to its flanks, and through the free growth of the coral, symmetry to its outline:—I may here repeat that the larger groups of atolls in the Pacific and Indian oceans cannot be supposed to be founded on banks of this nature. If, instead of the island in the diagram, the shore of a continent fringed by a reef had subsided, a great barrier-reef, like that on the N.E. coast of Australia, would have necessarily resulted; and it would have been separated from the main land by a deep-water channel, broad in proportion to the amount of subsidence, and to the less or greater inclination of the neighbouring coast-land. The effect of the continued subsidence of a great barrier-reef of this kind, and its probable conversion into a chain of separate atolls, will be noticed, when we discuss the apparent progressive disseverment of the larger Maldiva atolls. We now are able to perceive that the close similarity in form, dimensions, structure, and relative position (which latter point will hereafter be more fully noticed) between fringing and encircling barrier-reefs, and between these latter and atolls, is the necessary result of the transformation, during subsidence, of the one class into the other. On this view, the three classes of reefs ought to graduate into each other. Reefs having an intermediate character between those of the fringing and barrier classes do exist; for instance, on the S.W. coast of Madagascar, a reef extends for several miles, within which there is a broad channel from seven to eight fathoms deep, but the sea does not deepen abruptly outside the reef. Such cases, however, are open to some doubts, for an old fringing reef, which had extended itself a little on a basis of its own formation, would hardly be distinguishable from a barrier-reef, produced by a small amount of subsidence, and with its lagoon-channel nearly filled up with sediment during a long stationary period. Between barrier-reefs, encircling either one lofty island or several small low ones, and atolls including a mere expanse of water, a striking series can be shown: in proof of this, I need only refer to the first plate at the end of this volume, which speaks more plainly to the eye, than any description could to the ear. The authorities from which the charts have been engraved, together with some remarks on them, are given on a separate page descriptive of the plates. At New Caledonia (Plate II. fig. 5.) the barrier-reefs extend for 150 miles on each side of the submarine prolongation of the island; and at their northern extremity they appear broken up and converted into a vast atoll-formed reef, supporting a few low coral-islets: we may imagine that we here see the effects of subsidence actually in progress,—the water always encroaching on the northern end of the island, towards which the mountains slope down, and the reefs steadily building up their massive fabrics in the lines of their ancient growth. We have as yet only considered the origin of barrier-reefs and atolls in their simplest form; but there remain some peculiarities in structure and some special cases, described in the two first chapters, to be accounted for by our theory. These consist,—in the inclined ledge terminated by a wall, and sometimes succeeded by a second ledge with a wall, round the shores of certain lagoons and lagoon-channels; a structure which cannot, as I endeavoured to show, be explained by the simple growing powers of the corals,—in the ring or bason-like form of the central reefs, as well as of the separate marginal portions of the northern Maldiva atolls,—in the submerged condition of the whole, or of parts of certain barrier and atoll-formed reefs; where only a part is submerged, this being generally to leeward,—in the apparent progressive disseverment of some of the Maldiva atolls,—in the existence of irregularly formed atolls, some being tied together by linear reefs, and others with spurs projecting from them,—and, lastly, in the structure and origin of the Great Chagos bank. Step-formed ledges round certain lagoons.—If we suppose an atoll to subside at an extremely slow rate, it is difficult to follow out the complex results. The living corals would grow up on the outer margin; and likewise probably in the gullies and deeper parts of the bare surface of the annular reef; the water would encroach on the islets, but the accumulation of fresh detritus might possibly prevent their entire submergence. After a subsidence of this very slow nature, the surface of the annular reef sloping gently into the lagoon, would probably become united with the irregular reefs and banks of sand, which line the shores of most lagoons. Should, however, the atoll be carried down by a more rapid movement, the whole surface of the annular reef, where there was a foundation of solid matter, would be favourably circumstanced for the fresh growth of coral; but as the corals grew upwards on its exterior margin, and the waves broke heavily on this part, the increase of the massive polypifers on the inner side would be checked from the want of water. Consequently, the exterior parts would first reach the surface, and the new annular reef thus formed on the old one, would have its summit inclined inwards, and be terminated by a subaqueous wall, formed by the upward growth of the coral (before being much checked), from the inner edge of the solid parts of the old reef. The inner portion of the new reef, from not having grown to the surface, would be covered by the waters of the lagoon. Should a subsidence of the same kind be repeated, the corals would again grow up in a wall, from all the solid parts of the resunken reef, and, therefore, not from within the sandy shores of the lagoon; and the inner part of the new annular reef would, from being as before checked in its upward growth, be of less height than the exterior parts, and therefore would not reach the surface of the lagoon. In this case the shores of the lagoon would be surrounded by two inclined ledges, one beneath the other, and both abruptly terminated by subaqueous cliffs.* * According to Mr. Couthouy (p. 26) the external reef round many atolls descends by a succession of ledges or terraces. He attempts, I doubt whether successfully, to explain this structure somewhat in the same manner as I have attempted, with respect to the internal ledges round the lagoons of some atolls. More facts are wanted regarding the nature both of the interior and exterior step-like ledges: are all the ledges, or only the upper ones, covered with living coral? if they The ring or bason-formed reefs of the northern Maldiva atolls.—I may first observe, that the reefs within the lagoons of atolls and within lagoon-channels, would, if favourably circumstanced, grow upwards during subsidence in the same manner as the annular rim; and, therefore, we might expect that such lagoon-reefs, when not surrounded and buried by an accumulation of sediment more rapid than the rate of subsidence, would rise abruptly from a greater depth than that at which the efficient polypifers can flourish: we see this well exemplified in the small abruptly-sided reefs, with which the deep lagoons of the Chagos and Southern Maldiva atolls are studded. With respect to the ring or bason-formed reefs of the Northern Maldiva atolls, it is evident, from the perfectly continuous series which exists, that the marginal rings, although wider than the exterior or bounding reef of ordinary atolls, are only modified portions of such a reef; it is also evident that the central rings, although wider than the knolls or reefs which commonly occur in lagoons, occupy their place. The ring-like structure has been shown to be contingent on the breaches into the lagoon being broad and numerous, so that all the reefs which are bathed by the waters of the lagoon, are placed under nearly the same conditions with the outer coast of an atoll standing in the open sea. Hence the exterior and living margins of these reefs must have been favourably circumstanced for growing outwards, and increasing beyond the usual breadth; and they must likewise have been favourably circumstanced for growing vigorously upwards, during the subsiding movements, to which by our theory the whole archipelago has been subjected; and subsidence with this upward growth of the margins would convert the central space of each little reef into a small lagoon. This, however, could only take place with those reefs, which had increased to a breadth sufficient to prevent their central spaces from being almost immediately filled up with the sand and detritus are all covered, are the kinds different on the ledges according to the depth? Do the interior and exterior ledges occur together in the same atolls; if so, what is their total width, and is the intervening surface-reef narrow, &c.? driven inwards from all sides: hence it is that few reefs, which are less than half a mile in diameter, even in the atolls where the bason-like structure is most strikingly exhibited, include lagoons. This remark, I may add, applies to all coral-reefs, wherever found. The bason-formed reefs of the Maldiva Archipelago may, in fact, be briefly described, as small atolls formed during subsidence over the separate portions of large and broken atolls, in the same manner as these latter were formed over the barrier-reefs, which encircled the islands of a large archipelago now wholly submerged. Submerged and Dead Reefs.—In the second section of the first chapter, I have shown that there are in the neighbourhood of atolls, some deeply submerged banks, with level surfaces; that there are others, less deeply but yet wholly submerged, having all the characters of perfect atolls, but consisting merely of dead coral-rock; that there are barrier-reefs and atolls with merely a portion of their reef, generally on the leeward side, submerged; and that such portions either retain their perfect outline, or they appear to be quite effaced, their former place being marked only by a bank, conforming in outline with that part of the reef which remains perfect. These several cases are, I believe, intimately related together, and can be explained by the same means. There, perhaps, exist some submerged reefs, covered with living coral and growing upwards, but to these I do not here refer. As we see that in those parts of the ocean, where coral reefs are most abundant, one island is fringed and another neighbouring one is not fringed; as we see in the same archipelago, that all the reefs are more perfect in one part of it than in another,—for instance, in the southern half compared with the northern half of the Maldiva Archipelago, and likewise on the outer coasts compared with the inner coasts of the atolls in this same group, which are placed in a double row; as we know that the existence of the innumerable polypifers forming a reef, depends on their sustenance, and that they are preyed on by other organic beings; and, lastly, as we know that some inorganic causes are highly injurious to the growth of coral, it cannot be expected that during the round of change to which earth, air, and water are exposed, the reef-building polypifers should keep alive for perpetuity in any one place; and still less can this be expected, during the progressive subsidences, perhaps at some periods more rapid than at others, to which by our theory these reefs and islands have been subjected and are liable. It is, then, not improbable that the corals should sometimes perish either on the whole or on part of a reef; if on part, the dead portion, after a small amount of subsidence, would still retain its proper outline and position beneath the water. After a more prolonged subsidence, it would probably form, owing to the accumulation of sediment, only the margin of a flat bank, marking the limits of the former lagoon. Such dead portions of reef would generally lie on the leeward side,* for the impure water and fine sediment would more easily flow out from the lagoon over this side of the reef, where the force of the breakers is less than to windward; and therefore the corals would be less vigorous on this side, and be less able to resist any destroying agent. It is likewise owing to this same cause, that reefs are more frequently breached to leeward by narrow channels, serving as by ship-channels, than to windward. If the corals perished entirely, or on the greater part of the circumference of an atoll, an atoll-shaped bank of dead rock, more or less entirely submerged, would be produced; and further subsidence, together with the accumulation of sediment, would often obliterate * Mr. Lyell, in the first edition of his Principles of Geology, offered a somewhat different explanation of this structure. He supposes that there has been subsidence; but he was not aware that the submerged portions of reef were in most cases, if not in all, dead; and he attributes the difference in height in the two sides of most atolls, chiefly to the greater accumulation of detritus to windward than to leeward. But as matter is accumulated only on the backward part of the reef, the front part would remain of the same height on both sides. I may here observe that in most cases (for instance at Peros Banhos, the Gambier group and the Great Chagos bank) and I suspect in all cases, the dead and submerged portions do not blend or slope into the living and perfect parts, but are separated from them by an abrupt line. In some instances small patches of living reef rise to the surface from the middle of the submerged and dead parts. its atoll-like structure, and leave only a bank with a level surface. In the Chagos group of atolls, within an area of 160 miles by 60, there are two atoll-formed banks of dead rock (besides another very imperfect one) entirely submerged; a third, with merely two or three very small pieces of living reef rising to the surface; and a fourth, namely Peros Banhos (Plate I. fig. 9), with a portion nine miles in length dead and submerged. As by our theory this area has subsided, and as there is nothing improbable in the death, either from changes in the state of the surrounding sea or from the subsidence being great or sudden, of the corals on the whole, or on portions of some of the atolls, the case of the Chagos group presents no difficulty. So far indeed are any of the above-mentioned cases of submerged reefs from being inexplicable, that their occurrence might have been anticipated on our theory; and as fresh atolls are supposed to be in progressive formation by the subsidence of encircling barrier-reefs, a weighty objection, namely that the number of atolls must be increasing infinitely, might even have been raised, if proofs of the occasional destruction and loss of atolls could not have been adduced. The disseverment of the larger Maldiva atolls.—The apparent progressive disseverment in the Maldiva Archipelago of large atolls into smaller ones, is, in many respects, an important consideration, and requires an explanation. The graduated series, which marks as I believe this process, can be observed only in the northern half of the group, where the atolls have exceedingly imperfect margins, consisting of detached bason-formed reefs. The currents of the sea flow across these atolls, as I am informed by Capt. Moresby, with considerable force, and drift the sediment from side to side during the monsoons, transporting much of it seaward; yet the currents sweep with greater force round their flanks. It is historically known that these atolls have long existed in their present state; and we can believe, that even during a very slow subsidence they might thus remain, the central expanse being kept at nearly its original depth by the accumulation of sediment. But in the action of such nicely balanced forces during a progressive subsidence, (like that, to which by our theory this archipelago has been subjected,) it would be strange if the currents of the sea should never make a direct passage across some one of the atolls, through the many wide breaches in their margins. If this were once effected, a deep-water channel would soon be formed by the removal of the finer sediment, and the check to its further accumulation; and the sides of the channel would be worn into a slope like that on the outer coasts, which are exposed to the same force of the currents. In fact, a channel precisely like that bifurcating one which divides Mahlos Mahdoo (Plate II. fig. 4.), would almost necessarily be formed. The scattered reefs situated near the borders of the new ocean-channel, from being favourably placed for the growth of coral, would, by their extension, tend to produce fresh margins to the dissevered portions: such a tendency is very evident, (as may be seen in the large published chart) in the elongated reefs on the borders of the two channels intersecting Mahlos Mahdoo. Such channels would become deeper with continued subsidence, and probably from the reefs not growing up perpendicularly, somewhat broader. In this case, and more especially if the channels had been formed originally of considerable breadth, the dissevered portions would become perfect and distinct atolls, like Ari and Ross atolls, (Plate II, fig. 6.) or like the two Nillandoo atolls, which must be considered as distinct, although related in form and position, and separated from each other by channels, which though deep have been sounded. Further subsidence would render such channels unfathomable, and the dissevered portions would then resemble Phaleedoo and Moluque atolls, or Mahlos Mahdoo and Horsburgh atolls, (Plate II. fig. 4.) which are related to each other in no respect except in proximity and position. Hence, on the theory of subsidence, the disseverment of large atolls, which have imperfect margins (for otherwise their disseverement would be scarcely possible), and which are exposed to strong currents, is far from being an improbable event; and the several stages from close relation to entire isolation in the atolls of the Maldiva Archipelago, are readily explicable. We might go even further, and assert as not improbable, that the first formation of the Maldiva Archipelago was due to a barrier-reef, of nearly the same dimensions with that of New Caledonia (Plate II. fig. 5.): for if, in imagination, we complete the subsidence of that great island, we might anticipate from the present broken condition of the northern portion of the reef, and from the almost entire absence of reefs on the eastern coast, that the barrier-reef after repeated subsidences, would become during its upward growth separated into distinct portions; and these portions would tend to assume an atoll-like structure, from the coral growing with vigour round their entire circumferences, when freely exposed to an open sea. As we have some large islands partly submerged with barrier-reefs marking their former limits, such as New Caledonia, so our theory makes it probable that there should be other large islands wholly submerged; and these, we may now infer, would be surmounted, not by one enormous atoll, but by several large elongated ones, like the atolls in the Maldiva group; and these again, during long periods of subsidence, would sometimes become dissevered into smaller atolls. I may add, that both in the Marshall and Caroline Archipelagoes, there are atolls standing close together, which have an evident relationship in form: we may suppose, in such cases, either that two or more encircled islands originally stood close together, and afforded bases for two or more atolls, or that one atoll has been dissevered. From the position, as well as form, of three atolls in the Caroline Archipelago (the Namourrek and Elato group), which are placed in an irregular circle, I am strongly tempted to believe that they have originated by the process of disseverment.* * The same remark is, perhaps, applicable to the islands of Ollap, Fanadik, and Tamatam in the Caroline Archipelago, of which charts Irregularly-formed Atolls.—In the Marshall group, Musquillo atoll consists of two loops united in one point; and Menchicoff atoll is formed of three loops, two of which (as may be seen in fig. 3. Plate II.) are connected by a mere ribbon-shaped reef, and the three together are 60 miles in length. In the Gilbert group some of the atolls have narrow strips of reef, like spurs, projecting from them. There occur also in parts of the open sea, a few linear and straight reefs, standing by themselves; and likewise some few reefs in the form of crescents, with their extremities more or less curled inwards. Now, the upward growth of a barrier-reef which fronted only one side of an island, or one side of an elongated island with its extremities, (of which cases exist,) would produce after the complete subsidence of the land, mere strips or crescent or hook-formed reefs: if the island thus partially fronted became divided during subsidence into two or more islands, these islands would be united together by linear reefs; and from the further growth of the coral along their shores together with subsidence, reefs of various forms might ultimately be produced, either atolls united together by linear reefs, or atolls with spurs projecting from them. Some, however, of the more simple forms above specified, might, as we have seen, be equally well produced by the coral perishing during subsidence on part of the circumference of an atoll, whilst on the other parts it continued to grow up till it reached the surface. The Great Chagos Bank.—I have already shown that the submerged condition of the Great Chagos bank, (Plate II. fig. 1. with its section fig. 2.) and of some other banks in the Chagos group, may in all probability be attributed to the coral having perished before or during the movements of subsidence, to which this whole area by our theory has been sub- are given in the atlas of Duperrey's voyage: a line drawn through the linear reefs and lagoons of these three islands forms a semicircle. Consult also, the atlas of Lutké's voyage; and for the Marshall group that of Kotzebue; for the Gilbert group (which is referred to in the ensuing page) consult the atlas of Duperrey's voyage. Most of the points here referred to may, however, be seen in Krusenstern's general Atlas of the Pacific. jected. The external rim or upper ledge, (shaded in the chart,) consists of dead coral-rock thinly covered with sand; it lies at an average depth of between five and eight fathoms, and perfectly resembles in form the annular reef of an atoll. The banks of the second level, the boundaries of which are marked by dotted lines in the chart, lie from about fifteen to twenty fathoms beneath the surface; they are several miles broad, and terminate in a very steep slope round the central expanse. This central expanse I have already described, as consisting of a level muddy flat between thirty and forty fathoms deep. The banks of the second level, might at first sight be thought analogous to the internal step-like ledge of coral-rock which borders the lagoons of some atolls, but their much greater width, and their being formed of sand, are points of essential difference. On the eastern side of the atoll some of the banks are linear and parallel, resembling islets in a great river, and pointed directly towards a great breach on the opposite side of the atoll: these are best seen in the large published chart. I inferred from this circumstance, that strong currents sometimes set directly across this vast bank; and I have since heard from Capt. Moresby that this is the case. I observed, also, that the channels, or breaches through the rim, were all of the same depth as the central lagoon-like space into which they lead; whereas the channels into the other atolls of the Chagos group, and as I believe into most other large atolls, are not nearly as deep as their lagoons:—for instance at Peros Banhos, the channels are only of the same depth, namely between 10 and 20 fathoms, as the bottom of the lagoon for a space about a mile and a half in width round its shores, whilst the central expanse of the lagoon is from 35 to 40 fathoms deep. Now, if an atoll during a gradual subsidence once became entirely submerged, like the Great Chagos bank, and therefore no longer exposed to the surf, very little sediment could be formed from it; and consequently the channels leading into the lagoon from not being filled up with drifted sand and coral detritus, would continue increasing in depth, as the whole sank down. In this case, we might expect that the currents of the open sea, instead of any longer sweeping round the submarine flanks, would flow directly through the breaches across the lagoon, removing in their course the finer sediment, and preventing its further accumulation. We should then have the submerged reef forming an external and upper rim of rock, and beneath this portions of the sandy bottom of the old lagoon, intersected by deep-water channels or breaches, and thus formed into separate marginal banks; and these would be cut off by steep slopes, overhanging the central space, worn down by the passage of the oceanic currents. By these means, I have scarcely any doubt that the Great Chagos bank has originated,—a structure which at first appeared to me far more anomalous than any I had met with. The process of formation is nearly the same with that, by which Mahlos Mahdoo has been trisected; but in the Chagos bank the channels of the oceanic currents entering at several different quarters, have united in a central space. This great atoll-formed bank appears to be in an early stage of disseverment; should the work of subsidence go on, from the submerged and dead condition of the whole reef, and the imperfection of the S.E. quarter, a mere wreck would probably be left. The Pitt's bank, situated not far southward, appears to be precisely in this state: it consists of a moderately level, oblong bank of sand, lying from 10 to 20 fathoms beneath the surface, with two sides protected by a narrow ledge of rock which is submerged between 5 and 8 fathoms. A little further south, at about the same distance as the southern rim of the Great Chagos bank is from the northern rim, there are two other small banks with from 10 to 20 fathoms on them; and not far eastward soundings were struck on a sandy bottom, with between 110 and 145 fathoms. The northern portion with its ledge-like margin, closely resembles any one segment of the Great Chagos bank, between two of the deep-water channels, and the scattered banks southward appear to be the last wrecks of less perfect portions. I have examined with care the charts of the Indian and Pacific oceans, and have now brought before the reader all the examples, which I have met with, of reefs differing from the type of the class to which they belong; and I think it has been satisfactorily shown, that they are all included in our theory, modified by occasional accidents which might have been anticipated as probable. In this course we have seen, that in the lapse of ages encircling barrier-reefs are occasionally converted into atolls,—the name of atoll being properly applicable, at the moment when the last pinnacle of encircled land sinks beneath the surface of the sea. We have, also, seen that large atolls during the progressive subsidence of the areas, in which they stand, sometimes become dissevered into smaller ones; at other times, the reef-building polypifers having entirely perished, atolls are converted into atoll-formed banks of dead rock; and these again, through further subsidence and the accumulation of sediment, modified by the force of the oceanic currents, pass into level banks with scarcely any distinguishing character. Thus may the history of an atoll be followed from its first origin, through the occasional accidents of its existence, to its destruction and final obliteration. Objections to the theory of the formation of Atolls and Barrier-reefs.—The vast amount of subsidence, both horizontally or in area, and vertically or in depth, necessary to have submerged every mountain, even the highest, throughout the immense spaces of ocean interspersed with atolls, will probably strike most people as a formidable objection to my theory. But as continents, as large as the spaces supposed to have subsided, have been raised above the level of the sea,—as whole regions are now rising, for instance, in Scandinavia and South America,—and as no reason can be assigned, why subsidences should not have occurred in some parts of the earth's crust on as great a scale both in extent and amount as those of elevation, objections of this nature strike me as of little force. The remarkable point is, that movements to such an extent should have taken place within a period, during which the polypifers have continued adding matter on and above the same reefs. Another and less obvious objection to the theory will perhaps be advanced from the circumstance, of the lagoons within atolls and within barrier-reefs never having become in any one instance during prolonged subsidences of a greater depth than 60 fathoms, and seldom more than 40 fathoms: but we already admit, if the theory be worth considering, that the rate of subsidence has not exceeded that of the upward growth of the corals on the exterior margin; we are, therefore, only further required to admit, that the subsidence has not exceeded in rate the filling up of the interior spaces by the growth of the corals living there, and by the accumulation of sediment. As this filling up must take place very slowly within barrier-reefs lying far from the land, and within atolls which are of large dimensions and which have open lagoons with very few reefs, we are led to conclude that the subsidence thus counter-balanced, must have been slow in an extraordinary degree;—a conclusion which accords with our only means, namely, with what is known of the rate and manner of recent elevatory movements, of judging by analogy what is the probable rate of subsidence. In this chapter it has, I think, been shown, that the theory of subsidence, which we were compelled to receive from the necessity of giving to the corals, in certain large areas, foundations at the requisite depth, explains both the normal structure and the less regular forms of those two great classes of reefs, which have justly excited the astonishment of all persons who have sailed through the Pacific and Indian oceans. But further to test the truth of the theory, a crowd of questions will occur to the reader: Do the different kinds of reefs, which have been produced by the same kind of movement, generally lie within the same areas? What is their relation of form and position,—for instance, do adjoining groups of atolls, and the separate atolls in these groups, bear the same relation to each other which islands do in common archipelagoes? Have we reason to believe, that where there are fringing reefs, there has not lately been subsidence; or, for it is almost our only way of ascertaining this point, are there frequently proofs of recent elevation? Can we by this means account for the presence of certain classes of reefs in some large areas, and their entire absence in others? Do the areas which have subsided, as indicated by the presence of atolls and barrier-reefs, and the areas which have remained stationary or have been upraised, as shown by fringing-reefs, bear any determinate relation to each other; and are the dimensions of these areas such as harmonize with the greatness of the subterranean changes, which, it must be supposed, have lately taken place beneath them? Is there any connection between the movements thus indicated, and recent volcanic action?—All these questions ought to receive answers in accordance with the theory; and if this can be satisfactorily shown, not only is the theory confirmed, but as deductions, the answers are in themselves important. Under this latter point of view, these questions will be chiefly considered in the following chapter.* * I may take this opportunity of briefly considering the appearances, which would probably be presented by a vertical and deep section across a coral formation (referring chiefly to an atoll) formed by the upward growth of coral during successive subsidences. This is a subject worthy of attention, as a means of comparison with ancient coral strata. The circumferential parts would consist of massive species, in a vertical position, with their interstices filled up with detritus; but this would be the part most subject to subsequent denudation and removal. It is useless to speculate how large a proportion of the exterior annular reef would consist of upright coral, and how much of fragmentary rock, for this would depend on many contingencies,—such as on the rate of subsidence, occasionally allowing a fresh growth of coral to cover the whole surface, and on the breakers having force sufficient to throw fragments over this same space. The conglomerate which composes the base of the islets, would (if not removed by denudation together with the exterior reef on which it rests) be conspicuous from the size of the fragments,—the different degrees in which they have been rounded,—the presence of fragments of conglomerate torn up rounded and recemented,—and from the oblique stratification. The corals which lived in the lagoon-reefs at each successive level, would be preserved upright, and they would consist of many kinds, generally much branched. In this part, however, a very large proportion of the rock (and in some cases nearly all of it) would be formed of sedimentary matter, either in an excessively fine, or in a moderately coarse state, and with the particles almost blended together. The conglomerate which was formed of rounded pieces of the branched corals, on the shores of the lagoon, would differ from that formed on the islets and derived from the outer coast; yet both might have accumulated very near each other. I have seen a conglomerate limestone from Devonshire like a conglomerate now forming on the shores of the Maldiva atolls. The stratification taken as a whole, would be horizontal; but the conglomerate beds resting on the exterior reef, and the beds of sandstone on the shores of the lagoon (and no doubt on the external flanks) would probably be divided (as at Keeling atoll and at Mauritius) by numerous layers dipping at considerable angles in different directions. The calcareous sandstone and coral rock would almost necessarily contain innumerable shells, echini, and the bones of fish, turtle, and perhaps of birds; possibly, also, the bones of small saurians, as these animals find their way to the islands far remote from any continent. The large shells of some species of Tridacna would be found vertically imbedded in the solid rock, in the position in which they lived. We might expect, also, to find a mixture of the remains of pelagic and littoral animals in the strata formed in the lagoon, for pumice and the seeds of plants are floated from distant countries into the lagoons of many atolls: on the outer coast of Keeling atoll, near the mouth of the lagoon, the case of a pelagic Pteropodous animal was brought up on the arming of the sounding lead. All the loose blocks of coral on Keeling atoll were burrowed by vermiform animals; and as every cavity, no doubt, ultimately becomes filled with spathose limestone, slabs of the rock taken from a considerable depth, would, if polished, probably exhibit the excavations of such burrowing animals. The conglomerate and fine-grained beds of coral-rock would be hard, sonorous, white, and composed of nearly pure calcareous matter: in some few parts, judging from the specimens at Keeling atoll, they would probably contain a small quantity of iron. Floating pumice and scoriæ, and occasionally stones transported in the roots of trees (see my Journal of Researches, p. 549) appear the only sources, through which foreign matter is brought to coral-formations standing in the open ocean. The area over which sediment is transported from coral-reefs must be considerable: Capt. Moresby informs me that during the change of monsoons, the sea is discoloured to a considerable distance off the Maldiva and Chagos atolls. The sediment off fringing and barrier coral-reefs must be mingled with the mud, which is brought down from the land, and is transported seaward through the breaches, which occur in front of almost every valley. If the atolls of the larger archipelagoes were upraised, the bed of the ocean being converted into land, they would form flat-topped mountains, varying in diameter from a few miles (the smallest atolls being worn away) to sixty miles; and from being horizontally stratified and of similar composition, they would, as Mr. Lyell has remarked, falsely appear as if they had originally been united into one vast continuous mass. Such great strata of coral-rock would rarely be associated with erupted volcanic matter, for this could only take place, as may be inferred from what follows in the next chapter, when the area, in which they were situated, commenced to rise, or at least ceased to subside. During the enormous period necessary to effect an elevation of the kind just alluded to, the surface would necessarily be denuded to a great thickness; hence it is highly improbable that any fringing-reef, or even any barrier-reef, at least of those encircling small islands, would be preserved. From this same cause, the strata which were formed within the lagoons of atolls and lagoon-channels of barrier-reefs, and which must consist in a large part of sedimentary matter, would more often be preserved to future ages, than the exterior solid reef, composed of massive corals in an upright position; although it is on this exterior part, that the present existence and further growth of atolls and barrier-reefs entirely depend. ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF CORAL REEFS WITH REFERENCE TO THE THEORY OF THEIR FORMATION. Description of the coloured map—Proximity of atolls and barrier-reefs—Relation in form and position of atolls with ordinary islands—Direct evidence of subsidence difficult to be detected—Proofs of recent elevation where fringing reefs occur—Oscillations of level—Absence of active volcanos in the areas of subsidence—Immensity of the areas which have been elevated and have subsided—Their relation to the present distribution of the land—Areas of subsidence elongated, their intersection and alternation with those of elevation—Amount, and slow rate of the subsidence—Recapitulation. IT will be convenient to give here a short account of the appended map (Plate III.); a fuller one, with the data for colouring each spot, is reserved for the Appendix; and every place there referred to may be found in the Index. A larger chart would have been desirable; but, small as the adjoined one is, it is the result of many months' labour. I have consulted, as far as I was able, every original voyage and map; and the colours were first laid down on charts on a larger scale. The same blue colour, with merely a difference in the depth of tint, is used for atolls or lagoon-islands, and barrier-reefs; for we have seen, that as far as the actual coral-formation is concerned, they have no distinguishing character. Fringing-reefs have been coloured red, for between them on the one hand, and barrier-reefs and atolls on the other, there is an important distinction with respect to the depth beneath the surface, at which we are compelled to believe their foundations lie. The two distinct colours, therefore, mark two great types of structure. The dark blue colour represents atolls and submerged annular reefs, with deep water in their centres. I have coloured as atolls, a few low and small coral-islands, without lagoons; but this has been done only when it clearly appeared that they originally contained lagoons, since filled up with sediment: when there were not good grounds for this belief, they have been left uncoloured. The pale blue colour represents barrier-reefs. The most obvious character of reefs of this class is the broad and deep-water moat within the reef; but this, like the lagoons of small atolls, is liable to become filled up with detritus and with reefs of delicately-branched corals: when, therefore, a reef round the entire circumference of an island extends very far into a profoundly deep sea, so that it can hardly be confounded with a fringing-reef which must rest on a foundation of rock within a small depth, it has been coloured pale blue, although it does not include a deep-water moat: but this has only been done rarely, and each case is distinctly mentioned in the Appendix. The red colour represents reefs, fringing the land quite closely where the sea is deep, and where the bottom is gently inclined extending to a moderate distance from it, but not having a deep-water moat or lagoon like space parallel to the shore. It must be remembered that fringing reefs are frequently breached in front of rivers and valleys by deepish channels, where mud has been deposited. A space of 30 miles in width has been coloured round or in front of the reefs of each class, in order that the colours might be conspicuous on the appended map, which is reduced to so small a scale. The vermilion spots, and streaks, represent volcanos now in action, or historically known to have been so. They are chiefly laid down from Von Buch's work on the Canary Islands; and my reasons for making a few alterations are given in the note below.* * I have also made considerable use of the geological part of Berghaus' Physical Atlas. Beginning at the eastern side of the Pacific, I have added to the number of the volcanos in the southern part of the Cordillera, and have coloured Juan Fernandez according to observations collected during the voyage of the Beagle, (Geol. Trans. vol. v. p. 601.) The uncoloured coasts consist, first and chiefly, of those, where there are no coral-reefs, or such small portions as to be quite insignificant. Secondly, of those coasts where there are I have added a volcano to Albemarle Island, one of the Galapagos Archipelago, (the author's Journal of Researches, p. 457). In the Sandwich group there are no active volcanos, except at Hawaii; but the Rev. W. Ellis informs me, there are streams of lava apparently modern on Maui, having a very recent appearance, which can be traced to the craters whence they flowed. The same gentleman informs me, that there is no reason to believe that any active volcano exists in the Society Archipelago; nor are there any known in the Samoa or Navigator group, although some of the streams of lava and craters there appear recent. In the Friendly group, the Rev. J. Williams says (Narrative of Missionary Enterprise, p. 29) that Toofoa and Proby Islands are active volcanos. I infer from Hamilton's Voyage in the Pandora (p. 95), that Proby Island is synonymous with Onouafou, but I have not ventured to colour it. There can be no doubt respecting Toofoa; and Captain Edwards (Von Buch, p. 386) found the lava of a recent eruption at Amargura still smoking. Berghaus marks four active volcanos actually within the Friendly group; but I do not know on what authority: I may mention that Maurelle describes Latte as having a burnt-up appearance: I have marked only Toofoa and Amargura. South of the New Hebrides lies Matthews Rock, which is drawn and described as an active crater in the voyage of the Astrolabe. Between it and the volcano on the eastern side of New Zealand, lies Brimstone Island, which from the high temperature of the water in the crater, may be ranked as active. (Berghaus Vorbemerk. 11. Lief. S. 56). Malte Brun, vol. xii. p. 231, says that there is a volcano near port St. Vincent in New Caledonia. I believe this to be an error, arising from a smoke seen on the opposite coast by Cook (2nd voyage, vol. ii. p. 23) which smoke went out at night. The Mariana Islands, especially the northern ones, contain many craters (see Freycinet's Hydrog. Descript.) which are not active. Von Buch, however, states (p. 462) on the authority of La Peyrouse, that there are no less than seven volcanos between these islands and Japan. Gemellli Careri (Churchill's Collect. vol. iv. p. 458), says there are two active volcanos in lat. 23° 30' and in lat. 24°; but I have not coloured them. From the statements in Beechey's Voyage (p. 518, 4to edit.) I have coloured one in the northern part of the Bonin group. M. S. Julien has clearly made out from Chinese manuscripts not very ancient, (Comptes Rendus, 1840, p. 832), that there are two active volcanos on the eastern side of Formosa. In Torres Straits, on Cap Island (9° 48' S. 142° 39' E.) a volcano was seen burning with great violence in 1793 by Capt. Bampton (see Introduction to Flinders' reefs, but where the sea is very shallow, for in this case the reefs generally lie far from the land, and become very irregular in their forms; where they have not become irregular, they have been coloured. Thirdly, if I had the means of ascertaining the fact, I should not colour a reef merely coating the edges of a submarine crater, or of a level submerged bank; for such superficial formations differ essentially, even when not in external appearance, from reefs whose foundations as well as superficies have been wholly formed by the growth of coral. Fourthly, in the Red Sea, and within some parts of the East Indian Archipelago, (if the imperfect charts of the latter can be trusted,) there are many scattered reefs, of small size, represented in the chart by mere dots, which rise out of deep water: these cannot be arranged under either of the three classes: in the Red Sea, however, some of these little reefs, from their position, seem once to have formed parts of a continuous barrier. There exist, also, scattered in the open ocean, some linear and irregularly-formed strips of coral-reef, which, as shown in the last chapter, are probably allied in their origin to atolls; but as they do not belong to that class, they have not been coloured; they are very few in number, and of insignificant dimensions. Lastly, Voyage, p. 41). Mr. M'Clelland (Report of Committee for investigating Coal in India, p. 39) has shown that the volcanic band passing through Barren Island must be extended northwards. It appears by an old chart, that Cheduba was once an active volcano; (See also Silliman's North American Journal, vol. xxxviii. p. 385.) In Berghaus' Phys. Atlas, 1840, No. 7 of Geological Part, a volcano on the coast of Pondicherry is said to have burst forth in 1757. Ordinaire (Hist. Nat. des Volcans, p. 218) says that there is one at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, but I have not coloured it, as he gives no particulars. A volcano in Amsterdam, or St. Paul's, in the southern part of the Indian Ocean, has been seen (Naut. Mag. 1838, p. 842) in action. Dr. J. Allan, of Forres, informs me in a letter, that when he was at Joanna, he saw at night flames, apparently volcanic, issuing from the chief Comoro Island, and that the Arabs assured him that they were volcanic, adding that the volcano burned more during the wet season. I have marked this as a volcano, though with some hesitation, on account of the possibility of the flame arising from gaseous sources. some reefs are left uncoloured from the want of information respecting them, and some because they are of an intermediate structure between the barrier and fringing classes. The value of the map is lessened, in proportion to the number of reefs which I have been obliged to leave uncoloured, although, in a theoretical point of view, few of them present any great difficulty: but their number is not very great, as will be found by comparing the map with the statements in the Appendix. I have experienced more difficulty in colouring fringing-reefs than in colouring barrier-reefs, as the former, from their much less dimensions, have less attracted the attention of navigators. As I have had to seek my information from all kind of sources, and often from indirect ones, I do not venture to hope that the map is free from many errors. Nevertheless, I trust it will give an approximately correct view of the general distribution of the coral-reefs over the whole world, (with the exception of some fringing-reefs on the coast of Brazil, not included within the limits of the map,) and of their arrangement into the three great classes, which, though necessarily very imperfect from the nature of the objects classified, have been adopted by most voyagers. I may further remark, that the dark blue colour represents land entirely composed of coral-rock; the pale blue, land with a wide and thick border of coral-rock; and the red, a mere narrow fringe of coral-rock. Looking now at the map under the theoretical point of view indicated in the last chapter, the two blue tints signify that the foundations of the reefs thus coloured have subsided to a considerable amount, at a slower rate than that of the upward growth of the corals; and that probably in many cases they are still subsiding. The red signifies that the shores which support fringing-reefs have not subsided (at least to any considerable amount, for the effects of a subsidence on a small scale would in no case be distinguishable); but that they have remained nearly stationary since the period when they first became fringed by reefs; or that they are now rising or have been upraised, with new lines of reefs successively formed on them: these latter alternatives are obviously implied, as newly-formed lines of shore, after elevations of the land, would be in the same state with respect to the growth of fringing-reefs, as stationary coasts. If during the prolonged subsidence of a shore, coral-reefs grew for the first time on it, or if an old barrier-reef were destroyed and submerged, and new reefs became attached to the land, these would necessarily at first belong to the fringing class, and, therefore, be coloured red, although the coast was sinking: but I have no reason to believe, that from this source of error, any coast has been coloured wrongly with respect to movement indicated. Well characterized atolls and encircling barrier-reefs, where several occur in a group, or a single barrier-reef if of large dimensions, leave scarcely any doubt on the mind respecting the movement by which they have been produced; and even a small amount of subsequent elevation is soon betrayed. The evidence from a single atoll, or a single encircling barrier-reef, must be received with some caution, for the former may possibly be based upon a submerged crater or bank, and the latter on a submerged margin of sediment, or of worn-down rock. From these remarks we may with greater certainty infer that the spaces, especially the larger ones, tinted blue in the map, have subsided, than that the red spaces have remained stationary, or have been upraised. On the grouping of the different classes of reefs.—Having made these preliminary remarks, I will consider first how far the grouping of the different kinds of coral-islands and reefs is corroborative of the truth of the theory. A glance at the map shows that the reefs, coloured blue and red, produced under widely different conditions, are not indiscriminately mixed together. Atolls and barrier-reefs, on the other hand, as may be seen by the two blue tints, generally lie near each other; and this would be the natural result of both having been produced during the subsidence of the areas in which they stand. Thus, the largest group of encircled islands is that of the Society Archipelago; and these islands are surrounded by atolls, and only separated by a narrow space from the large group of Low atolls. In the midst of the Caroline atolls, there are three fine encircled islands. The northern point of the barrier-reef of New Caledonia seems itself, as before remarked, to form a complete large atoll. The great Australian barrier is described as including both atolls and small encircled islands. Capt. King* mentions many atoll-formed and encircling coral-reefs, some of which lie within the barrier, and others may be said (for instance between lat. 16° and 13°) to form part of it. Flinders† has described an atoll-formed reef in lat. 10°, seven miles long and from one to three broad, resembling a boot in shape, with apparently very deep water within. Eight miles westward of this, and forming part of the barrier, lie the Murray Islands, which are high and are encircled. In the Corallian sea, between the two great barriers of Australia and New Caledonia, there are many low islets and coral-reefs, some of which are annular, or horse-shoe shaped. Observing the smallness of the scale of the map, the parallels of latitude being 900 miles apart, we see, that none of the large groups of reefs and islands supposed to have been produced by long-continued subsidence, lie near extensive lines of coast coloured red, which are supposed to have remained stationary since the growth of their reefs, or to have been upraised and new lines of reefs formed on them. Where the red and blue circles do occur near each other, I am able, in several instances, to show that there have been oscillations of level, subsidence having preceded the elevation of the red spots; and elevation having preceded the subsidence of the blue spots; and in this case the juxta-position of reefs belonging to the two great types of structure, is little surprising. We may, therefore, conclude that the proximity in the same areas of the two classes of reefs, which owe their origin to the subsidence of the earth's crust, and their separation from those formed during its stationary or uprising condition, holds good to the full extent, which might have been anticipated by our theory. * Sailing Directions, appended to vol. ii. of his Surveying Voyage to Australia. † Voyage to Terra Australia, vol. ii. p. 336. As groups of atolls have originated in the upward growth, at each fresh sinking of the land, of those reefs which primarily fringed the shores of one great island, or of several smaller ones; so we might expect that these rings of coral-rock, like so many rude outline charts, would still retain some traces of the general form, or at least general range, of the land, round which they were first modelled. That this is the case with the atolls in the Southern Pacific as far as their range is concerned, seems highly probable, when we observe that the three principal groups are directed in N.W. and S.E. lines, and that nearly all the land in the S. Pacific ranges in this same direction; namely, N. Western Australia, New Caledonia, the northern half of New Zealand, the New Hebrides, Saloman, Navigator, Society, Marquesas, and Austral archipelagoes: in the Northern Pacific, the Caroline atolls abut against the N.W. line of the Marshall atolls, much in the same manner as the E. and W. line of islands from Ceram to New Britain do on New Ireland: in the Indian Ocean the Laccadive and Maldiva atolls extend nearly parallel to the western and mountainous coast of India. In most respects, there is a perfect resemblance with ordinary islands in the grouping of atolls and in their form: thus the outline of all the larger groups is elongated; and the greater number of the individual atolls are elongated in the same direction with the group, in which they stand. The Chagos group is less elongated than is usual with other groups, and the individual atolls in it are likewise but little elongated; this is strikingly seen by comparing them with the neighbouring Maldiva atolls. In the Marshall and Maldiva archipelagoes, the atolls are ranged in two parallel lines, like the mountains in a great double mountain-chain. Some of the atolls, in the larger archipelagoes, stand so near each other, and have such an evident relationship in form, that they compose little sub-groups: in the Caroline Archipelago, one such sub-group consists of Pouynipète, a lofty island encircled by a barrier-reef, and separated by a channel only four miles and a half wide from Andeema atoll, with a second atoll a little further off. In all these respects an examination of a series of charts will show how perfectly groups of atolls resemble groups of common islands. On the direct evidence of the blue spaces in the map having subsided during the upward growth of the reefs so coloured, and of the red spaces having remained stationary, or having been upraised.—With respect to subsidence, I have shown in the last chapter, that we cannot expect to obtain in countries inhabited only by semi-civilized races, demonstrative proofs of a movement, which invariably tends to conceal its own evidence. But on the coral-islands supposed to have been produced by subsidence, we have proofs of changes in their external appearance—of a round of decay and renovation—of the last vestiges of land on some—of its first commencement on others: we hear of storms desolating them to the astonishment of their inhabitants: we know by the great fissures with which some of them are traversed, and by the earthquakes felt under others, that subterranean disturbances of some kind are in progress. These facts, if not directly connected with subsidence, as I believe they are, at least show how difficult it would be to discover proofs of such movement by ordinary means. At Keeling atoll, however, I have described some appearances, which seem directly to show that subsidence did take place there during the late earthquakes. Vanikoro, according to the Chevalier Dillon,* * See Capt. Dillon's Voyage in search of La Peyrouse. M. Cordier in his Report on the Voyage of the Astrolabe, (p. cxi. vol. i.) speaking of Vanikoro, says the shores are surrounded by reefs of madrepore, "qu'on assure être de formation tout-a-fait moderne." I have in vain endeavoured to learn some further particulars about this remarkable passage. I may here add, that according to our theory, the island of Pouynipète, (Pl. I. fig. 7.) in the Caroline Archipelago, being encircled by a barrier-reef, must have subsided. In the New S. Wales Lit. Advert. Feb. 1835, (which I have seen through the favour of Dr. Lloghstky,) there is an account of this island, (subsequently confirmed by Mr. Campbell,) in which it is said, "At the N.E. end, at a place called Tamen, there are ruins of a town, now only accessible by boats, the waves reaching to the steps of the houses." Judging from this passage, one would be tempted to conclude that the island must have subsided, since these houses were built. I may, also, here append a statement in Malte Brun, (vol. ix. p. 775, given is often violently shaken by earthquakes, and there, the unusual depth of the channel between the shore and the reef,—the almost entire absence of islets on the reef,—its wall-like structure on the inner side, and the small quantity of low alluvial land at the foot of the mountains, all seem to show that this island has not remained long at its present level, with the lagoon-channel subjected to the accumulation of sediment, and the reef to the wear and tear of the breakers. At the Society Archipelago, on the other hand, where a slight tremor is only rarely felt, the shoalness of the lagoon channels round some of the islands, the number of islets formed on the reefs of others, and the broad belt of low land at the foot of the mountains, indicate that, although there must have been great subsidence to have produced the barrier-reefs, there has since elapsed a long stationary period.* without any authority,) that the sea gains in an extraordinary manner on the coast of Cochin China, which lies in front and near the subsiding coral-reefs in the China Sea: as the coast is granitic, and not alluvial, it is scarcely possible that the encroachment of the sea can be owing to the washing away of the land; and if so, it must be due to subsidence. * Mr. Couthouy states, (Remarks, p. 44,) that at Tahiti and Eimeo the space between the reef and the shore has been nearly filled up by the extension of those coral-reefs, which within most barrier-reefs merely fringe the land. From this circumstance, he arrives at the same conclusion as I have done, that the Society Islands since their subsidence have remained stationary during a long period; but he further believes that they have recently commenced rising, as well as the whole area of the Low Archipelago. He does not give any detailed proofs regarding the elevation of the Society Islands, but I shall refer to this subject in another part of this chapter. Before making some further comments, I may observe how satisfactory it is to me, to find Mr. Couthouy affirming, that "having personally examined a large number of coral-islands, and also residing eight months among the volcanic class, having shore and partially encircling reefs, I may be permitted to state that my own observations have impressed a conviction of the correctness of the theory of Mr. Darwin." This gentleman believes, that subsequently to the subsidence by which the atolls in the Low Archipelago were produced, the whole area has been elevated to the amount of a few feet: this indeed be a remarkable fact; but as far as I am able to judge, the Turning now to the red colour; as on our map, the areas which have sunk slowly downwards to great depths are many his conclusion are not sufficiently strong. He states that he found in almost every atoll which he visited, the shores of the lagoon raised from 18 to 30 inches above the sea-level, and containing imbedded Tridacnæ and corals standing as they grew; some of the corals were dead in their upper parts, but below a certain line they continued to flourish. In the lagoons, also, he frequently met with clusters of madrepore, with their extremities standing from one inch to a foot above the surface of the water. Now, these appearances are exactly what I should have expected, without any subsequent elevation having taken place; and I think Mr. Couthouy has not borne in mind the indisputable fact, that corals, when constantly bathed by the surf, can exist at a higher level than in quite tranquil water, as in a lagoon. As long, therefore, as the waves continued at low water to break entirely over parts of the annular reef of an atoll, submerged to a small depth, the corals and shells attached on these parts might continue living at a level above the smooth surface of the lagoon, into which the waves rolled; but as soon as the outer edge of the reef grew up to its utmost possible height, or if the reef were very broad nearly to that height, the force of the breakers would be checked, and the corals and shells on the inner parts near the lagoon would occasionally be left dry, and thus be partially or wholly destroyed. Even in atolls, which have not lately subsided, if the outer margin of the reef continued to increase in breadth seaward, (each fresh zone of corals rising to the same vertical height as at Keeling atoll,) the line where the waves broke most heavily would advance outwards, and therefore the corals which, when living near the margin, were washed by the breaking waves during the whole of each tide, would cease being so, and would therefore be left on the backward part of the reef standing exposed and dead. The case of the madrepores in the lagoons with the tops of their branches exposed, seems to be an analogous fact, to the great fields of dead but upright corals in the lagoon of Keeling atoll;—a condition of things which I have endeavoured to show, has resulted from the lagoon having become more and more enclosed and choked up with reefs, so that during high winds, the rising of the tide (as observed by the inhabitants) is checked, and the corals, which had formerly grown to the greatest possible height, are occasionally exposed, and thus are killed: and this is a condition of things, towards which almost every atoll in the intervals of its subsidence must be tending. Or if we look to the state of an atoll directly after a subsidence of some fathoms, the waves would roll heavily over the entire circumference of the reef, and the surface of the lagoon would like the ocean never be quite at rest, and and large, we might naturally have been led to conjecture, that with such great changes of level in progress, the coasts which have been fringed probably for ages, (for we have no reason to believe that coral-reefs are of short duration,) would not have remained all this time stationary, but would frequently have undergone movements of elevation. This supposition, we shall immediately see, holds good to a remarkable extent; and although a stationary condition of the land can hardly ever be open to proof, from the evidence being therefore the corals in the lagoon, from being constantly laved by the rippling water, might extend their branches to a little greater height than they could, when the lagoon became enclosed and protected. Christmas atoll, (2° North lat.) which has a very shallow lagoon, and differs in several respects from most atolls, possibly may have been elevated recently; but its highest part appears (Couthouy, p. 46) to be only ten feet above the sea-level. The facts of a second class, adduced by Mr. Couthouy, in support of the alleged recent elevation of the Low Archipelago, are not all (especially those referring to a shelf of rock) quite intelligible to me: he believes that certain enormous fragments of rock on the reef, must have been moved into their present position, when the reef was at a lower level; but here again the force of the breakers on any inner point of the reef being diminished by its outward growth without any change in its level, has not, I think, been borne in mind. We should, also, not overlook the occasional agency of waves caused by earthquakes and hurricanes. Mr. Couthouy further argues, that since these great fragments were deposited and fixed on the reef, they have been elevated; he infers this from the greatest amount of erosion not being near their bases, where they are unceasingly washed by the reflux of the tides, but at some height on their sides, near the line of high-water mark, as shown in an accompanying diagram. My former remark again applies here, with this further observation, that as the waves have to roll over a wide space of reef before they reach the fragments, their force must be greatly increased with the increasing depth of water as the tide rises, and therefore I should have expected that the chief line of present erosion would have coincided with the line of high-water mark; and if the reef had grown outwards, that there would have been lines of erosion at greater heights. The conclusion, to which I am finally led by the interesting observations of Mr. Couthouy, is, that the atolls in the Low Archipelago have, like the Society Islands, remained at a stationary level for a long period: and this probably is the ordinary course of events, subsidence supervening after long intervals of rest. only negative, we are, in some degree, enabled to ascertain the correctness of the parts coloured red on the map, by the direct testimony of upraised organic remains of a modern date. Before going into the details on this head, (printed in small type,) I may mention, that when reading a memoir on coral formations by MM. Quoy and Gaimard,* I was astonished to find, for I knew that they had crossed both the Pacific and Indian oceans, that their descriptions were applicable only to reefs of the fringing class; but my astonishment ended satisfactorily, when I discovered that, by a strange chance, all the islands which these eminent naturalists had visited, though several in number,—namely, the Mauritius, Timor, New Guinea, the Mariana and Sandwich Archipelagoes, could be shown by their own statements to have been elevated within a recent geological era. In the eastern half of the Pacific, the Sandwich Islands are all fringed, and almost every naturalist who has visited them, has remarked on the abundance of elevated corals and shells, apparently identical with living species. The Rev. W. Ellis informs me, that he has noticed round several parts of Hawaii, beds of coral-detritus, about twenty feet above the level of the sea, and where the coast is low they extend far inland. Upraised coral-rock forms a considerable part of the borders of Oahu; and at Elizabeth Island† it composes three strata, each about ten feet thick. Nihau, which forms the northern, as Hawaii does the southern end of the group, (350 miles in length) likewise seems to consist of coral and volcanic rocks. Mr. Couthouy‡ has lately described with interesting details, several upraised beaches, ancient reefs with their surfaces perfectly preserved, and beds of recent shells and corals, at the islands of Maui, Morokai, Oahu and Tauai (or Kauai) in this group. Mr. Pierce, an intelligent resident at Oahu, is convinced, from changes which have taken place within his memory, during the last sixteen years, "that the elevation is at present going forward at a very perceptible rate." * Annales des Sciences Nat. tom. vi. p. 279, &c. † Zoology of Capt. Beechey's Voyage, p. 176. See also MM. Quoy and Gaimard in Annales des Scien. Nat. tom. vi. ‡ Remarks on Coral Formations, p. 51. The Natives at Kauai state that the land is there gaining rapidly on the sea; and Mr. Couthouy has no doubt, from the nature of the strata, that this has been effected by an elevation of the land. In the southern part of the Low Archipelago, Elizabeth Island is described by Capt. Beechey,* as being quite flat, and about eighty feet in height; it is entirely composed of dead corals, forming a honeycombed, but compact rock. In cases like this, of an island having exactly the appearance, which the elevation of any one of the smaller surrounding atolls with a shallow lagoon would present, one is led to conclude (with little better reason, however, than the improbability of such small and low fabrics lasting, for an immense period, exposed to the many destroying agents of nature), that the elevation has taken place at an epoch not geologically remote. When merely the surface of an island of ordinary formation is strewed with marine bodies, and that continuously, or nearly so, from the beach to a certain height, and not above that height, it is exceedingly improbable that such organic remains, although they may not have been specifically examined, should belong to any ancient period. It is necessary to bear these remarks in mind, in considering the evidence of the elevatory movements in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, as it does not often rest on specific determinations, and therefore should be received with caution. Six of the Cook and Austral Islands (S.W. of the Society group), are fringed; of these, five were described to me by the Rev. J. Williams, as formed of coral-rock, (associated with some basalt in Mangaia), and the sixth as lofty and basaltic. Mangaia is nearly 300 feet high, with a level summit; and according to Mr. S. Wilson† it is an upraised reef; "and there are in the central hollow, formerly the bed of the lagoon, many scattered patches of coral-rock, some of them raised to a height of forty feet." These knolls of coral-rock were evidently once separate reefs in the lagoon of an atoll. Mr. Martens, at Sydney, informed me that this island is surrounded by a terrace-like plain at about the height of a hundred feet, which probably marks a pause in its elevation. From these facts we may infer, perhaps, that the Cook and Austral Islands have been upheaved at a period probably not very remote. Savage Island (S.E. of the Friendly group), is about forty feet in height. Forster‡ describes the plants as already growing out of * Beechey's Voyage in the Pacific, p. 46, 4to. edition. † Couthouy's Remarks, p. 34. ‡ Observations made during Voyage round the World, p. 147. the dead, but still upright and spreading trees of coral; and the younger Forster* believes that an ancient lagoon is now represented by a central plain: here we cannot doubt that the elevatory forces have recently acted. The same conclusion may be extended, though with somewhat less certainty, to the islands of the Friendly Group, which have been well described in the second and third voyages of Cook. The surface of Tongatabou is low and level, but with some parts a hundred feet high; the whole consists of coral-rock, "which yet shews the cavities and irregularities worn into it by the action of the tides."† On Eoua the same appearances were noticed at an elevation of between 200 and 300 feet. Vavao, also, at the opposite or northern end of the group, consists, according to the Rev. J. Williams, of coral-rock. Tongatabou, with its northern extensive reefs, resembles either an upraised atoll with one half originally imperfect, or one unequally elevated; and Anamouka, an atoll equally elevated. This latter island contains‡ in its centre a salt-water lake, about a mile-and-a-half in diameter, without any communication with the sea, and around it the land rises gradually like a bank: the highest part is only between twenty and thirty feet; but on this part, as well as on the rest of the land, (which as Cook observes, rises above the height of true lagoon-islands,) coral-rock like that on the beach, was found. In the Navigator Archipelago, Mr. Couthouy§ found on Manua many and very large fragments of coral at the height of eighty feet, "on a steep hill-side, rising half a mile inland from a low sandy plain abounding in marine remains." The fragments were embedded in a mixture of decomposed lava and sand. It is not stated whether they were accompanied by shells, or whether the corals resembled recent species; as these remains were embedded, they possibly may belong to a remote epoch; but I presume this was not the opinion of Mr. Couthouy. Earthquakes are very frequent in this archipelago. Still proceeding westward we come to the New Hebrides; on these islands, Mr. G. Bennett (author of Wanderings in New South Wales), informs me he found much coral at a great altitude, which he considered of recent origin. Respecting Santa Cruz, and the Salomon Archipelago, I have no information; but at New Ireland, which forms the northern point of the latter chain, both Labillardière and Lesson have described large beds of an apparently very modern * Voyage, vol. ii. p. 163. † Cook's Third Voyage (4to. edition), vol. i. p. 314. ‡ Ibid. vol. I. p. 235. § Remarks on Coral Formations, p. 50. madreporitic rock, with the form of the corals little altered. The latter author* states that this formation composes a newer line of coast, modelled round an ancient one. There only remains to be described in the Pacific, that curved line of fringed islands, of which the Marianas form the main part. Of these Guam, Rota, Tinian, Saypan, and some islets farther north, are described by Quoy and Gaimard,† and Chamisso,‡ as chiefly composed of madreporitic limestone, which attains a considerable elevation, and is in several cases worn into successively rising cliffs: the two former naturalists seem to have compared the corals and shells with the existing ones, and state that they are of recent species. Fais, which lies in the prolonged line of the Marianas, is the only island in this part of the sea which is fringed; it is ninety feet high, and consists entirely of madreporitic rock.§ In the East Indian Archipelago, many authors have recorded proofs of recent elevation. M. Lesson|| states, that near Port Dory, on the north coast of New Guinea, the shores are flanked, to the height of 150 feet, by madreporitic strata of a modern date. He mentions similar formations at Waigiou, Amboina, Bourou, Ceram, Sonda and Timor: at this latter place, MM. Quoy and Gaimard¶ have likewise described the primitive rocks, as coated to a considerable height with coral. Some small islets eastward of Timor are said in Kolff's Voyage** to resemble small coral islets upraised some feet above the sea. Dr. Macolmson informs me that Dr. Hardie found in Java an extensive formation, containing an abundance of shells, of which the greater part appear to be of existing species. Dr. Jack†† * Voyage de la Coquille, Part. Zoolog. † Freycinet's Voyage autour du Monde. See also the Hydrographical Memoir, p. 215. ‡ Kotzebue's First Voyage. § Lutké's Voyage, vol. ii. p. 304. || Partie Zoolog. Voyage de la Coquille. ¶ Ann. des Scien. Nat., tom. vi. p. 281. ** Translated by Windsor Earl, chapters vi. and vii. †† Geolog. Transact. 2nd series, vol. i. p. 403. On the Peninsula of Malacca, in front of Pinang, 5° 30' N., Dr. Ward collected some shells, which Dr. Malcolmson informs me, although not compared with existing species, had a recent appearance. Dr. Ward describes in this neighbourhood (Trans. Asiat. Soc. vol. xviii., part 2, p. 166.) a single water-worn rock, with a conglomerate of sea shells at its base, situated six miles inland, which, according to the traditions of the natives, was has described some upraised shells and corals, apparently recent, on Pulo Nias off Sumatra; and Marsden relates in his history of this great island, that the names of many promontories, show that they were originally islands. On part of the west coast of Borneo and at the Sooloo Islands, the form of the land, the nature of the soil, and the water-washed rocks, present appearances,* (although it is doubtful whether such vague evidence is worthy of mention,) of having recently been covered by the sea; and the inhabitants of the Sooloo Islands believe that this has been the case. Mr. Cuming, who has lately investigated, with so much success, the natural history of the Phillippines, found near Cabagan, in Luzon, about fifty feet above the level of the R. Cagayan, and seventy miles from its mouth, a large bed of fossil shells: these, he informs me, are of the same species with those now existing on the shores of the neighbouring islands. From the accounts given us by Captain Basil Hall and Captain Beechey† of the lines of inland reefs, and walls of coral-rock worn into caves, above the present reach of the waves, at the Loo Choo Islands, there can be little doubt that they have been upraised at no very remote period. Dr. Davy‡ describes the northern province of Ceylon as being very low, and consisting of a limestone with shells and corals of very recent origin; he adds, that it does not admit of a doubt that the sea has retired from this district even within the memory of man. There is also some reason for believing that the western shores of India, north of Ceylon, have been upraised within the recent period.§ once surrounded by the sea. Capt. Low has also described (Ibid. Part i. p. 131.) mounds of shells lying two miles inland on this line of coast. * Notices of the East Indian Arch., Singapore, 1828, p. 6, and Append. p. 43. † Capt. B. Hall, Voyage to Loo Choo, Append. pp. xxi. and xxv. Capt. Beechey's Voyage, p. 496. ‡ Travels in Ceylon, p. 13. This madreporitic formation is mentioned by M. Cordier in his report to the Institute, (May 4, 1839,) on the voyage of the Chevrette, as one of immense extent, and belonging to the latest tertiary period. § Dr. Benza, in his Journey through the N. Circars, (the Madras Lit. and Scient. Journ. vol. v.) has described a formation with recent freshwater and marine shells, occurring at the distance of three or four miles from the present shore. Dr. Benza, in conversation with me, attributed their position to a rise of the land. Dr. Malcolmson, how- Mauritius has certainly been upraised within the recent period, as I have stated in the chapter on fringing-reefs. The northern extremity of Madagascar is described by Capt. Owen* as formed of madreporitic rock, as likewise are the shores and outlying islands along an immense space of Eastern Africa, from a little north of the equator for 900 miles southward. Nothing can be more vague than the expression "madreporitic rock;" but at the same time it is, I think, scarcely possible to look at the chart of the linear islets, which rise to a greater height than can be accounted for by the growth of coral, in front of the coast from the equator to 2° S., without feeling convinced that a line of fringing reefs has been elevated at a period so recent, that no great changes have since taken place on the surface of this part of the globe. Some, also, of the higher islands of madreporitic rock on this coast, for instance Pemba, have very singular forms, which seem to show the combined effect of the growth of coral round submerged banks, and their subsequent upheaval. Dr. Allan informs me that he never observed any elevated organic remains on the Seychelles, which come under our fringed class. The nature of the formations round the shores of the Red Sea, as described by several authors, shows that the whole of this large area has been elevated within a very recent tertiary epoch. A part of this space in the appended map, is coloured blue, indicating the presence of barrier-reefs; on which circumstance I shall presently make some remarks. Rüppell† states that the tertiary formation, of which he has examined the organic remains, forms a fringe along the shores with a uniform height of from 30 and 40 feet, from the mouth of the Gulf of Suez to about Lat. 26°; but that south of 26°, the beds attain only the height of from 12 to 15 feet. This, however, can hardly be quite accurate; although possibly there may be a decrease in the elevation of the shores in the middle parts of the Red Sea, for Dr. Malcolmson (as he informs me) collected from the cliffs of Camaran Island (Lat. 15° 30' S.) shells and corals, apparently recent, at a ever, (and there cannot be a higher authority on the geology of India) informs me that he suspects that these beds may have been formed by the mere action of the waves and currents accumulating sediment. From analogy I should much incline to Dr. Benza's opinion. * Owen's Africa, vol. ii. p. 37 for Madagascar; and for S. Africa, vol. i. pp. 412 and 426. Lieut. Boteler's narrative contains fuller particulars regarding the coral-rock, vol. i. p. 174., and vol. ii. pp. 41 and 54. See also Ruschenberger's Voyage round the World, vol. i. p. 60. † Rüppell, Reise in Abyssinien, Band i. s. 141. height between 30 and 40 feet; and Mr. Salt (Travels in Abyssinia) describes a similar formation a little southward on the opposite shore at Amphila. Moreover, near the mouth of the Gulf of Suez, although on the coast opposite to that on which Dr. Rüppell says that the modern beds attain a height of only 30 to 40 feet, Mr. Burton* found a deposit replete with existing species of shells, at the height of 200 feet. In an admirable series of drawings by Capt. Moresby, I could see how continuously the cliff-bounded low plains of this formation extended with a nearly equable height, both on the eastern and western shores. The southern coast of Arabia seem to have been subjected to the same elevatory movement, for Dr. Malcolmson found at Sahar low cliffs containing shells and corals, apparently of recent species. The Persian Gulf abounds with coral reefs; but as it is difficult to distinguish them from sand-banks in this shallow sea, I have coloured only some near the mouth; towards the head of the gulf Mr. Ainsworth† says that the land is worn into terraces, and that the beds contain organic remains of existing forms. The West Indian Archipelago of "fringed" islands, alone remains to be mentioned: evidence of an elevation within a late tertiary epoch of nearly the whole of this great area, may be found in the works of almost all the naturalists who have visited it. I will give some of the principal references in a note.‡ It is very remarkable, on reviewing these details, to observe in how many instances fringing-reefs round the shores, have coincided with the existence on the land of upraised organic * Lyell's Principles of Geology, 5th edition, vol. iv. p. 25. † Ainsworth's Assyria and Babylon, p. 217. ‡ On Florida and the north shores of the Gulf of Mexico, Rogers' Report to Brit. Assoc. vol. iii. p. 14.—On the shores of Mexico, Humboldt, Polit. Essay on New Spain, vol. i. p. 62. (I have also some corroborative facts with respect to the shores of Mexico.)—Honduras and the Antilles, Lyell's Principles, 5th ed. vol. iv. p. 22.—Santa Cruz and Barbadoes, Prof. Hovey, Silliman's Journ vol. xxxv. p. 74.—St. Domingo, Courrojolles, Jour. de Phys. tom. liv. p. 106.—Bahamas, United Service Journ. No. lxxi. pp. 218 and 224.—Jamaica, De la Beche Geol. Man. p. 142.—Cuba, Taylor in Lond. and Edin. Phil. Mag. vol. xi. p. 17. Dr. Daubeny also at a meeting of the Geolog. Soc. orally described some very modern beds lying on the N.W. parts of Cuba. I might have added many other less important references. remains, which seem, from evidence more or less satisfactory, to belong to a late tertiary period. It may, however, be objected, that similar proofs of elevation, perhaps, occur on the coasts coloured blue in our map: but this certainly is not the case with the few following and doubtful exceptions. The entire area of the Red Sea appears to have been upraised within a modern period; nevertheless I have been compelled, (though on unsatisfactory evidence, as given in the Appendix) to class the reefs in the middle part, as barrier-reefs; should, however, the statements prove accurate of the less height of the tertiary beds in this middle part, compared with the northern and southern districts, we might well suspect that it had subsided subsequently to the general elevation by which the whole area has been upraised. Several authors* have stated that they have observed shells and corals high up on the mountains of the Society Islands,—a group encircled by barrier-reefs, and, therefore, supposed to have subsided: at Tahiti Mr. Stutchbury found on the apex of one of the highest mountains, between 5000 and 7000 feet above the level of the sea, "a distinct and regular stratum of semi-fossil coral." At Tahiti, however, other naturalists, as well as myself, have searched in vain at a low level near the coast, for upraised shells or masses of coral-reef, where if present they could hardly have been overlooked. From this fact, I concluded that probably the organic remains strewed high up on the surface of the land, had originally been embedded in the volcanic strata, and had subsequently been washed * Ellis, in his Polynesian Researches, was the first to call attention to these remains, (vol. i. p. 38.) and the tradition of the natives concerning them. See also William's, Nar. of Miss. Enterprize, p. 21; also Tyerman and G. Bennett, Journ. of Voyage, vol. i. p. 213; also Mr. Couthouy's Remarks, p. 51; but his principal fact, namely, that there is a mass of upraised coral on the narrow peninsula of Tiarubu, is from hearsay evidence; also Mr. Stutchbury, West of England Journ. No. 1. p. 54. There is a passage in Von Zach, Corres. Astronom. vol. x. p. 266., inferring an uprising at Tahiti, from a footpath now used, which was formerly impassable; but I particularly inquired from several native chiefs, whether they knew of any change of this kind, and they were unanimous in giving me an answer in the negative. out by the rain. I have since heard from the Rev. W. Ellis, that the remains which he met with, were (as he believes,) interstratified with an argillaceous tuff; this likewise was the case with the shells observed by the Rev. D. Tyerman at Huaheine. These remains have not been specifically examined; they may, therefore, and especially the stratum observed by Mr. Stutchbury at an immense height, be contemporaneous with the first formation of the Society Islands, and be of any degree of antiquity: or they may have been deposited at some subsequent, but probably not very recent period of elevation; for if the period had been recent, the entire surface of the coast-land of these islands, where the reefs are so extensive, would have been coated with upraised coral, which certainly is not the case. Two of the Harvey, or Cook Islands, namely, Aitutaki and Manouai, are encircled by reefs, which extend so far from the land, that I have coloured them blue, although with much hesitation, as the space within the reef is shallow, and the outline of the land is not abrupt. These two islands consist of coral-rock; but I have no evidence of their recent elevation, besides, the improbability of Mangaia, a fringed island in the same group, (but distant 170 miles,) having retained its nearly perfect atoll-like structure, during any immense lapse of time after its upheaval. The Red Sea, therefore, is the only area in which we have clear proofs of the recent elevation of a district, which, by our theory (although the barrier-reefs are there not well characterized), has lately subsided. But we have no reason to be surprised at oscillations of level of this kind having occasionally taken place. There can be scarcely any doubt that Savage, Aurora,* and Mangaia Islands, and several of the * Aurora Island is described by Mr. Couthouy (Remarks, p. 58); it lies 120 miles N.E. of Tahiti; it is not coloured in the appended map, because it does not appear to be fringed by living reefs. Mr. Couthouy describes its summit as "presenting a broad table-land which declines a few feet towards the centre, where we may suppose the lagoon to have been placed." It is about 200 feet in height, and consists of reef-rock and conglomerate, with existing species of coral embeded in it. The island has been elevated at two successive periods; the cliffs being islands in the Friendly group, existed originally as atolls, and these have undoubtedly since been upraised to some height above the level of the sea; so that by our theory, there has here, also, been an oscillation of level,—elevation having succeeded subsidence, instead of, as in the middle part of the Red Sea and at the Harvey Islands, subsidence having probably succeeded recent elevation. It is an interesting fact, that Fais, which, from its composition, form, height, and situation at the western end of the Caroline Archipelago, one is strongly induced to believe existed before its upheaval as an atoll, lies exactly in the prolongation of the curved line of the Mariana group, which we know to be a line of recent elevation. I may add, that Elizabeth Island, in the southern part of the Low Archipelago, which seems to have had the same kind of origin as Fais, lies near Pitcairn Island, the only one in this part of the ocean which is high, and at the same time not surrounded by an encircling barrier-reef. On the absence of active Volcanos in the areas of subsidence, and on their frequent presence in the areas of elevation.—Before making some concluding remarks on the relations of the spaces coloured blue and red, it will be convenient to consider the position on our map of the volcanos historically known to have been in action. It is impossible not to be struck, first with the absence of volcanos in the great areas of subsidence tinted pale and dark blue,—namely, in the central parts of the Indian Ocean, in the China sea, in the sea between the barriers of Australia and New Caledonia, in the Caroline, Marshall, Gilbert, and Low Archipelagoes; and, secondly, with the coincidence of the principal volcanic chains with the parts coloured red, which indicates the presence of fringing reefs; and, as we have just seen, the presence in most cases of upraised organic remains of a modern date. I may here remark that the reefs were all coloured before the marked half-way up with a horizontal water-worn line of deep excavations. Aurora Island seems closely to resemble in structure Elizabeth Island, at the southern end of the Low Archipelago. volcanos were added to the map, or indeed before I knew of the existence of several of them. The volcano in Torres Strait, at the northern point of Australia, is that which lies nearest to a large subsiding area, although situated 125 miles within the outer margin of the actual barrier-reef. The Great Comoro Island, which probably contains a volcano, is only twenty miles distant from the barrier-reef of Mohila; Ambil volcano, in the Philippines, is distant only a little more than sixty miles from the atoll-formed Appoo reef: and there are two other volcanos in the map within ninety miles of circles coloured blue. These few cases, which thus offer partial exceptions to the rule, of volcanos being placed remote from the areas of subsidence, lie either near single and isolated atolls, or near small groups of encircled islands; and these by our theory can have, in few instances, subsided to the same amount in depth or area, as groups of atolls. There is not one active volcano within several hundred miles of an archipelago, or even a small group of atolls. It is, therefore, a striking fact that in the Friendly Archipelago, which owes its origin to the elevation of a group of atolls, two volcanos, and, perhaps, others,* are known to be in action: on the other hand, on several of the encircled islands in the Pacific, supposed by our theory to have subsided, there are old craters and streams of lava, which show the effects of past and ancient eruptions. In these cases, it would appear as if the volcanos had come into action, and had become extinguished on the same spots, according as the elevating or subsiding movements prevailed. There are some other coasts on the map, where volcanos in a state of action concur with proofs of recent elevation, besides those coloured red from being fringed by coral-reefs. Thus I hope to show in a future volume, that nearly the whole line of the west coast of South America, which forms the greatest volcanic chain in the world, from near the equator for a space of between 2000 and 3000 miles * See the note at p. 121, on the authorities for colouring the volcanos in the appended map. southward, has undergone an upward movement during a late geological period. The islands on the north-western shores of the Pacific, which form the second greatest volcanic chain, are very imperfectly known; but Luzon, in the Philippines, and the Loo Choo islands, have been recently elevated; and at Kamtschatka* there are extensive tertiary beds of modern date. Evidence of the same nature, but not very satisfactory, may be detected in northern New Zealand, where there are two volcanos. The co-existence in other parts of the world of active volcanos, with upraised beds of a modern tertiary origin, will occur to every geologist.† Nevertheless, until it could be shown that volcanos were inactive or did not exist in subsiding areas, the conclusion that their distribution depended on the nature of the subterranean movements in progress, would have been hazardous. But now, viewing the appended map, it may, I think, be considered as almost established, that volcanos are often (not necessarily always) present in those areas where the subterranean motive power has lately forced, or is now forcing outwards the crust of the earth, but that they are invariably absent in those, where the surface has lately subsided or is still subsiding.‡ On the relations of the areas of Subsidence and Elevation.—The immense surfaces on the map, which, both by our theory and by the plain evidence of upraised marine remains, have undergone a change of level either downwards or upwards during a late period, is a most remarkable fact. The exis- * At Sedanka, in Lat. 58° N. (Von Buch's Descrip. des isles Canaries, p. 455.) In a forthcoming Part, I shall give the evidence referred to with respect to the elevation of New Zealand. † During the subterranean disturbances which took place in Chile in 1835, I have shown (Geolog. Trans. 2nd Ser. vol. v. p. 606.) that at the same moment that a large district was upraised, volcanic matter burst forth at widely-separated points, through both new and old vents. ‡ We may infer from this rule, that in any old deposit, which contains interstratified beds of erupted matter, there was at the period, and in the area of its formation, a tendency to an upward movement in the earth's surface, and certainly no movement of subsidence. tence of continents shows that the areas have been immense, which at some period have been upraised: in South America we may feel sure, and on the north-western shores of the Indian Ocean we may suspect, that this rising is either now actually in progress, or has taken place quite recently. By our theory, we may conclude that the areas are likewise immense which have lately subsided, or, judging from the earthquakes occasionally felt and from other appearances, are now subsiding. The smallness of the scale of our map should not be overlooked: each of the squares on it contains (not allowing for the curvature of the earth) 810,000 square miles. Look at the space of ocean from near the southern end of the Low Archipelago to the northern end of the Marshall Archipelago,—a length of 4500 miles, in which, as far as is known, every island, excepting Aurora which lies just without the Low Archipelago, is atoll-formed. The eastern and western boundaries of our map are continents, and they are rising areas: the central spaces of the great Indian and Pacific oceans, are mostly subsiding; between them, north of Australia, lies the most broken land on the globe, and there the rising parts are surrounded and penetrated by areas of subsidence,* so that the prevailing movements now in progress, seem to accord with the actual states of surface of the great divisions of the world. The blue spaces on the map are nearly all elongated; but it does not necessarily follow from this, (a caution, for which I am indebted to Mr. Lyell,) that the areas of subsidence were likewise elongated; for the subsidence of a long, narrow, space of the bed of the ocean, including in it a transverse chain of mountains, surmounted by atolls, would only be marked on the map by a transverse blue band. But where a chain of atolls and barrier-reefs lies in an elongated area, between spaces coloured red, which therefore have re- * I suspect that the Arru and Timor-laut Islands present an included small area of subsidence, like that of the China Sea; but I have not ventured to colour them from my imperfect information, as given in the Appendix. mained stationary or have been upraised, this must have resulted either from the area of subsidence having originally been elongated (owing to some tendency in the earth's crust thus to subside), or from the subsiding area having originally been of an irregular figure, or as broad as long, and having since been narrowed by the elevation of neighbouring districts. Thus the areas, which subsided during the formation of the great north and south line of atolls in the Indian Ocean,—of the east and west line of the Caroline atolls,—and of the north-west and south-east line of the barrier-reefs of New Caledonia and the Louisiade, must have originally been elongated, or if not so, they must have since been made elongated by elevations, which we know to belong to a recent period. I infer from Mr. Hopkins's researches,* that for the formation of a long chain of mountains, with few lateral spurs, an area elongated in the same direction with the chain, must have been subjected to an elevatory movement. Mountain-chains, however, when already formed, although running in very different directions, it seems,† may be raised together by a widely-acting force: so, perhaps, mountain-chains may subside together. Hence, we cannot tell whether the Caroline and Marshall Archipelagoes, two groups of atolls running in different directions and meeting each other, have been formed by the subsidence of two areas, or of one large * Researches in Physical Geology, Transact. Cambridge Phil. Soc. vol. vi. part i. † For instance in S. America from lat. 34° for many degrees southward there are upraised beds containing recent species of shells, on both the Atlantic and Pacific side of the continent, and from the gradual ascent of the land, although with very unequal slopes, on both sides towards the Cordillera, I think it can hardly be doubted that the entire width has been upraised in mass within the recent period. In this case the two W.N.W. and E.S.E. mountain-lines, namely the Sierra Ventana and the S. Tapalguen, and the great north and south line of the Cordillera have been together raised. In the West Indies the N. and S. line of the eastern Antilles, and the E. and W. line of Jamaica, appear both to have been upraised within the latest geological period. area, including two distinct lines of mountains. We have, however, in the southern prolongation of the Mariana Islands, probable evidence of a line of recent elevation having intersected one of recent subsidence. A view of the map will show that, generally, there is a tendency to alternation in the parallel areas undergoing opposite kinds of movement; as if the sinking of one area balanced the rising of another. The existence in many parts of the world of high table-land, proves that large surfaces have been upraised in mass to considerable heights above the level of the ocean; although the highest points in almost every country consist of upturned strata, or erupted matter: and from the immense spaces scattered with atolls, which indicate that land originally existed there, although not one pinnacle now remains above the level of the sea, we may conclude that wide areas have subsided to an amount, sufficient to bury not only any formerly existing table-land, but even the heights formed by fractured strata, and erupted matter. The effects produced on the land by the later elevatory movements, namely, successively rising cliffs, lines of erosion, and beds of littoral shells and pebbles, all requiring time for their production, prove that these movements have been very slow; we can, however, infer this with safety, only with respect to the few last hundred feet of rise. But with reference to the whole vast amount of subsidence, necessary to have produced the many atolls widely scattered over immense spaces, it has already been shown (and it is, perhaps, the most interesting conclusion in this volume), that the movements must either have been uniform and exceedingly slow, or have been effected by small steps, separated from each other by long intervals of time, during which the reef-constructing polypifers were able to bring up their solid frame-works to the surface. We have little means of judging whether many considerable oscillations of level have generally occurred during the elevation of large tracts: but we know, from clear geological evidence, that this has frequently taken place; and we have seen on our map, that some of the same islands have both subsided and been upraised. I conclude, however, that most of the large blue spaces have subsided without many and great elevatory oscillations, because only a few upraised atolls have been observed: the supposition that such elevations have taken place, but that the upraised parts have been worn down by the surf, and thus have escaped observation, is overruled by the very considerable depth of the lagoons of all the larger atolls; for this could not have been the case, if they had suffered repeated elevations and abrasion. From the comparative observations made in these latter pages, we may finally conclude, that the subterranean changes which have caused some large areas to rise, and others to subside, have acted in a very similar manner. Recapitulation.—In the three first chapters, the principal kinds of coral-reefs were described in detail, and they were found to differ little, as far as relates to the actual surface of the reef. An atoll differs from an encircling barrier-reef only in the absence of land within its central expanse; and a barrier-reef differs from a fringing-reef, in being placed at a much greater distance from the land with reference to the probable inclination of its submarine foundation, and in the presence of a deep-water lagoon-like space or moat within the reef. In the fourth chapter the growing powers of the reef-constructing polypifers were discussed; and it was shown, that they cannot flourish beneath a very limited depth. In accordance with this limit, there is no difficulty respecting the foundations, on which fringing-reefs are based; whereas, with barrier-reefs and atolls, there is a great apparent difficulty on this head;—in barrier-reefs from the improbability of the rock of the coast or of banks of sediment extending, in every instance, so far seaward within the required depth;—and in atolls, from the immensity of the spaces over which they are interspersed, and the apparent necessity for believing that they are all supported on mountain-summits, which, although rising very near to the surface-level of the sea, in no one instance emerge above it. To escape this latter most improbable admission, which implies the existence of submarine chains of mountains of almost the same height, extending over areas of many thousand square miles, there is but one alternative; namely, the prolonged subsidence of the foundations, on which the atolls were primarily based, together with the upward growth of the reef-constructing corals. On this view every difficulty vanishes: fringing-reefs are thus converted into barrier-reefs; and barrier-reefs, when encircling islands, are thus converted into atolls, the instant the last pinnacle of land sinks beneath the surface of the ocean. Thus the ordinary forms and certain peculiarities in the structure of atolls and barrier-reefs can be explained;—namely, the wall-like structure on their inner sides—the bason or ring-like shape both of the marginal and central reefs in the Maldiva atolls—the union of some atolls as if by a ribbon—the apparent disseverment of others—and the occurrence, in atolls as well as in barrier-reefs, of portions of reef, and of the whole of some reefs, in a dead and submerged state, but retaining the outline of living reefs. Thus can be explained the existence of breaches through barrier-reefs in front of valleys, though separated from them by a wide space of deep water; thus, also, the ordinary outline of groups of atolls, and the relative forms of the separate atolls one to another; thus can be explained the proximity of the two kinds of reefs formed during subsidence, and their separation from the spaces where fringing-reefs abound. On searching for other evidence of the movements supposed by our theory, we find marks of change in atolls and in barrier-reefs, and of subterranean disturbances under them; but from the nature of things, it is scarcely possible to detect any direct proofs of subsidence, although some appearances are strongly in favour of it. On the fringed coasts, however, the presence of upraised marine bodies of a recent epoch, plainly show, that these coasts, instead of having remained stationary, which is all that can be directly inferred from our theory, have generally been elevated. Finally, when the two great types of structure, namely barrier-reefs and atolls on the one hand, and fringing-reefs on the other, were laid down in colours on our map, a magnificent and harmonious picture of the movements, which the crust of the earth has within a late period undergone, is presented to us. We there see vast areas rising, with volcanic matter every now and then bursting forth through the vents or fissures with which they are traversed. We see other wide spaces slowly sinking without any volcanic outbursts; and we may feel sure, that this sinking must have been immense in amount as well as in area, thus to have buried over the broad face of the ocean every one of those mountains, above which atolls now stand like monuments, marking the place of their former existence. Reflecting how powerful an agent with respect to denudation, and consequently to the nature and thickness of the deposits in accumulation, the sea must ever be, when acting for prolonged periods on the land, during either its slow emergence or subsidence; reflecting, also, on the final effects of these movements in the interchange of land and ocean-water, on the climate of the earth, and on the distribution of organic beings, I may be permitted to hope, that the conclusions derived from the study of coral-formations, originally attempted merely to explain their peculiar forms, may be thought worthy of the attention of geologists. A DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE REEFS AND ISLANDS IN THE COLOURED MAP, PLATE III. IN the beginning of the last chapter I stated the principles on which the map is coloured. There only remains to be said, that it is an exact copy of one by M. C. Gressier, published by the Dépôt général de la Marine, in 1835. The names have been altered into English, and the longitude has been reduced to that of Greenwich. The colours were first laid down on accurate charts, on a large scale. The data, on which the volcanos historically known to have been in action, have been marked with vermilion, were given in a note to the last chapter. I will commence my description on the eastern side of the map, and will describe each group of islands consecutively, proceeding westward across the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but ending with the West Indies. The WESTERN SHORES OF AMERICA appear to be entirely without coral reefs: south of the equator the survey of the Beagle, and north of it, the published charts show that this is the case. Even in the Bay of Panama, where corals flourish, there are no true coral reefs, as I have been informed by Mr. Lloyd. There are no coral-reefs in the Galapagos archipelago, as I know from personal inspection; and I believe there are none on the Cocos, Revilla-gigedo, and other neighbouring islands. Clipperton rock, 10° N. 109° W., has lately been surveyed by Capt. Belcher; in form it is like the crater of a volcano. From a drawing appended to the MS. plan in the Admiralty, it evidently is not an atoll. The eastern parts of the Pacific present an enormous area, without any islands, except Easter, and Sala, and Gomez Islands, which do not appear to be surrounded by reefs. The LOW ARCHIPELAGO.—This group consists of about 80 atolls: it would be quite superfluous to refer to descriptions of each. In D'Urville and Lottin's chart, one island (Wolchonsky) is written with a capital letter, signifying, as explained in a former chapter, that it is a high island; but this must be a mistake, as the original chart by Bellinghausen shows that it is a true atoll. Capt. Beechey says of the 32 groups which he examined (of the greater number of which I have seen beautiful MS. charts in the Admiralty), that 29 now contain lagoons, and he believes the other three originally did. Bellinghausen (see an account of this Russian voyage, in the Biblioth. des Voyages, 1834, p. 443) says, that the 17 islands which he discovered resembled each other in structure, and he has given charts on a large scale of all of them. Kotzebue has given plans of several; Cook and Bligh mention others; a few were seen during the voyage of the Beagle; and notices of other atolls are scattered through several publications. The Actæon group in this archipelago has lately been discovered (Geograph. Journ., vol. vii. p. 454); it consists of three small and low islets, one of which has a lagoon. Another lagoon island has been discovered (Naut. Mag. 1839, p. 770), in 22° 4' S. and 136° 20' W. Towards the S.E. part of the group there are some islands of different formation: Elizabeth Island is described by Beechey (p. 46, 4to. ed.) as fringed by reefs, at the distance of between two and three hundred yards; coloured red. Pitcairn Island in the immediate neighbourhood, according to the same authority, has no reefs of any kind, although numerous pieces of coral are thrown up on the beach; the sea close to its shore is very deep (see Zool. of Beechey's Voyage, p. 164); it is left uncoloured. Gambier Islands (see Plate I. fig. 8,) are encircled by a barrier reef: the greatest depth within is 38 fathoms; coloured pale blue. Aurora Island, which lies N.E. of Tahiti close to the large space coloured dark blue in the map, has been already described in a note (p. 139), on the authority of Mr. Couthouy: it is an upraised atoll, but as it does not appear to be fringed by living reefs, it is left uncoloured. The SOCIETY Arch. is separated by a narrow space from the Low Arch.; and in their parallel direction they manifest some relation to each other. I have already described the general character of the reefs of these fine encircled islands. In the atlas of the Coquille's Voyage there is a good general chart of the group, and separate plans of some of the islands. Tahiti the largest island in the group is almost surrounded, as seen in Cook's chart, by a reef from a half a mile to a mile and a half from the shore, with from 10 to 30 fathoms within it. Some considerable submerged reefs lying parallel to the shore, with a broad and deep space within, have lately been discovered (Naut. Mag. 1836, p. 264,) on the N.E. coast of the island, where none are laid down by Cook. At Eimeo the reef "which like a ring surrounds it, is in some places one or two miles distant from the shore, in others united to the beach." (Ellis, Polynesian Researches, vol. i. p. 18, 12mo. edit.) Cook found deep water (20 fathoms) in some of the harbours within the reef. Mr. Couthouy, however, states (Remarks, p. 45,) that both at Tahiti and Eimeo, the space between the barrier-reef and the shore, has been almost filled up,—"a nearly continuous fringing-reef surrounding the island, and varying from a few yards to rather more than a mile in width, the lagoons merely forming canals between this and the sea-reef," that is the barrier-reef. Tapamanoa is surrounded by a reef at a considerable distance from the shore; from the island being small, it is breached, as I am informed by the Rev. W. Ellis, only by a narrow and crooked boat-channel. This is the lowest island in the group, its height probably not exceeding 500 feet. A little way north of Tahiti, the low coral islets of Teturoa are situated; from the description of them given me by the Rev. J. Williams (the author of the Narrative of Missionary Enterprise), I should have thought they had formed a small atoll, and likewise from the description given by the Rev. D. Tyerman and G. Bennett (Journ. of Voy. and Travels, vol. i. p. 183,) who say that ten low coral islets "are comprehended within one general reef, and separated from each other by interjacent lagoons;" but as Mr. Stutchbury (West of England Journal, vol. i. p. 54,) describes it as consisting of a mere narrow ridge, I have left it uncoloured. Maitea, eastward of the group, is classed by Forster as a high encircled island; but from the account given by the Rev. D. Tyerman and G. Bennett (vol. i. p. 57,) it appears to be an exceedingly abrupt cone, rising from the sea without any reef; I have left it uncoloured. It would be superfluous to describe the northern islands in this group, as they may be well seen in the chart accompanying the 4to. edition of Cook's Voyages, and in the Atlas of the Coquille's Voyage. Maurua is the only one of the northern islands, in which the water within the reef is not deep, being only 4½ fathoms; but the great width of the reef, stretching three miles and a half southward of the land (which is represented in the drawing in the atlas of the Coquille's voyage as descending abruptly to the water) shows, on the principle explained in the beginning of the last chapter, that it belongs to the barrier class. I may here mention, from information communicated to me by the Rev. W. Ellis, that on the N.E. side of Huaheine there is a bank of sand, about a quarter of a mile wide, extending parallel to the shore, and separated from it by an extensive and deep lagoon: this bank of sand rests on coral rock, and undoubtedly was originally a living reef. North of Bolabola lies the atoll of Toubai (Motou-iti of the Coquille's Atlas), which is coloured dark blue; the other islands, surrounded by barrier-reefs, are pale blue: three of them are represented in Figures 3, 4, and 5, in Plate I. There are three low coral-groups lying a little E. of the Society Arch., and almost forming part of it, namely, Bellinghausen, which is said by Kotzebue (Second Voyage, vol. ii. p. 255,) to be a lagoon-island; Mopeha, which, from Cook's description (Second Voyage, Book iii. chap. 1,) no doubt is an atoll; and the Scilly Islands, which are said by Wallis (Voyage, chap. ix.) to form a group of low islets and shoals, and therefore, probably, they compose an atoll: the two former have been coloured blue, but not the latter. MENDANA or MARQUESAS Group.—These islands are entirely without reefs, as may be seen in Krusenstern's Atlas, making a remarkable contrast with the adjacent group of the Society's Islands. Mr. F. D. Bennett has given some account of this group, in the seventh volume of the Geograph. Journ. He informs me that all the islands have the same general character, and that the water is very deep close to their shores. He visited three of them, namely, Dominicana, Christiana, and Roapoa; their beaches are strewed with rounded masses of coral, and although no regular reefs exist, yet the shore is in many places lined by coral-rock, so that a boat grounds on this formation. Hence these islands ought probably to come within the class of fringed islands and be coloured red; but as I am determined to err on the cautious side, I have left them uncoloured. COOK or HARVEY and AUSTRAL. ISL.—Palmerston Island is minutely described as an atoll by Capt. Cook during his voyage in 1774; coloured blue. Aitutaki was partially surveyed by the Beagle, (see map accompanying Voyages of Adventure and Beagle); the land is hilly, sloping gently to the beach; the highest point is 360 feet; on the southern side the reef projects five miles from the land: off this point the Beagle found no bottom with 270 fathoms: the reef is surmounted by many low coral-islets. Although within the reef the water is exceedingly shallow, not being more than a few feet deep, as I am informed by the Rev. J. Williams; nevertheless, from the great extension of this reef into a profoundly deep ocean, this island probably belongs, on the principle lately adverted to, to the barrier class, and I have coloured it pale blue; although with much hesitation.—Manouai or Harvey Isld. The highest point is about 50 feet: the Rev. J. Williams informs me that the reef here, although it lies far from the shore, is less distant than at Aitutaki, but the water within the reef is rather deeper: I have also coloured this pale blue, with many doubts.—Round Mitiaro Isld., as I am informed by Mr. Williams, the reef is attached to the shore; coloured red.—Mauki, or Maouti; the reef round this isld. (under the name of Parry Isld. in the Voyage of H.M.S. Blonde, p. 209,) is described as a coral flat, only 50 yards wide, and two feet under water. This statement has been corroborated by Mr. Williams, who calls the reef attached; coloured red.—Atiu, or Wateeo; a moderately elevated, hilly island, like the others of this group. The reef is described in Cook's Voyage as attached to the shore, and about 100 yards wide; coloured red.—Fenoua-iti; Cook describes this isld. as very low, not more than six or seven feet high, (vol. i. book ii. chap. iii. 1777); in the chart published in the Coquille's atlas, a reef is engraved close to the shore: this isld. is not mentioned in the list given by Mr. Williams (p. 16) in the Narrative Missionary Enterprise; nature doubtful. As it is so near Atiu, it has been unavoidably coloured red.—Rarotonga; Mr. Williams informs me it is a lofty basaltic isld., with an attached reef; coloured red.—There are three islands. Rourouti, Roxburgh, and Hull, of which I have not been able to obtain any account, and have left them uncoloured. Hull isld., in the French chart, is written with small letters, as being low.—Mangaia; height about 300 feet; "the surrounding reef joins the shore," (Williams's Narrative, p. 18); coloured red.—Rimetara; Mr. Williams informs me that the reef is rather close to the shore; but, from information given me by Mr. Ellis, the reef does not appear to be quite so closely attached to it as in the foregoing cases: the isld. is about 300 feet high, (Naut. Mag. 1839, p. 738); coloured red.—Rurutu; Mr. Williams and Mr. Ellis inform me that this island has an attached reef; coloured red. It is described by Cook under the name of Oheteroa: he says it is not surrounded, like the neighbouring islds., by a reef; he must have meant a distant reef.—Toubouai; in Cook's chart, (2d Voyage, vol. ii. p. 2,) the reef is laid down in part one mile, and in part two miles from the shore. Mr. Ellis (Polynes. Res. vol. iii. p. 381) says the low land round the base of the isld. is very extensive; and this gentleman informs me that the water within the reef appears deep; coloured blue.—Raivaivai, or Vivitao; Mr. Williams informs me that the reef is here distant; Mr. Ellis, however, says that this is certainly not the case on one side of the isld.; and he believes that the water within the reef is not deep; hence I have left it uncoloured.—Lancaster Reef, described in Naut. Mag. 1833, (p. 693,) as an extensive crescent-formed coral-reef, I have not coloured it.—Rapa, or Oparree; from the accounts given of it by Ellis and Vancouver, there does not appear to be any reef.—I. de Bass is an adjoining isld., of which I cannot find any account.—Kemin Isld.; Krusenstern seems hardly to know its position, and gives no further particulars. ISLANDS BETWEEN the Low and Gilbert Archipelagoes. Caroline Isld. (10° S., 150° W.) is described by Mr. F. D. Bennett (Geograph. Journ. vol. vii. p. 225) as containing a fine lagoon; coloured blue.—Flint Isld., (11° S., 151° W.); Krusenstern believes that it is the same with Peregrino, which is described by Quiros (Burney's Chron. Hist. vol. ii. p. 283) as "a cluster of small islands connected by a reef, and forming a lagoon in the middle;" coloured blue.—Wostock is an isld. a little more than half a mile in diameter, and apparently quite flat and low, and was discovered by Bellinghausen; it is situated a little west of Caroline Isld., but it is not placed on the French charts; I have not coloured it, although I entertain little doubt from the chart of Bellinghausen, that it originally contained a small lagoon.—Penrhyn Isld. (9° S., 158° W.); a plan of it in the atlas of the first voyage of Kotzebue, shows that it is an atoll; blue.—Starbuck Isld. (5° S., 156° W.); is described in Lord Byron's Voyage in the Blonde (p. 206) as formed of a flat coral-rock, with no trees; the height not given; not coloured.—Malden Isld. (4° S., 154° W.); in the same voyage (p. 205) this island is said to be of coral formation, and no part above 40 feet high; I have not ventured to colour it, although, from being of coral formation, it is probably fringed; in which case it should be red. Jarvis, or Bunker Isld. (0° 20' S. 160° W.) is described by Mr. F. D. Bennett (Geograph. Journ. vol. vii. p. 227) as a narrow, low strip of coral formation; not coloured.—Brook is a small, low isld. between the two latter; the position, and perhaps even the existence of it is doubtful; not coloured.—Pescado and Humphrey Islands; I can find out nothing about these islands, except that the latter appears to be small and low; not coloured.—Rearson, or Grand Duke Alexander's, (10° S., 161° W.); an atoll, of which a plan is given by Bellinghausen; blue.—Souvoroff Islands, (13° S., 163° W.); Admiral Krusenstern, in the most obliging manner, obtained for me an account of these islands from Admiral Lazareff, who discovered them. They consist of five very low islands of coral formation, two of which are connected by a reef, with deep water close to it. They do not surround a lagoon, but are so placed that a line drawn through them includes an oval space, part of which is shallow; these islets, therefore, probably once (as is the case with some of the islands in the Caroline arch.) formed a single atoll; but I have not coloured them.—Danger Isld. (10° S., 166° W.); described as low by Com. Byron, and more lately surveyed by Bellinghausen; it is a small atoll with three islets on it; blue.—Clarence Isld. (9° S., 172° W.); discovered in the Pandora (G. Hamilton's Voyage, p. 75): it is said, "in running along the land, we saw several canoes crossing the lagoons;" as this island is in the close vicinity of other low islands; and as it is said, that the natives make reservoirs of water in old cocoa-nut trees, (which shows the nature of the land) I have no doubt it is an atoll, and have coloured it blue.—York Isld. (8° S., 172° W.) is described by Commodore Byron (chap. x. of his Voyage) as an atoll; blue.—Sydney Isld. (4° S., 172° W.), is about three miles in diameter, with its interior occupied by a lagoon, (Capt. Tromelin, Annal. Marit. 1829, p. 297;) blue.—Phoenix Isld. (4° S., 171° W.) is nearly circular, low, sandy, not more than two miles in diameter, and very steep outside, (Tromelin Annal. Marit. 1829, p. 297): it may be inferred that this isld. originally contained a lagoon, but I have not coloured it.—New Nantucket, (0° 15' N., 174° W.) From the French chart it must be a low isld.; I can find nothing more about it, or about Mary Isld.; both uncoloured.—Gardner Isld. (5° S., 174° W.), from its position, is certainly the same as Kemin Isld. described (Krusenstern, p. 435, Appen. to Mem. publ. 1827) as having a lagoon in its centre; blue. ISLANDS SOUTH of the Sandwich Archipelago. Christmas Isld. (2° N., 157° W.) Capt. Cook, in his third voyage (vol. ii. chap. x.) has given a detailed account of this atoll. The breadth of the islets on the reef is unusually great, and the sea near it does not deepen so suddenly as is generally the case. It has more lately been visited by Mr. F. D. Bennett, (Geograph. Journ. vol. vii. p. 226); and he assures me that it is low and of coral formation: I particularly mention this, because it is engraved with a capital letter, signifying a high isld., in D'Urville and Lottin's chart. Mr. Couthouy, also, has given some account of it, (Remarks, p. 46) from the Hawaiian Spectator; he believes it has lately undergone a small elevation, but his evidence does not appear to me satisfactory; the deepest part of the lagoon is said to be only ten feet; nevertheless, I have coloured it blue.—Fanning Isld., (4° N., 158° W.) according to Capt. Tromelin, (Ann. Maritim. 1829, p. 283,) is an atoll: his account, as observed by Krusenstern, differs from that given in Fanning's Voyage, (p. 224) which, however, is far from clear; coloured blue.—Washington Isld. (4° N., 159° W.) is engraved as a low isld. in D'Urville's chart, but is described by Fanning, (p. 226,) as having a much greater elevation than Fanning Isld., and hence I presume it is not an atoll; not coloured.—Palmyra Isld. (6° N., 162° W.) is an atoll divided into two parts (Krusenstern's Mem. Suppl. p. 50, also Fanning's Voyage, p. 233); blue.— Smyth's, or Johnston's Islds. (17° N., 170° W.) Capt. Smyth, R.N., has had the kindness to inform me that they consist of two very low small islands, with a dangerous reef off the east end of them. Capt. Smyth does not recollect whether these islets, together with the reef, surrounded a lagoon; uncoloured. SANDWICH ARCH.—Hawaii; in the chart in Freycinet's atlas, small portions of the coast are fringed by reefs; and in the accompanying Hydrog. Memoir, reefs are mentioned in several places, and the coral is said to injure the cables. On one side of the islet of Kohaihai there is a bank of sand and coral with five feet water on it, running parallel to the shore, and leaving a channel of about fifteen feet deep within. I have coloured this isld. red, but it is very much less perfectly fringed than others of the group.—Maui; in Freycinet's chart of the anchorage of Raheina, two or three miles of coast are seen to be fringed; and in the Hydrog. Memoir "banks of coral along shore" are spoken of. Mr. F. D. Bennett informs me that the reefs, on an average, extend about a quarter of a mile from the beach; the land is not very steep, and outside the reefs the sea does not become deep very suddenly; coloured red.—Morotoi, I presume, is fringed: Freycinet speaks of the breakers extending along the shore at a little distance from it. From the chart, I believe it is fringed; coloured red.—Oahu; Freycinet, in his Hydrog. Memoir, mentions some of the reefs. Mr. F. D. Bennett informs me that the shore is skirted for forty or fifty miles in length. There is even a harbour for ships formed by the reefs, but it is at the mouth of a valley; red.—Atooi, in La Peyrouse's charts, is represented as fringed by a reef, in the same manner as Oahu and Morotoi; and this, as I have been informed by Mr. Ellis, on part at least of the shore, is of coral formation: the reef does not leave a deep channel within; red.—Oneehow; Mr. Ellis believes this island is also fringed by a coral-reef: considering its close proximity to the other islands, I have ventured to colour it red. I have in vain consulted the works of Cook, Vancouver, La Peyrouse, and Lisiansky, for any satisfactory account of the small islands and reefs, which lie scattered in a N.W. line prolonged from the Sandwich group, and hence have left them uncoloured, with one exception; for I am indebted to Mr. F. D. Bennett for informing me of an atoll-formed reef, in Lat. 28° 22', Long. 178° 30' W., on which the Gledstanes was wrecked in 1837. It is apparently of large size, and extends in a N.W. and S.E. line: very few islets have been formed on it. The lagoon seems to be shallow; at least, the deepest part which was surveyed was only three fathoms. Mr. Couthouy (Remarks, p. 38) describes this isld. under the name of Ocean isld. Considerable doubts should be entertained regarding the nature of a reef of this kind, with a very shallow lagoon, and standing far from any other atoll, on account of the possibility of a crater or flat bank of rock lying at the proper depth beneath the surface of the water, thus affording a foundation for a ring-formed coral-reef. I have, however, thought myself compelled, from its large size and symmetrical outline, to colour it blue. SAMOA or NAVIGATOR GROUP.—Kotzebue, in his second voyage, contrasts the structure of these islands with many others in the Pacific, in not being furnished with harbours for ships, formed by distant coral-reefs. The Rev. J. Williams, however, informs me, that coral-reefs do occur in irregular patches on the shores of these islands; but that they do not form a continuous band, as round Mangaia, and other such perfect cases of fringed islands. From the charts accompanying La Peyrouse's voyage, it appears that the north shore of Savaii, Maouna, Orosenga, and Manua, are fringed by reefs. La Peyrouse, speaking of Maouna, (p. 126.) says that the coral-reef surrounding its shores, almost touches the beach; and is breached in front of the little coves and streams, forming passages for canoes, and probably even for boats. Further on (p. 159.) he extends the same observation to all the islands which he visited.—Mr. Williams in his Narrative, speaks of a reef going round a small island attached to Oyolava, and returning again to it: all these islands have been coloured red.—A chart of Rose island, at the extreme west end of the group, is given by Freycinet, from which I should have thought that it had been an atoll; but according to Mr. Couthouy (Remarks, p. 43.) it consists of a reef, only a league in circuit, surmounted by a very few low islets; the lagoon is very shallow, and is strewed with numerous large boulders of volcanic rock. This island, therefore, probably consists of a bank of rock, a few feet submerged, with the outer margin of its upper surface fringed with reefs; hence it cannot be properly classed with atolls, in which the foundations are always supposed to lie at a depth, greater than that at which the reef-constructing polypifers can live; not coloured. Beveridge Reef, 20° S. 167° W., is described in the Naut. Mag. (May 1833, p. 442) as ten miles long in a N. & S. line, and eight wide; "in the inside of the reef, there appears deep water;" there is a passage near the S.W. corner: this therefore seems to be a submerged atoll, and is coloured blue. Savage Isl., 19° S. 170° W., has been described by Cook and Forster. The younger Forster, (vol. ii. p. 163.) says it is about forty feet high: he suspects that it contains a low plain, which formerly was the lagoon. The Rev. J. Williams informs me that the reef fringing its shores, resembles that round Mangaia; coloured red. FRIENDLY ARCH.—Pylstaart Isl: judging from the chart in Freycinet's Atlas, I should have supposed that it had been regularly fringed; but as nothing is said in the Hydrog. Memoir (or in the voyage of Tasman, the discoverer) about coral-reefs, I have left it uncoloured.—Tongatabou: In the atlas of the voyage of the Astrolabe, the whole south side of the island is represented as narrowly fringed by the same reef which forms an extensive platform on the northern side. The origin of this latter reef, which might have been mistaken for a barrier-reef, has already been attempted to be explained, when giving the proofs of the recent elevation of this island.—In Cook's charts the little outlying island also of Eoaigee, is represented as fringed; coloured red.—Eoua: I cannot make out from Capt. Cook's charts and descriptions, that this island has any reef, although the bottom of the neighbouring sea seems to be corally, and the island itself is formed of coral-rock. Forster, however, distinctly (Observations, p. 14.) classes it with high islands having reefs, but it certainly is not encircled by a barrier-reef; and the younger Forster (Voyage, vol. 1., p. 426.) says, that "a bed of coral rocks surrounded the coast towards the landing-place." I have therefore classed it with the fringed islands, and coloured it red. The several islands lying N.W. of Tongatabou, namely Anamouka, Komango, Kotou, Lefouga, Foa, &c., are seen in Capt. Cook's chart to be fringed by reefs, and several of them are connected together. From the various statements in the first volume of Cook's third voyage, and especially in the 4th and 6th chapters, it appears that these reefs are of coral formation, and certainly do not belong to the barrier class; coloured red.—Toufoa & Kao, forming the western part of the group, according to Forster, have no reefs; the former is an active volcano,—Vavao. There is a chart of this singularly-formed island, by Espinoza: according to Mr. Williams it consists of coral-rock: the Chevalier Dillon informs me that it is not fringed; not coloured. Nor are the islands of Latte and Amargura, for I have not seen plans on a large scale of them, and do not know whether they are fringed. Niouha, 16° S. 174° W. or Keppel Island of Wallis, or Cocos Isld. From a view and chart of this island, given in Wallis's Voyage, (4to. edit) it is evidently encircled by a reef; coloured blue: it is however remarkable that Boscawen Island, immediately adjoining, has no reef of any kind; uncoloured. Wallis Island, 13° S. 176° W., a chart and view of this island in Wallis's Voyage, (4to. edit.) shows that it is encircled. A view of it in the Naut. Mag. July 1833, p. 376., shows the same fact; blue. Alloufatou, or Horn Island, Onouafu, or Proby Island, and Hunter Islands, lie between the Navigator and Fidji groups. I can find no distinct accounts of them. FIDJI or VITI GROUP.—The best chart of the numerous islands of this group, will be found in the Atlas of the Astrolabe's Voyage. From this, and from the description given in the Hydrog. Memoir accompanying it, it appears that many of these islands are bold and mountainous, rising to the height of between 3,000 and 4,000 feet. Most of the islands are surrounded by reefs, lying far from the land, and outside of which the ocean appears very deep. The Astrolabe sounded with 90 fathoms in several places about a mile from the reefs, and found no bottom. Although the depth within the reef, is not laid down, it is evident from several expressions, that Capt. D'Urville believes that ships could anchor within, if passages existed through the outer barriers. The Chev. Dillon informs me that this is the case: hence I have coloured this group blue. In the S.E. part, lies Batoa, or Turtle island of Cook, (2nd Voyage, vol. 2. p. 23, and chart; 4to. edit.) surrounded by a coral-reef, "which in some places extends two miles from the shore;" within the reef the water appears to be deep, and outside it is unfathomable; coloured pale blue. At the distance of a few miles, Capt. Cook (ibid. p. 24) found a circular coral-reef, four or five leagues in circuit, with deep water within; "in short, the bank wants only a few little islets to make it exactly like one of the half-drowned isles so often mentioned,"—namely, atolls. South of Batoa, lies the high island of Ono, which appears in Bellinghausen's atlas to be encircled; as do some other small islands to the south; coloured pale blue: near Ono, there is an annular-reef, quite similar to the one just described in the words of Capt. Cook; coloured dark blue. Rotoumah, 13° S. 179° E.—From the chart in Duperrey's atlas, I thought this isl. was encircled, and had coloured it blue; but the Chev. Dillon assures me that the reef is only a shore or fringing one; red. Independence Isl. 10° S. 179° E., is described by Mr. G. Bennett, (United Service Journ. 1831, part ii. p. 197) as a low island of coral formation; it is small, and does not appear to contain a lagoon, although an opening through the reef is referred to. A lagoon probably once existed, and has since been filled up; left uncoloured. ELLICE GROUP.—Oscar, Peyster, and Ellice Islds., are figured in Arrowsmith's chart of the Pacific (corrected to 1832) as atolls, and are said to be very low; blue.—Nederlandisch Isl. I am greatly indebted to the kindness of Admiral Krusenstern, for sending me the original documents concerning this island. From the plans given by Capts. Eeg and Khremtshenko, and from the detailed account given by the former, it appears that it is a narrow coral island, about two miles long, containing a small lagoon. The sea is very deep close to the shore, which is fronted by sharp coral-rocks. Capt. Eeg compares the lagoon with that of other coral-islands; and he distinctly says, the land is "very low". I have therefore coloured it blue. Admiral Krusenstern (Memoir on the Pacific, Append. 1835) states that its shores are 80 ft. high; this probably arose from the height of the cocoa-nut trees, with which it is covered, being mistaken for land.—Gran Cocal is said in Krusenstern's Memoir to be low, and to be surrounded by a reef; it is small, and therefore probably once contained a lagoon; uncoloured.—St. Augustin. From a chart and view of it, given in the Atlas of the Coquille's Voyage, it appears to be a small atoll, with its lagoon partly filled up; coloured blue. GILBERT GROUP.—The chart of this group, given in the Atlas of the Coquille's Voyage, at once shows that it is composed of ten well characterized atolls. In D'Urville and Lottin's chart, Sydenham is written with a capital letter, signifying that it is high; but this certainly is not the case, for it is a perfectly characterized atoll, and a sketch, showing how low it is, is given in the Coquille's Atlas. Some narrow strip-like reefs project from the southern side of Drummond atoll, and render it irregular. The southern island of the group is called Chase (in some charts, Rotches); of this I can find no account, but Mr. F. D. Bennett discovered (Geograph. Journ. vol. vii. p. 229,) a low extensive island in nearly the same latitude, about three degrees westward of the longitude assigned to Rotches, but very probably it is the same island. Mr. Bennett informs me that the man at the mast-head reported an appearance of lagoon-water in the centre; and, therefore, considering its position, I have coloured it blue. Pitt Isld., at the extreme northern point of the group, is left uncoloured, as its exact position and nature is not known.—Byron Isld., which lies a little to the eastward, does not appear to have been visited since Commodore Byron's Voyage, and it was then seen only from a distance of 18 miles; it is said to be low; uncoloured. Ocean, Pleasant, and Atlantic Islds. all lie considerably to the west of the Gilbert group: I have been unable to find any distinct account of them. Ocean island is written with small letters in the French chart, but in Krusenstern's Memoir it is said to be high. MARSHALL GROUP.—We are well acquainted with this group from the excellent charts of the separate islands, made during the two voyages of Kotzebue: a reduced one of the whole group may be easily seen in Krusenstern's Atlas, and in Kotzebue's Second Voyage. The group consists (with the exception of two little islands which probably have had their lagoon filled up,) of a double row of 23 large and well-characterized atolls, from the examination of which Chamisso has given us his well-known account of coral formations. I include Gaspar-Rico, or Cornwallis Isld., in this group, which is described by Chamisso (Kotzebue's First Voyage, vol. iii. p. 179,) "as a low sickle-formed group, with mould only on the windward side." Gaspard Island is considered by some geographers as a distinct island lying N.E. of the group, but it is not entered in the chart by Krusenstern; left uncoloured. In the S.W. part of this group lies Baring Isld., of which little is known; (see Krusenstern's Appendix, 1835, p. 149.) I have left it uncoloured; but Boston Isld. I have coloured blue, as it is described (Ibid.) as consisting of 14 small islands, which, no doubt, inclose a lagoon, as represented in a chart in the Coquille's Atlas.—Two islands, Aur Kawen and Gaspar Rico, are written in the French chart with capital letters; but this is an error, for from the account given by Chamisso in Kotzebue's First Voyage, they are certainly low. The nature, position, and even existence, of the shoals and small islands north of the Marshall group, are doubtful. NEW HEBRIDES.—Any chart, on even a small scale, of these islands, will show that their shores are almost without reefs, presenting a remarkable contrast with those of New Caledonia on the one hand, and the Fidji group on the other. Nevertheless, I have been assured by Mr. G. Bennett, that coral grows vigorously on their shores; as, indeed, will be further shown in some of the following notices. As, therefore, these islands are not encircled, and as coral grows vigorously on their shores, we might almost conclude, without further evidence, that they were fringed, and hence I have applied the red colour with rather greater freedom than in other instances.—Matthew's Rock, an active volcano, someway south of the group (of which a plan is given in Atlas of the Astrolabe's Voyage) does not appear to have reefs of any kind about it.—Annatom, the southernmost of the Hebrides; from a rough wood-cut given in the United Service Journal (1831, Part iii. p. 190,) accompanying a paper by Mr. Bennett, it appears that the shore is fringed; coloured red.—Tanna; Forster, in his Observations (p. 22,) says Tanna has on its shores coral-rock and madrepores; and the younger Forster, in his account (vol. ii. p. 269,) speaking of the harbour says, the whole S.E. side consists of coral-reefs, which are overflowed at high water: part of the southern shore in Cook's chart is represented as fringed; coloured red.—Immer, is described (United Service Journ. 1831, Part iii. p. 192,) by Mr. Bennett, as being of moderate elevation, with cliffs appearing like sandstone: coral grows in patches on its shore, but I have not coloured it; and I mention these facts, because Immer might have been thought, from Forster's classification (Observations, p. 14,) to have been a low island, or even an atoll.—Erromango Isl.; Cook (2d Voyage, vol. ii. p. 45, 4to. edit.) speaks of rocks every where lining the coast, and the natives offered to haul his boat over the breakers to the sandy beach: Mr. Bennett, in a letter to the editor of the Singapore Chron., alludes to the reefs on its shores. It may, I think, be safely inferred from these passages that the shore is fringed in parts by coral reefs; coloured red.—Sandwich Isld., the east coast is said (Cook's 2d Voyage, vol. ii. p. 41,) to be low, and to be guarded by a chain of breakers. In the accompanying chart it is seen to be fringed by a reef; coloured red.—Mallicollo; Forster speaks of the reef-bounded shore: the reef is about thirty yards wide, and so shallow that a boat cannot pass over it. Forster, also, (Observat. p. 23,) says, that the rocks of the sea-shore consist of madrepore. In the plan of Sandwich harbour, the headlands are represented as fringed; coloured red.—Aurora and Pentecost Islds., according to Bougainville, apparently have no reefs: nor has the large isld. of S. Espiritu, nor Bligh Isld. or Banks' Islds., which latter lie to the N.E. of the Hebrides. But in none of these cases, have I met with any detailed account of their shores, or seen plans on a large scale; and it will be evident, that a fringing reef of only thirty, or even a few hundred yards in width, is of so little importance to navigation, that it will seldom be noticed, excepting by chance; and hence I do not doubt that several of these islands, now left uncoloured, ought to be red. SANTA-CRUZ GROUP.—Vanikoro (Fig. 1, Pl. I.) offers a striking example of a barrier-reef: it was first described by the Chevalier Dillon, in his Voyage, and was surveyed in the Astrolabe; coloured pale blue.—Tikopia and Fataka islands appear, from the descriptions of Dillon and D'Urville, to have no reefs: Anouda is a low, flat isld., surrounded by cliffs, (Astrolabe Hydrog. and Krusenstern Mem. vol. ii. p. 432); these are uncoloured.—Toupoua (Otooboa of Dillon) is stated by Capt. Tromelin (Annales Marit. 1829, p. 289) to be almost entirely included in a reef, lying at the distance of two miles from the shore. There is a space of three miles without any reef, which, although indented with bays, offers no anchorage from the extreme depth of the water close to the shore: Capt. Dillon also speaks of the reefs fronting this island; coloured blue.—Santa-Cruz. I have carefully examined the works of Carteret, Dentrecasteaux, Wilson, and Tromelin, and I cannot discover any mention of reefs on its shores; left uncoloured.—Tinakoro is a constantly active volcano without reefs.—Mendana Isles, (mentioned by Dillon under the name of Mammee, &c.); said by Krusenstern to be low, and intertwined with reefs. I do not believe they include a lagoon; I have left them uncoloured.—Duff's islds. compose a small group directed in a N.W. and S.E. band; they are described by Wilson, (p. 296, Miss. Voy. 4to. edit.) as formed by bold peaked land, with the islands surrounded by coral-reefs, extending about half a mile from the shore: at the distance of a mile from the reefs he found only seven fathoms. As I have no reason for supposing there is deep water within these reefs, I have coloured them red.—Kennedy isld., N.E. of Duff's: I have been unable to find any account of it. NEW CALEDONIA.—The great barrier-reefs on the shores of this island have already been described: (Fig. 5, Pl. II.) They have been visited by Labillardière, Cook, and the northern point by D'Urville; this latter part so closely resembles an atoll that I have coloured it dark blue. The Loyalty group is situated eastward of this island; from the chart and description given in the voyage of the Astrolabe, they do not appear to have any reefs; north of this group, there are some extensive low reefs, (called Astrolabe and Beaupré,) which do not seem to be atoll-formed; these are left uncoloured. AUSTRALIAN BARRIER-REEF.—The limits of this great reef, which has already been described, have been coloured from the charts of Flinders and King. In the northern parts, an atoll-formed reef, lying outside the barrier, has been described by Bligh, and is coloured dark blue. In the space between Australia and New Caledonia, called by Flinders the Corallian Sea, there are numerous reefs. Of these, some are represented in Krusenstern's atlas as having an atoll-like structure; namely, Bampton shoal, Frederic, Vine or Horse-shoe, and Alert reefs; these have been coloured dark blue. LOUISIADE: the dangerous reefs which front and surround the western, southern, and northern coasts of this so-called peninsula and archipelago, seem evidently to belong to the barrier class. The land is lofty, with a low fringe on the coast; the reefs are distant, and the sea outside them profoundly deep. Nearly all that is known of this group is derived from the labours of Dentrecasteaux and Bougainville: the latter has represented one continuous reef ninety miles long, parallel to the shore, and in places as much as ten miles from it; coloured pale blue. A little distance northward, we have the Laughlan Islds., the reefs round which are engraved in the atlas of the Voyage of the Astrolabe, in the same manner as in the encircled islands of the Caroline arch.: the reef is, in parts, a mile and a half from the shore, to which it does not appear to be attached; coloured blue. At some little distance from the extremity of the Louisiade lies Wells reef, described in G. Hamilton's Voyage in H.M.S. Pandora, (p. 100): it is said, "we found we had got embayed in a double reef, which will soon be an island." As this statement is only intelligible on the supposition of the reef being crescent or horse-shoe formed, like so many other submerged annular reefs, I have ventured to colour it blue. SALOMAN ARCHIPELAGO: the chart in Krusenstern's atlas shows that these islands are not encircled, and as coral appears, from the works of Surville, Bougainville, and Labillardière, to grow on their shores, this circumstance, as in the case of the New Hebrides, is a presumption that they are fringed. I cannot find out anything from Dentrecasteaux's Voyage, regarding the southern islds. of the group, so have left them uncoloured.—Malayta Isld. in a rough MS. chart in the Admiralty has its northern shore fringed.—Ysabel Isld., the N.E. part of this island, in the same chart, is also fringed: Mendana, speaking (Burney, vol. i. p. 280) of an islet adjoining the northern coast, says it is surrounded by reefs: the shores, also, of Port Praslin appear regularly fringed.—Choiseul Isld.; in Bougainville's chart of Choiseul Bay, parts of the shores are fringed by coral-reefs.—Bougainville Isld.; according to Dentrecasteaux, the western shore abounds with coral-reefs, and the smaller islands are said to be attached to the larger ones by reefs; all the before-mentioned islands have been coloured red.—Bouka Islds.; Capt. Duperrey has kindly informed me in a letter, that he passed close round the northern side of this island, (of which a plan is given in his atlas of the Coquille's Voyage,) and that it was "garnie d'une bande de récifs à fleur d'eau adherentes au rivage;" and he infers, from the abundance of coral on the islands north and south of Bouka, that the reef probably is of coral; coloured red. Off the north coast of the Salomon Arch., there are several small groups which are little known: they appear to be low, and of coral formation; and some of them probably have an atoll-like structure: the Chev. Dillon, however, informs me this is not the case with the B. de Candelaria.—Outong Java, according to the Spanish Navigator, Maurelle, is thus characterized; but this is the only one, which I have ventured to colour blue. NEW IRELAND.—The shores of the S.W. point of this island and some adjoining islets, are fringed by reefs, as may be seen in the Atlases of the Voyages of the Coquille and Astrolabe. M. Lesson observes that the reefs are open in front of each streamlet. The Duke of York's Isld. is also fringed; but with regard to the other parts of New Ireland, New Hanover, and the small islands lying northward, I have been unable to obtain any information. I will only add that no part of New Ireland appears to be fronted by distant reefs. I have coloured red only the above specified portions. NEW BRITAIN and the NORTHERN SHORE of NEW GUINEA.—From the charts in the Voyage of the Astrolabe, and from the Hydrog. Memoir, it appears that these coasts are entirely without reefs, as are the Schouten islands, lying close to the northern shore of New Guinea. The western and south-western parts of New Guinea, will be treated of when we come to the islands of the East Indian Archipelago. ADMIRALTY GROUP.—From the accounts by Bougainville, Maurelle, Dentrecasteaux, and the scattered notices collected by Horsburgh, it appears, that some of the many islds. composing it, are high, with a bold outline; and others are very low, small and interlaced with reefs. All the high islands appear to be fronted by distant reefs rising abruptly from the sea, and within some of which, there is reason to believe that the water is deep. I have therefore little doubt they are of the barrier class. In the southern part of the group, we have Elizabeth isld., which is surrounded by a reef at the distance of a mile; and two miles eastward of it (Krusenstern, Append. 1835, p. 42) there is a little island containing a lagoon. Near here, also, lies Circular-reef, (Horsburgh Direct. vol. I. p. 691. 4th edit.) "three or four miles in diameter, having deep water inside with an opening at the N.N.W. part, and on the outside steep to." I have from these data, coloured the group pale blue, and circular-reef dark blue.—The Anachorites, Echequier, and Hermites, consist of innumerable low islands of coral formation, which probably have atoll-like forms; but not being able to ascertain this, I have not coloured them, nor Durour isld., which is described by Carteret as low. THE CAROLINE ARCH. is now well known, chiefly from the hydrographical labours of Lutké: it contains about forty groups of atolls, and three encircled islands, two of which are engraved in Fig. 2 and 7, Pl. I. Commencing with the eastern part; the encircling reef round Ualan, appears to be only about half a mile from the shore; but as the land is low, and covered with mangroves, (Voyage autour da Monde, par F. Lutké, vol. i. p. 339) the real margin has not probably been ascertained. The extreme depth in one of the harbours within the reef, is 33 fathoms, (see charts in atlas of Coquille's Voyage,) and outside at half a mile distance from the reef, no bottom was obtained with 250 fathoms. The reef is surmounted by many islets, and the lagoon-like channel within is mostly shallow, and appears to have been much encroached on by the low land surrounding the central mountains; these facts show that time has allowed much detritus to accumulate; coloured pale blue.—Pouynipète or Seniavine. In the greater part of the circumference of this island, the reef is about one mile and three quarters distant: on the north side it is five miles off the included high islets. The reef is broken in several places; and just within it, the depth in one place is 30 fathoms, and in another, 28, beyond which, to all appearance, there was "un porte vaste et sur." (Lutké, vol. ii. p. 4.) coloured pale blue.—Hogoleu or Roug. This wonderful group contains at least 62 islands, and its reef is 135 miles in circuit. Of the islands, only a few, about six or eight, (see Hydrog. description, p. 428 of the Voyage of the Astrolabe, and the large accompanying chart taken chiefly from that given by Duperrey,) are high, and the rest are all small, low, and formed on the reef. The depth of the great interior lake has not been ascertained; but Capt. D'Urville appears to have entertained no doubt about the possibility of taking in a frigate. The reef lies no less than fourteen miles distant from the northern coasts of the interior high islds.; seven from their western sides, and twenty from the southern: the sea is deep outside. This island is a likeness on a grand scale to the Gambier group in the Low Archipelago. Of the groups of low* islands forming the chief part of the Caroline Archipelago, all those of larger size, have the true atoll-structure, (as may be seen in the atlas by Capt. Lutké) and some even of the very small ones, as Macaskill and Duperrey, of which plans are given in the atlas of the Coquille's Voyage. There are however, some low, small islands of coral formation, namely, Ollap, Tamatam, Bigali, Satahoual, which do not contain lagoons; but it is probable that lagoons originally existed, but have since filled up: Lutké (vol. ii. p. 304.) seems to have thought that all the low islands, with only one exception, contained lagoons. From the sketches, and from the manner in which the margins of these islands are engraved in the atlas of the Voyage of the Coquille, it might have been thought that they were not low; but by a comparison with the remarks of Lutké (vol. ii. p. 107, regarding Bigali) and of Freycinet (Hydrog. Mem. L'Uranie, Voy. p. 188, regarding Tamatam, Ollap, &c.) it will be seen that the artist must have represented the land incorrectly. The most southern isld. in the group, namely, Piguiram, is not coloured, because I have found no account of it. Nougouor, or Monte Verdison, which was not visited by Lutké, is described and figured by Mr. Bennett (United Service Journal, Jan. 1832,) as an atoll. All the above-mentioned islands have been coloured blue. WESTERN PART OF THE CAROLINE ARCHIPELAGO.—Fais Island * In D'Urville and Lottin's chart, Peserare is written with capital letters; but this evidently is an error, for it is one of the low islets on the reef of Namonouyto (see Lutké's charts,)—a regular atoll. is 90 feet high, and is surrounded, as I have been informed by Admiral Lutké, by a narrow reef of living coral, of which the broadest part, as represented in the charts, is only 150 yards; coloured red.—Philip Isld., I believe, is low; but Hunter, in his Historical Journal, gives no clear account of it; uncoloured.—Elivi, from the manner in which the islets on the reefs are engraved, in the Atlas of the Astrolabe's Voyage, I should have thought they were above the ordinary height; but Admiral Lutké assures me this is not the case: they form a regular atoll; coloured blue. Gouap (Eap of Chamisso,) is a high island with a reef (see Chart in Voy. of Astrolabe,) more than a mile distant in most parts from the shore, and two miles in one part. Capt. D'Urville thinks that there would be anchorage (Hydrog. Descript. Astrolabe Voyage, p. 436.) for ships within the reef, if a passage could be found; coloured pale blue.—Goulou, from the chart in the Astrolabe's Atlas, appears to be an atoll. D'Urville (Hydrog. Descript. p. 437.) speaks of the low islets on the reef; coloured dark blue. PELEW ISLDS.—Krusenstern speaks of some of the islands being mountainous; the reefs are distant from the shore, and there are spaces within them, and not opposite valleys, with from ten to fifteen fathoms. According to a MS. chart of the group by Lieut. Elmer in the Admiralty, there is a large space within the reef with deepish water: although the high land does not hold a central position with respect to the reefs, as is generally the case, I have little doubt that the reefs of the Pelew islands ought to be ranked with the barrier-class, and I have coloured them pale blue. In Lieut. Elmer's chart there is a horse-shoe-formed shoal, laid down thirteen miles N.W. of Pelew, with fifteen fathoms within the reef, and some dry banks on it; coloured dark blue.—Spanish, Martires, Sanserot, Pulo Anna and Mariere islands are not coloured, because I know nothing about them, excepting that according to Krusenstern, the second, third, and fourth mentioned, are low, placed on coral-reefs, and therefore perhaps contain lagoons; but Pulo Mariere is a little higher. MARIANA ARCHIPELAGO, or LADRONES.—Guahan. Almost the whole of this island is fringed by reefs, which extend in most parts about a third of a mile from the land. Even where the reefs are most extensive, the water within them is shallow. In several parts there is a navigable channel for boats and canoes within the reefs. In Freycinet's Hydrog. Mem., there is an account of these reefs, and in the atlas, a map on a large scale; coloured red.—Rota. "L'ile est presque entièrement entourée des récifs." (p. 212, Freycinet's Hydrog. Mem.) These reefs project about a quarter of a mile from the shore; coloured red.—Tinian. The eastern coast is precipitous, and is without reefs; but the western side is fringed like the last island; coloured red.—Saypan. The N.E. coast, and likewise the western shores appear to be fringed; but there is a great, irregular, horn-like reef projecting far from this side; coloured red.—Farallon de Medinilla, appears so regularly and closely-fringed in Freycinet's charts, that I have ventured to colour it red, although nothing is said about reefs in the Hydrographical Memoir. The several islands which form the northern part of the group are volcanic, (with the exception perhaps of Torres, which resembles in form the madreporitic island of Medinilla,) and appear to be without reefs. Mangs, however, is described (by Freycinet, p. 219, Hydrog.) from some Spanish charts, as formed of small islands placed "au milieu des nombreux récifs;" and as these reefs in the general chart of the group do not project so much as a mile; and as there is no appearance from a double line, of the existence of deep water within, I have ventured, although with much hesitation, to colour them red. Respecting Folger and Marshall Islds., which lie some way east of the Marianas, I can find out nothing, excepting that they are probably low. Krusenstern says this of Marshall isl.; and Folger isl. is written with small letters in D'Urville's chart; uncoloured. BONIN or ARZOBISPO GROUP.—Peel Isld. has been examined by Capt. Beechey, to whose kindness I am much indebted for giving me information regarding it: "at Port Lloyd there is a great deal of coral; and the inner harbour is entirely formed by coral reefs, which extend outside the port along the coast." Capt. Beechey, in another part of his letter to me, alludes to the reefs fringing the island in all directions; but at the same time it must be observed that the surf washes the volcanic rocks of the coast in the greater part of its circumference. I do not know whether the other islands of the Archipelago, are fringed; I have coloured Peel isld. red.—Grampus Isld. to the eastward, does not appear (Meare's Voyage, p. 95.) to have any reefs, nor does Rosario Isld., (from Lutké's chart) which lies to the westward. Respecting the few other islands in this part of the sea, namely the Sulphur Islds. with an active volcano, and those lying between Bonin and Japan, (which are situated near the extreme limit in latitude, at which reefs are formed,) I have not been able to find any clear account. WEST END OF NEW GUINEA.—Port Dory. From the charts in the Voyage of the Coquille, it would appear that the coast in this part is fringed by coral-reefs; M. Lesson, however, remarks that the coral is sickly; coloured red.—Waigiou. A considerable portion of the northern shore of these islands are seen in the charts (on a large scale) in Freycinet's Atlas to be fringed by coral-reefs. Forrest (p. 21, Voyage to New Guinea) alludes to the coral-reefs lining the heads of Piapis Bay; and Horsburgh, (vol. ii. p. 599, 4th edit.) speaking of the islands in Dampier Strait, says, "sharp coral-rocks line their shores;" coloured red.—In the sea north of these islands, we have Guedes, (or Freewill, or St. David's,) which from the chart given in the 4to edit. of Carteret's Voyage, must be an atoll. Krusenstern says the islets are very low; coloured blue.—Carteret's Shoals, in 2° 53' N., are described as circular, with stony points shewing all round, with deeper water in the middle; coloured blue.—Aiou; the plan of this group, given in the atlas of the Voyage of the Astrolabe, shows that it is an atoll; and, from a chart in Forrest's Voyage, it appears there is twelve fathoms within the circular reef; coloured blue.—The S.W. coast of New Guinea appears to be low, muddy, and devoid of reefs. The Arru, Timor laut and Tenimber groups have lately been examined by Capt. Kolff, the MS. translation of which, by Mr. W. Earl, I have been permitted to read, through the kindness of Capt. Washington, R.N. These islands are mostly rather low, and are surrounded by distant reefs; (the Ki Islands, however, are lofty, and, from Mr. Stanley's survey, appear without reefs;) the sea in some parts is shallow, in others profoundly deep, (as near Larrat). From the imperfection of the published charts, I have been unable to decide to which class these reefs belongs. From the distance to which they extend from the land where the sea is very deep, I am strongly inclined to believe they ought to come within the barrier class, and be coloured blue; but I have been forced to leave them uncoloured.—The last-mentioned groups are connected with the east end of Ceram by a chain of small islands, of which the small groups of Ceram-laut, Goram, and Keffing are surrounded by very extensive reefs, projecting into deep water, which, as in the last case, I strongly suspect belong to the barrier class; but I have not coloured them. From the south side of Keffing, the reefs project five miles, (Windsor Earl's sailing Direct. for the Arafura Sea, p. 9.) CERAM.—In various charts which I have examined, several parts of the coast are represented as fringed by reefs.—Manipa island, between Ceram and Bourou, in an old MS. chart in the Admiralty, is fringed by a very irregular reef, partly dry at low water, which I do not doubt is of coral formation; both islands coloured red.—Bourou; parts of this island appear fringed by coral-reefs, namely, the eastern coast, as seen in Freycinet's chart; and Cajeli Bay, which is said by Horsburgh (vol. ii. p. 630) to be lined by coral-reefs, that stretch out a little way, and have only a few feet water on them. In several charts, portions of the islands forming the AMBOINA GROUP are fringed by reefs; for instance, Noessa, Harenca, and Ucaster, in Freycinet's charts. The above-mentioned islands have been coloured red, although the evidence is not very satisfactory.—North of Bourou the parallel line of the Xulla Isles extend: I have not been able to find out anything about them, excepting that Horsburgh (vol. ii. p. 543) says that the northern shore is surrounded by a reef at the distance of two or three miles; uncoloured.—Mysol Group; the Kanary Islands are said by Forrest (Voyage, p. 130) to be divided from each other by deep straits, and are lined with coral-rocks; coloured red.—Guebe, lying between Waigiou and Gilolo, is engraved as if fringed; and it is said by Freycinet, that all the soundings under five fathoms were on coral; coloured red.—Gilolo. In a chart published by Dalrymple, the numerous islands on the western, southern, (Batchian and the Strait of Patientia,) and eastern sides appear fringed by narrow reefs; these reefs, I suppose, are of coral, for it is said in Malte Brun, (vol. xii. p. 156,) "sur les côtes (of Batchian) comme dans les plupart des iles de cet archipel, il y a de rocs de madrepores d'une beauté et d'une variété infinies." Forrest, also, (p. 50,) says Seland, near Batchian, is a little island with reefs of coral; coloured red.—Morty Island, (north of Gilolo); Horsburgh (vol. ii. p. 506) says the northern coast is lined by reefs, projecting one or two miles, and having no soundings close to them; I have left it uncoloured, although, as in some former cases, it ought probably to be pale blue.—Celebes. The western and northern coasts appear in the charts to be bold and without reefs. Near the extreme northern point, however, an islet in the Straits of Limbe, and part of the adjoining shore, appear to be fringed: the east side of the bay of Manado, has deep water, and is fringed by sand and coral, (Astol. Voyage Hydrog. Part, p. 453-4); this extreme point, therefore, I have coloured red.—Of the islands leading from this point to Magindanao, I have not been able to find any account, except of Serangani, which appears surrounded by narrow reefs; and Forrest (Voyage, p. 164) speaks of coral on its shores; I have, therefore, coloured this island red. To the eastward of this chain lie several islands; of which I cannot find any account, except of Karkalang, which is said by Horsburgh (vol. ii. p. 504) to be lined by a dangerous reef, projecting several miles from the northern shore; not coloured. ISLANDS NEAR TIMOR.—The account of the following islands is taken from Capt. D. Kolff's Voyage in 1825, translated by Mr. W. Earl, from the Dutch.—Lette has "reefs extending along shore at the distance of half a mile from the land."—Moa has reefs on the S.W. part.—Lakor has a reef lining its shore; these islands are coloured red. Still more eastward, Luan has, differently from the last-mentioned islands, an extensive reef; it is steep outside, and within there is a depth of twelve feet; from these facts, it is impossible to decide which class this island belongs.—Kissa, off the point of Timor, has its "shore fronted by a reef, steep too on the outer side, over which small proahs can go at the time of high water;" coloured red.—Timor; most of the points, and some considerable spaces of the northern shore, are seen in Freycinet's chart to be fringed by coral-reefs; and mention is made of them in the accompanying Hydrog. Memoir; coloured red.—Savu, S.E. of Timor, appears in Flinders' chart to be fringed; but I have not coloured it, as I do not know that the reefs are of coral.—Sandalwood Isld. has, according to Horsburgh (vol. ii. p. 607,) a reef on its southern shore, four miles distant from the land; as the neighbouring sea is deep, and generally bold, this probably is a barrier-reef, but I have not ventured to colour it. N.W. COAST of AUSTRALIA.—It appears, in Capt. King's Sailing Directions (Narrative of Survey, vol. ii. pp. 325 to 369,) that there are many extensive coral-reefs skirting, often at considerable distances, the N.W. shores, and encompassing the small adjoining islets. Deep water, in no instance, is represented in the charts between these reefs and the land; and, therefore, they probably belong to the fringing class. But as they extend far into the sea, which is generally shallow, even in places where the land seems to be somewhat precipitous; I have not coloured them. Houtman's Abrolhos (lat. 28° S. on west coast) have lately been surveyed by Capt. Wickham (as described in Naut. Mag., 1841, p. 511): they lie on the edge of a steeply-shelving bank, which extends about 30 miles seaward, along the whole line of coast. The two southern reefs, or islands, enclose a lagoon-like space of water, varying in depth from 5 to 15 fathoms, and in one spot with 23 fathoms. The greater part of the land has been formed on their inland sides, by the accumulation of fragments of corals; the sea- ward face consisting of nearly bare ledges of rock. Some of the specimens, brought home by Capt. Wickham, contained fragments of marine shells, but others did not; and these closely resembled a formation at King George's Sound, principally due to the action of the wind on calcareous dust, which I shall describe in a forthcoming Part. From the extreme irregularity of these reefs with their lagoons, and from their position on a bank, the usual depth of which is only 30 fathoms, I have not ventured to class them with atolls, and hence have left them uncoloured.—Rowley Shoals. These lie someway from the N.W. coast of Australia: according to Capt. King (Narrative of Survey, vol. i. p. 60,) they are of coral-formation. They rise abruptly from the sea, and Capt. King had no bottom with 170 fathom close to them. Three of them are crescent-shaped; they are mentioned by Mr. Lyell, on the authority of Capt. King, with reference to the direction of their open sides. "A third oval reef of the same group is entirely submerged," (Principles of Geolog., Book iii. chap. xviii.); coloured blue.—Scott's Reefs, lying north of Rowley Shoals, are briefly described by Capt. Wickham (Naut. Mag., 1841, p. 440): they appear to be of great size, of a circular form, and "with smooth water within, forming probably a lagoon of great extent." There is a break on the western side, where there probably is an entrance: the water is very deep off these reefs; coloured blue. Proceeding westward along the great volcanic chain of the East-Indian archipelago, Solor Strait is represented in a chart published by Dalrymple from a Dutch MS., as fringed; as are parts of Flores, of Adenara, and of Solor. Horsburgh speaks of coral growing on these shores, and therefore I have no doubt that the reefs are of coral, and accordingly have coloured them red. We hear from Horsburgh (vol ii. p. 602,) that a coral flat bounds the shores of Sapy Bay. From the same authority it appears (p. 610,) that reefs fringe the island of Timor-Young, on the N. shore of Sumbawa; and, likewise, (p. 600,) that Bally town in Lombock, is fronted by a reef, stretching along the shore at the distance of a hundred fathoms, with channels through it for boats; these places, therefore, have been coloured red.—Bally Isld.: In a Dutch MS. chart on a large scale of Java, which was brought from that island by Dr. Horsfield, who had the kindness to show it me at the India-House, its western, northern, and southern shores appear very regularly fringed by a reef (see, also, Horsburgh, vol. ii. p. 593); and as coral is found abundantly there, I have not the least doubt that the reef is of coral, and therefore have coloured it red. JAVA.—My information regarding the reefs of this great island is derived from the chart just mentioned. The greater part of Madura is represented in it as regularly fringed, and likewise portions of the coast of Java immediately south of it. Dr. Horsfield informs me that coral is very abundant near Sourabaya. The islets and parts of the N. coast of Java, west of Point Buang, or Japara, are fringed by reefs, said to be of coral. Lubeck, or Bavian islands, lying at some distance from the shore of Java, are regularly fringed by coral-reefs: Carimon Java appears equally so, though it is not directly said that the reefs are of coral; there is a depth between 30 and 40 fathoms round these islands. Parts of the shores of Sunda Str., where the water is from 40 to 80 fathoms deep, and the islets near Batavia appear in several charts to be fringed. In the Dutch chart the southern shore, in the narrowest part of the island, is in two places fringed by reefs of coral. West of Segorrowodee Bay, and the extreme S.E. and E. portions are likewise fringed by coral-reefs; all the above-mentioned places coloured red. Macassar St.; the east coast of Borneo appears, in most parts, free from reefs, and where they occur, as on the coast of Pamaroong, the sea is very shallow; hence no part is coloured. In Macassar Str. itself, in about lat. 2° S., there are many small islands with coral shoals projecting far from them. There are also (old charts by Dalrymple) numerous little flats of coral, not rising to the surface of the water, and shelving suddenly from five fathoms to no bottom with fifty fathoms; they do not appear to have a lagoon-like structure. There are similar coral-shoals a little farther south; and in lat. 4° 55' there are two, which are engraved from modern surveys, in a manner which might represent an annular reef with deep water inside: Capt. Moresby, however, who was formerly in this sea, doubts this fact, so that I have left them uncoloured: at the same time I may remark, that these two shoals make a nearer approach to the atoll-like structure than any other within the E. Indian arch. Southward of these shoals there are other low islands and irregular coral-reefs; and in the space of sea, north of the great volcanic chain, from Timor to Java, we have also other islands, such as the Postillions, Kalatoa, Tokan-Bessees, &c., which are chiefly low, and are surrounded by very irregular and distant reefs. From the imperfect charts I have seen, I have not been able to decide whether they belong to the atoll or barrier-classes, or whether they merely fringe submarine banks, and gently sloping land. In the Bay of Bonin, between the two southern arms of Celebes, there are numerous coral-reefs; but none of them seem to have an atoll-like structure. I have, therefore, not coloured any of the islands in this part of the sea; I think it, however, exceedingly probable that some of them ought to be blue. I may add that there is a harbour on the S.E. coast of Bouton, which, according to an old chart, is formed by a reef, parallel to the shore, with deep water within; and in the voyage of the Coquille, some neighbouring islands are represented with reefs a good way distant, but I do not know whether with deep water within. I have not thought the evidence sufficient to permit me to colour them. SUMATRA.—Commencing with the west coast and outlying islands; Engano Isld. is represented in the published chart as surrounded by a narrow reef, and Napier, in his sailing directions, speaks of the reef being of coral (also Horsburgh, vol. ii. p. 115); coloured red. Rat Isld. 3° 51' S. is surrounded by reefs of coral, partly dry at low water (Horsburgh, vol. ii. p. 96).—Trieste Isld. (4° 2' S.) The shore is represented, in a chart which I saw at the India House, as fringed in such a manner, that I feel sure the fringe consists of coral; but as the island is so low, that the sea sometimes flows quite over it, (Dampier Voyage, vol. i. p. 474) I have not coloured it.—Pulo Dooa, lat. 3°. In an old chart it is said there are chasms in the reefs round the island, admitting boats to the watering-place, and that the southern islet consists of a mass of sand and coral.—Pulo Pisang; Horsburgh (vol. ii. p. 86) says that the rocky coral bank, which stretches about forty yards from the shore, is steep to all round: in a chart, also, which I have seen, the island is represented as regularly fringed. Pulo Mintao is lined with reefs on its west side (Horsburgh, vol. ii. p. 107).—Pulo Baniak; the same authority (vol. ii. p. 105), speaking of a part, says it is faced with coral rocks.—Minguin, 3° 36' N. A coral reef fronts this place, and projects into the sea nearly a quarter of a mile (Notices of the Indian Arch. published at Singapore, p. 105).—Pulo Brassa, 5° 46' N. A reef surrounds it at a cable's length (Horsburgh, vol. ii. p. 60). I have coloured all the above specified points red. I may here add, that both Horsburgh and Mr. Moor (in the Notices just alluded to) frequently speak of the numerous reefs and banks of coral on the west coast of Sumatra; but these nowhere have the structure of a barrier-reef, and Marsden (History of Sumatra) states, that where the coast is flat, the fringing reefs extend furthest from it. The northern and southern points, and the greater part of the east coast, are low, and faced with mud banks, and therefore without coral. NICOBAR ISLANDS.—The chart represents the islands of this group as fringed by reefs. With regard to Great Nicobar, Capt. Moresby informs me, that it is fringed by reefs of coral, extending between 200 and 300 yards from the shore. The Northern Nicobars appear so regularly fringed in the published charts, that I have no doubt the reefs are of coral. This group, therefore, is coloured red. ANDAMAN ISLANDS.—From an examination of the MS. chart, on a large scale, of this island, by Capt. Arch. Blair, in the Admiralty, several portions of the coast appear fringed; and as Horsburgh speaks of coral reefs being numerous in the vicinity of these islands, I should have coloured them red, had not some expressions in a paper in the Asiatic Researches (vol. iv. p. 402) led me to doubt the existence of reefs; uncoloured. The coast of Malacca, Tanasserim, and the coasts northward, appear in the greater part to be low and muddy: where reefs occur, as in parts of Malacca Straits, and near Singapore, they are of the fringing kind; but the water is so shoal, that I have not coloured them. In the sea, however, between Malacca and the west coast of Borneo, where there is a greater depth from 40 to 50 fathoms, I have coloured red some of the groups, which are regularly fringed. The northern Natunas and the Anambas Islds. are represented in the charts on a large scale, published in the Atlas of the Voyage of the Favourite, as fringed by reefs of coral, with very shoal water within them.—Tumbelan and Bunoa Islds. (1° N.) are represented in the English charts as surrounded by a very regular fringe.—St. Barbes (0° 15' N.) is said by Horsburgh (vol. ii. p. 279) to be fronted by a reef, over which boats can land only at high water.—The shore of Borneo at Tunjong Apee is also fronted by a reef, extending not far from the land (Horsburgh, vol. ii. p. 468). These places I have coloured red; although with some hesitation, as the water is shallow. I might perhaps have added Pulo Leat, in Gaspar Str., Lucepara and Carimata; but as the sea is confined and shallow, and the reefs not very regular, I have left them uncoloured. The water shoals gradually towards the whole west coast of Borneo: I cannot make out that it has any reefs of coral. The islands, however, off the northern extremity, and near the S.W. end of Palawan, are fringed by very distant coral reefs: thus the reefs in the case of Balabac are no less than five miles from the land; but the sea, in the whole of this district, is so shallow, that the reefs might be expected to extend very far from the land. I have not, therefore, thought myself authorized to colour them. The N.E. point of Borneo, where the water is very shoal, is connected with Magindanao by a chain of islands called the Sooloo Archipelago, about which I have been able to obtain very little information; Pangootaran, although ten miles long, entirely consists of a bed of coral-rock (Notices of E. Indian Arch. p. 58): I believe from Horsburgh that the island is low; not coloured.—Tahow bank, in some old charts, appears like a submerged atoll; not coloured. Forrest (Voyage, p. 21) states that one of the islands near Sooloo is surrounded by coral rocks; but there is no distant reef. Near the S. end of Basselan, some of the islets in the chart accompanying Forrest's Voyage, appear fringed with reefs; hence I have coloured, though unwillingly, parts of the Sooloo group red. The sea between Sooloo and Palawan, near the shoal coast of Borneo is interspersed with irregular reefs and shoal patches; not coloured: but in the northern part of this sea, there are two low islets, Cagayanes and Cavilli, surrounded by extensive coral-reefs; the breakers round the latter (Horsburgh, vol. ii. p. 513) extend 5 or 6 miles from a sand-bank, which forms the only dry part; these breakers are steep to outside; there appears to be an opening through them on one side, with four or five fathoms within: from this description, I strongly suspect that Cavilli ought to be considered an atoll; but, as I have not seen any chart of it, on even a moderately large scale, I have not coloured it. The islets off the northern end of Palawan are in the same case as those off the southern end, namely they are fringed by reefs, some way distant from the shore, but the water is exceedingly shallow; uncoloured. The western shore of Palawan will be treated of under the head of China Sea. PHILLIPPINE ARCHIPELAGO.—A chart on a large scale of Appoo shoal, which lies near the S.E. coast of Mindoro, has been executed by Capt. D. Ross: it appears atoll-formed, but with rather an irregular outline; its diameter is about ten miles; there are two well defined passages leading into the interior lagoon, which appears open; close outside the reef all round, there is no bottom with seventy fathoms; coloured blue.—Mindoro: the N.W. coast is represented in several charts, as fringed by a reef; and Luban Isld. is said, by Horsburgh, (vol. ii. p. 436) to be "lined by a reef."—Luzon: Mr. Cuming, who has lately investigated with so much success the Natural History of the Philippines, informs me, that about three miles of the shore north of Point St. Jago, is fringed by a reef; as are (Horsburgh, vol. ii. p. 437) the Three Friars off Silanguin Bay. Between Point Capones and Playa Honda, the coast is "lined by a coral reef, stretching out nearly a mile in some places," (Horsburgh); and Mr. Cuming visited some fringing reefs on parts of this coast, namely, near Puebla, Iba, and Mansinglor. In the neighbourhood of Solon-solon Bay, the shore is lined (Horsburgh, ii. p. 439) by coral reefs, stretching out a great way: there are also reefs about the islets off Solamague; and as I am informed by Mr. Cuming, near St. Catalina, and a litle north of it. The same gentleman informs me there are reefs on the S.E. point of this island in front of Samar, extending from Malalabon to Bulusan. These appear to be the principal fringing-reefs on the coasts of Luzon; and they have all been coloured red. Mr. Cuming informs me that none of them have deep water within; although it appears from Horsburgh that some few extend to a considerable distance from the shore. Within the Philippine Archipelago, the shores of the islands do not appear to be commonly fringed, with the exception of the S. shore of Masbate, and nearly the whole of Bohol; which are both coloured red. On the S. shore of Magindanao, Bunwoot Isld. is surrounded (according to Forrest, Voyage, p. 253), by a coral-reef, which in the chart appears one of the fringing class. With respect to the eastern coasts of the whole Archipelago, I have not been able to obtain any account. BABUYAN ISLANDS.—Horsburgh says, (vol. ii. p. 442) coral-reefs line the shores of the harbour in Fuga; and the charts show there are other reefs about these islands. Camiguin has its shore in parts lined by coral-rock (Horsburgh, p. 443); about a mile off shore there is between 30 and 35 fathoms. The plan of Port San Pio Quinto shows that its shores are fringed with coral; coloured red.—BASHEE ISLANDS: Horsburgh, speaking of the southern part of the group, (vol. ii. p. 445) says the shores of both islands are fortified by a reef, and through some of the gaps in it, the natives can pass in their boats in fine weather; the bottom near the land is coral-rock. From the published charts, it is evident that several of these islands are most regularly fringed; coloured red. The northern islands are left uncoloured, as I have been unable to find any account of them.—FORMOSA. The shores, especially the western one, seem chiefly composed of mud and sand, and I cannot make out that they are anywhere lined by reefs; except in a harbour (Horsburgh, vol. ii. p. 449) at the extreme northern point: hence, of course, the whole of this island is left uncoloured. The small adjoining islands are in the same case.—PATCHOW, OR MADJIKO-SIMA GROUPS. Patchuson has been described by Capt. Broughton (Voy. to the N. Pacific, p. 191); he says, the boats, with some difficulty, found a passage through the coral-reefs, which extend along the coast, nearly half a mile off it. The boats were well sheltered within the reef; but it does not appear that the water is deep there. Outside the reef the depth is very irregular, varying from five to fifty fathoms; the form of the land is not very abrupt; coloured red.—Taypin-san; from the description given (p. 195,) by the same author, it appears that a very irregular reef extends, to the distance of several miles, from the southern island; but whether it encircles a space of deep water is not evident; nor, indeed, whether these outlying reefs are connected with those more immediately adjoining the land; left uncoloured. I may here just add that the shore of Kumi, (lying west of Patchow,) has a narrow reef attached to it in the plan of it, in La Peyrouse's atlas; but it does not appear in the account of the voyage that it is of coral; uncoloured.—LOO CHOO. The greater part of the coast of this moderately hilly island, is skirted by reefs, which do not extend far from the shore, and which do not leave a channel of deep water within them, as may be seen in the charts accompanying Capt. B. Hall's voyage to Loo Choo, (see also remarks in Appendix, p. xxi. and xxv.) There are, however, some ports with deep water, formed by reefs in front of valleys, in the same manner as happens at Mauritius. Capt. Beechey, in a letter to me, compares these reefs with those encircling the Society Islands; but there appears to me a marked difference between them, in the less distance at which the Loo Choo reefs lie from the land with relation to the probable submarine inclination, and in the absence of an interior deep water-moat or channel, parallel to the land. Hence, I have classed these reefs with fringing-reefs, and coloured them red.—PESCADORES (west of Formosa). Dampier (vol. i. p. 416,) has compared the appearance of the land to the southern parts of England. The islands are interlaced with coral reefs; but as the water is very shoal, and as spits of sand and gravel (Horsburgh, vol. ii. p. 450,) extend far out from them, it is impossible to draw any inferences regarding the nature of the reefs. CHINA SEA.—Proceeding from north to south, we first meet the Pratas Shoal, (Lat. 20° N.) which, according to Horsburgh, (vol. ii. p. 335,) is composed of coral, is of a circular form, and has a low islet on it. The reef is on a level with the water's edge, and when the sea runs high, there are breakers mostly all round, "but the water within seems pretty deep in some places; although steep to in most parts outside, there appears to be several parts where a ship might find anchorage outside the breakers;" coloured blue.—The Paracells have been accurately surveyed by Capt. D. Ross, and charts on a large scale published: but few low islets have been formed on these shoals, and this seems to be a general circumstance in the China Sea; the sea close outside the reefs is very deep; several of them have a lagoon-like structure; or separate islets (Prattle, Robert, Drummond, &c.) are so arranged round a moderately shallow space, as to appear as if they had once formed one large atoll.—Bombay Shoal (one of the Paracells) has the form of an annular reef, and is "apparently deep within;" it seems to have an entrance (Horsburgh, vol. ii. p. 332) on its west side; it is very steep outside.—Discovery Shoal, also, is of an oval form, with a lagoon-like space within, and three openings leading into it, in which there is a depth from two to twenty fathoms. Outside, at the distance (Horsburgh, vol. ii. p. 333) of only twenty yards from the reef, soundings could not be obtained. The Paracells are coloured blue.—Macclesfield Bank: this is a coral bank of great size, lying east of the Paracells; some parts of the bank are level, with a sandy bottom, but, generally, the depth is very irregular. It is intersected by deep cuts or channels. I am not able to perceive in the published charts, (its limits, however, are not very accurately known) whether the central part is deeper, which I suspect is the case, as in the great Chagos Bank, in the Indian Ocean; not coloured.—Scarborough Shoal: this coral shoal is engraved with a double row of crosses, forming a circle, as if there was deep water within the reef: close outside there was no bottom, with a hundred fathoms; coloured blue.—The sea off the west coast of Palawan and the northern part of Borneo is strewed with shoals: Swallow Shoal, according to Horsburgh, (vol. ii. p. 431,) "is formed, like most of the shoals hereabouts, of a belt of coral-rocks, with a basin of deeper water within."—Half-Moon Shoal has a similar structure; Capt. D. Ross describes it, as a narrow belt of coral-rock, "with a basin of deep water in the centre," and deep sea close outside.—Bombay Shoal appears (Horsburgh, vol. ii. p. 432) "to be a basin of smooth water surrounded by breakers." These three shoals I have coloured blue.—The Paraquas Shoals are of a circular form, with deep gaps running through them; not coloured.—A bank, gradually shoaling to the depth of 30 fathoms, extends to a distance of about 20 miles from the northern part of Borneo, and to 30 miles from the northern part of Palawan. Near the land this bank appears tolerably free from danger, but a little further out it is thickly studded with coral shoals, which do not generally rise quite to the surface; some of them are very steep to, and others have a fringe of shoal-water round them. I should have thought that these shoals had level surfaces, had it not been for the statement made by Horsburgh "that most of the shoals hereabouts are formed of a belt of coral." But, perhaps, that expression was more particularly applied to the shoals further in the offing. If these reefs of coral have a lagoon-like structure, they should have been coloured blue, and they would have formed an imperfect barrier in front of Palawan and the northern part of Borneo. But, as the water is not very deep, these reefs may have grown up from inequalities on the bank: I have not coloured them.—The coasts of China, Tonquin, and Cochin-China, forming the western boundary of the China Sea, appear to be without reefs: with regard to the two last-mentioned coasts, I speak after examining the charts on a large scale in the atlas of the Voyage of the Favourite. INDIAN OCEAN.—South Keeling atoll has been specially described: nine miles north of it lies North Keeling, a very small atoll, surveyed by the Beagle, the lagoon of which is dry at low water.—Christmas Island, lying to the east, is a high island, without, as I have been informed by a person who passed it, any reefs at all.—CEYLON: a space about eighty miles in length of the S.-western and southern shores of these islands has been described by Mr. Twynam, (Naut. Mag. 1836, pp. 365 and 518); parts of this space appear to be very regularly fringed by coral-reefs, which extend from a quarter to half a mile from the shore. These reefs are in places breached, and afford safe anchorage for the small trading craft. Outside, the sea gradually deepens; there is 40 fathoms about six miles off shore: this part I have coloured red. In the published charts of Ceylon there appear to be fringing reefs in several parts of the S.-eastern shores, which I have also coloured red.—At Venloos Bay the shore is likewise fringed. North of Trincomalee there are also reefs of the same kind. The sea off the northern part of Ceylon is exceedingly shallow; and therefore I have not coloured the reefs which fringe portions of its shores, and the adjoining islets, as well as the Indian promontory of Madura. CHAGOS, MALDIVA and LACCADIVE ARCHIPELAGOES.—These three great groups which have already been often noticed, are now well known from the admirable surveys of Capt. Moresby and Lieut. Powell. The published charts, which are worthy of the most attentive examination, at once show that the Chagos and Maldiva groups are entirely formed of great atolls, or lagoon-formed reefs, surmounted by islets. In the Laccadive group, this structure is less evident; the islets are low, not exceeding the usual height of coral formations, (see Lieut. Wood's account, Geograph. Journ. vol. vi. p. 29) and most of the reefs are circular, as may be seen in the published charts; and within several of them, as I am informed by Capt. Moresby, there is deepish water; these therefore, have been coloured blue. Directly north, and almost forming part of this group, there is a long, narrow, slightly-curved bank, rising out of the depths of the ocean, composed of sand, shells, and decayed coral, with from 23 to 30 fathoms on it. I have no doubt that it has had the same origin with the other Laccidive banks; but as it does not deepen towards the centre, I have not coloured it. I might have referred to other authorities regarding these three Archipelagoes; but after the publication of the charts by Capt. Moresby, to whose personal kindness in giving me much information I am exceedingly indebted, it would have been superfluous. Sahia de Malha bank consists of a series of narrow banks, with from 8 to 16 fathoms on them; they are arranged in a semi-circular manner, round a space about forty fathoms deep, which slopes on the S.E. quarter to unfathomable depths; they are steep to on both sides, but more especially on the ocean-side. Hence this bank closely resembles in structure, and I may add from Capt. Moresby's information in composition, the Pitt's Bank in the Chagos group; and the Pitt's Bank, must, after what has been shown of the Great Chagos Bank, be considered as a sunken, half-destroyed atoll; hence coloured blue.—Cargados Carajos Bank. Its southern portion consists of a large, curved, coral-shoal, with some low islets on its eastern edge, and likewise some on the western side, between which there is a depth of about twelve fathoms. Northward, a great bank extends. I cannot (probably owing to the want of perfect charts,) refer this reef and bank to any class;—therefore not coloured.—Ile de Sable is a little island, lying west of C. Carajos, only some toises in height (Voyage of the Favourite, vol. i. p. 130;) it is surrounded by reefs; but its structure is unintelligible to me. There are some small banks north of it, of which I can find no clear account.—Mauritius. The reefs round this island have been described in the chapter on fringing-reefs; coloured red. Rodriguez. The coral-reefs here are exceedingly extensive; in one part they project even five miles from the shore. As far as I can make out, there is no deep-water moat within them; and the sea outside does not deepen very suddenly. The outline, however, of the land appears to be (Life of Sir J. Makintosh, vol. ii. p. 165.) hilly and rugged. I am unable to decide whether these reefs belong to the barrier-class, as seems probable from their great extension, or to the fringing-class; uncoloured.—Bourbon. The greater part of the shores of this island, are without reefs; but Capt. Carmichael (Hooker's Bot. Misc.) states that a portion, fifteen miles in length, on the S.E. side, is imperfectly fringed with coral-reefs: I have not thought this sufficient to colour the island. SEYCHELLES.—The rocky islands of primary formation, composing this group, rise from a very extensive and tolerably level bank, having a depth between 20 and 40 fathoms. In Capt. Owen's chart, and in that in the atlas of the Voyage of the Favourite, it appears that the east side of Mahé and the adjoining islets of St. Anne and Cerf, are regularly fringed by coral reefs. A portion of the S.E. part of Curieuse Isld., the N., and part of the S.W. shore of Praslin Isld., and the whole west side of Digue Isld., appear fringed. From a MS. account of these islands by Capt. F. Moresby, in the Admiralty, it appears that Silhouette is also fringed; he states that all these islands are formed of granite and quartz, that they rise abruptly from the sea, and that "coral-reefs have grown round them, and project for some distance." Dr. Allan of Forres, who visited these islands, informs me that there is no deep water between the reefs and the shore. The above specified points have been coloured red. Amirantes Islands: The small islands of this neighbouring group, according to the MS. account of them by Capt. F. Moresby, are situated on an extensive bank; they consist of the debris of corals and shells; are only about 20 feet in height, and are environed by reefs, some attached to the shore, and some rather distant from it.—I have taken great pains to procure plans and information regarding the several islands lying between S.E. and S.W. of the Amirantes, and the Seychelles; relying chiefly on Capt. F. Moresby, and Dr. Allan, it appears that the greater number, namely—Platte, Alphonse, Coetivi, Galega, Providence, St. Pierre, Astova, Assomption, and Glorioso, are low, formed of sand or coral-rock, and irregularly shaped; they are situated on very extensive banks, and are connected with great coral-reefs. Galega is said by Dr. Allan, to be rather higher than the other islands; and St. Pierre is described by Capt. F. Moresby, as being cavernous throughout, and as not consisting of either limestone or granite. These islands, as well as the Amirantes, certainly are not atoll-formed, and they differ as a group from every other group with which I am acquainted; I have not coloured them; but probably the reefs belong to the fringing class. Their formation is attributed both by Dr. Allan and Capt. F. Moresby, to the action of the currents, here exceedingly violent, on banks, which no doubt have had an independent geological origin. They resemble in many respects some islands and banks in the West Indies, which owe their origin to a similar agency, in conjunction with an elevation of the entire area. In close vicinity to these several islands, there are three others of an apparently different nature: first, Juan de Nova, which appears from some plans and accounts to be an atoll; but from others does not appear to be so; not coloured. Secondly, Cosmoledo; "this group consists of a ring of coral, ten leagues in circumference, and quarter of a mile broad in some places, inclosing a magnificent lagoon, into which there did not appear a single opening" (Horsburgh, vol. i. p. 151); coloured blue. Thirdly, Aldabra; it consists of three islets, about 25 feet in height, with red cliffs (Horsburgh, vol. i. p. 176), surrounding a very shallow basin or lagoon. The sea is profoundly deep close to the shore. Viewing this island in a chart, it would be thought an atoll; but the foregoing description shows that there is something different in its nature; Dr. Allan also states that it is cavernous, and that the coral-rock has a vitrified appearance. Is it an upheaved atoll, or the crater of a volcano?—uncoloured. COMORO GROUP.—Mayotta, according to Horsburgh (vol. i. p. 216, 4th edit.), is completely surrounded by a reef, which runs at the distance of three, four, and in some places even five miles from the land; in an old chart, published by Dalrymple, a depth in many places of 36 and 38 fathoms is laid down within the reef. In the same chart, the space of open water within the reef in some parts is even more than three miles wide: the land is bold and peaked; this island, therefore, is encircled by a well-characterized barrier reef, and is coloured pale blue.—Johanna; Horsburgh says (vol. i. p. 217), this island from the N.W. to the S.W. point, is bounded by a reef, at the distance of two miles from the shore; in some parts, however, the reef must be attached, since Lieut. Boteler (Narr. vol. i. p. 161), describes a passage through it, within which there is room only for a few boats. Its height, as I am informed by Dr. Allan, is about 3,500 feet; it is very precipitous, and is composed of granite, greenstone, and quartz; coloured blue.—Mohilla; on the S. side of this island there is anchorage, in from 30 to 45 fathoms, between a reef and the shore (Horsburgh, vol. i. p. 214); in Capt. Owen's chart of Madagascar, this island is represented as encircled; coloured blue.—Great Comoro Isld. is, as I am informed by Dr. Allan, about 8,000 feet high, and apparently volcanic; it is not regularly encircled; but reefs of various shapes and dimensions, jut out from every headland on the W., S., and S.E. coasts, inside of which reefs there are channels, often parallel with the shore, with deep water. On the N.-western coasts the reefs appear attached to the shores. The land near the coast is in some places bold, but generally speaking it is flat; Horsburgh says, (vol. i. p. 214,) the water is profoundly deep close to the shore, from which expression I presume some parts are without reefs. From this description, I apprehend the reef belongs to the barrier class; but I have not coloured it, as most of the charts which I have seen, represent the reefs round it as very much less extensive than round the other islands in the group. MADAGASCAR.—My information is chiefly derived from the published charts by Capt. Owen, and the accounts given by him and by Lieut. Boteler. Commencing at the S.W. extremity of this island; towards the northern part of the Star Bank (in lat. 25° S.) the coast for ten miles is fringed by a reef; coloured red. The shore immediately S. of St. Augustin's Bay appears fringed; but Tullear Harbour, directly N. of it, is formed by a narrow reef ten miles long, extending parallel to the shore, with from four to ten fathoms within it. If this reef had been more extensive, it must have been classed as a barrier-reef; but as the line of coast falls inwards here, a submarine bank perhaps extends parallel to the shore, which has offered a foundation for the growth of the coral; I have left this part uncoloured. From lat. 22° 16' to 21° 37', the shore is fringed by coral reefs (see Lieut. Boteler's Narrative, vol. ii. p. 106), less than a mile in width, and with shallow water within. There are outlying coral shoals in several parts of the offing, with about ten fathoms between them and the shore, and the depth of the sea one mile and a-half seaward, is about 30 fathoms. The part above specified is engraved on a large scale; and as in the charts on rather a smaller scale the same fringe of reef extends as far as lat. 33° 15'; I have coloured the whole of this part of the coast red. The islands of Juan de Nova (in lat. 17° S.) appear in the charts on a large scale to be fringed, but I have not been able to ascertain whether the reefs are of coral; uncoloured. The main-part of the west coast appears to be low, with outlying sand-banks, which Lieut. Boteler (vol. ii. p. 106) says, "are faced on the edge of deep water by a line of sharp-pointed coral-rocks." Nevertheless I have not coloured this part, as I cannot make out by the charts that the coast itself is fringed. The headlands of Narrenda and Passandava Bays (14° 40') and the islands in front of Radama harbour are represented in the plans as regularly fringed, and have accordingly been coloured red. With respect to the East coast of Madagascar, Dr. Allan informs me in a letter, that the whole line of coast, from Tamatave in 18° 12' to C. Amber at the extreme northern point of the island, is bordered by coral-reefs. The land is low, uneven, and gradually rising from the coast. From Capt. Owen's charts, also, the existence of these reefs, which evidently belong to the fringing class, on some parts, namely, N. of British Sound and near Ngoncy, of the above line of coast might have been inferred. Lieut. Boteler (vol. i. p. 155) speaks of "the reef surrounding the island of St. Mary's at a small distance from the shore." In a previous chapter I have described, from the information of Dr. Allan, the manner in which the reefs extend in N.E. lines from the headlands on this coast, thus sometimes forming rather deep channels within them: this seems caused by the action of the currents, and the reefs spring up from the submarine prolongations of the sandy headlands. The above specified portion of the coast is coloured red. The remaining S.E. portions do not appear in any published chart to possess reefs of any kind; and the Rev. W. Ellis, whose means of information regarding this side of Madagascar have been extensive, informs me he believes there are none. EAST COAST OF AFRICA.—Proceeding from the northern part, the coast appears, for a considerable space, without reefs. My information, I may here observe, is derived from the survey by Capt. Owen, together with his Narrative; and that by Lieut. Boteler. At Mukdeesha (2° 1' N.) there is a coral-reef extending four or five miles along the shore, (Owen's Nar. vol. i. p. 357) which in the chart lies at the distance of a quarter of a mile from the shore, and has within it from six to ten feet water: this then is a fringing-reef, and is coloured red. From Juba a little S. of the equator, to Lamoo (in 2° 20' S.) "the coast and islands are formed of madrepore" (Owen's Narrative, vol. i. p. 363). The chart of this part (entitled Dundas Islds.) presents an extraordinary appearance; the coast of the mainland is quite straight, and it is fronted at the average distance of two miles, by exceedingly narrow, straight islets, fringed with reefs. Within the chain of islets, there are extensive tidal flats and muddy bays, into which many rivers enter: the depth of these spaces varies from one to four fathoms—the latter depth not being common, and about twelve feet the average. Outside the chain of islets, the sea, at the distance of a mile, varies in depth from eight to fifteen fathoms. Lieut. Boteler (Nar. vol. i. p. 369) describes the muddy bay of Patta, which seems to resemble other parts of this coast, as fronted by small, narrow, level islets formed of decomposing coral, the margin of which is seldom of greater height than twelve feet, overhanging the rocky surface from which the islets rise. Knowing that the islets are formed of coral, it is I think scarcely possible to view the coast, and not at once conclude that we here see a fringing-reef, which has been upraised a few feet: the unusual depth of from two to four fathoms within some of these islets, is probably due to muddy rivers having prevented the growth of coral near the shore. There is, however, one difficulty on this view, namely, that before the elevation took place, which converted the reef into a chain of islets, the water must apparently have been still deeper; on the other hand it may be supposed that the formation of a nearly perfect barrier in front of so large an extent of coast, would cause the currents (especially in front of the rivers,) to deepen their muddy beds. When describing, in the chapter on fringing reefs, those of Mauritius, I have given my reasons for believing that the shoal spaces within reefs of this kind, must, in many instances, have been deepened. However this may be, as several parts of this line of coast are undoubtedly fringed by living reefs, I have coloured it red.—Maleenda (3° 20' S.) In the plan of the harbour, the south headland appears fringed; and in Owen's chart on a larger scale, the reefs are seen to extend nearly thirty miles southward; coloured red. Mombas (4° 5' S.) The island which forms the harbour, "is surrounded by cliffs of madrepore, capable of being rendered almost impregnable," (Owen's Nar. vol. i. p. 412). The shore of the main land, N. and S. of the harbour, is most regularly fringed by a coral-reef at a distance from half a mile to one mile and a quarter from the land; within the reef the depth is from nine to fifteen feet; outside the reef the depth at rather less than half a mile is thirty fathoms. From the charts it appears that a space about thirty-six miles in length, is here fringed; coloured red.—Pemba (5° S.) is an isld. of coral formation, level, and about 200 feet in height (Owen's Nar. vol. i. p. 425); it is 35 miles long, and is separated from the mainland by a deep sea. The outer coast is represented in the charts as regularly fringed; coloured red. The main land in front of Pemba is likewise fringed; but there also appear to be some outlying reefs with deep water between them and the shore. I do not understand their structure, either from the charts or the description, therefore have not coloured them.—Zanzibar resembles Pemba in most respects; its southern half on the western side and the neighbouring islets are fringed; coloured red. On the main land, a little S. of Zanzibar, there are some banks parallel to the coast, which I should have thought had been formed of coral, had it not been said (Boteler's Nar. vol. ii. p. 39) that there were composed of sand; not coloured.—Latham's Bank is a small island, fringed by coral-reefs; but being only ten feet high, it has not been coloured.—Monfeea is an island of the same character as Pemba: its outer shore is fringed, and its southern extremity is connected with Keelwa Point on the main land by a chain of islands fringed by reefs; coloured red. The four last-mentioned islands resemble in many respects some of the islands in the Red Sea, which will presently be described.—Keelwa. In a plan of the shore, a space of 20 miles N. and S. of this place is fringed by reefs, apparently of coral: these reefs are prolonged still further southward in Owen's general chart. The coast in the plans of the rivers Lindy and Monghow (9° 59' and 10° 7' S.) has the same structure; coloured red.—Querimba Islands (from 10° 40' to 13° S.) A chart on a large scale is given of these islands: they are low, and of coral formation (Boteler's Nar. vol. ii. p. 54); and generally have extensive reefs projecting from them, which are dry at low water, and which on the outside rise abruptly from a deep sea: on their insides they are separated from the continent by a channel, or rather a succession of bays, with an average depth of ten fathoms. The small headlands on the continent also have coral-banks attached to them; and the Querimba islands and banks are placed on the lines of prolongation of these headlands, and are separated from them by very shallow channels. It is evident that whatever cause, whether the drifting of sediment or subterranean movements, produced the headlands, likewise produced, as might have been expected, submarine prolongations to them; and these towards their outer extremities, have since afforded a favourable basis for the growth of coral-reefs, and subsequently for the formation of islets. As these reefs clearly belong to the fringing-class, the Querimba islands have been coloured red.—Monabila (13° 32' S.) In the plan of this harbour, the headlands outside are fringed by reefs apparently of coral; coloured red.—Mozambique (15° S.) The outer part of the island on which the city is built, and the neighbouring islands, are fringed by coral-reefs; coloured red. From the description given in Owen's Nar. (vol. i. p. 162) the shore from Mozambique to Delagoa Bay appears to be low and sandy: many of the shoals and islets off this line of coast are of coral formation; but from their small size and lowness, it is not possible, from the charts, to know whether they are truly fringed. Hence this portion of coast is left uncoloured, as are likewise those parts more northward, of which no mention has been made in the foregoing pages, from the want of information. PERSIAN GULF.—From the charts lately published on a large scale by the East Indian Company, it appears that several parts, especially the southern shores of this gulf, are fringed by coral-reefs; but as the water is very shallow, and as there are numerous sand-banks, which are difficult to distinguish on the chart from reefs, I have not coloured the upper part red. Towards the mouth, however, where the water is rather deeper, the Islands of Ormuz and Larrack, appear so regularly fringed, that I have coloured them red. There are certainly no atolls in the Persian Gulf. The shores of Immaum, and of the promontory forming the southern headland of the Persian Gulf, seem to be without reefs. The whole S.W. part (except one or two small patches) of Arabia Felix, and the shores of Socotra appear from the charts and memoir of Capt. Haines (Geograph. Journ., 1839, p. 125,) to be without any reefs. I believe there are no extensive coral-reefs on any part of the coasts of India, except on the low promontory of Madura (as already mentioned) in front of Ceylon. RED SEA.—My information is chiefly derived from the admirable charts published by the East Indian Company in 1836, from personal communication with Capt. Moresby, one of the surveyors, and from the excellent memoir, "über die Natur der Corallen-Bänken des Rothen Meeres," by Ehrenberg. The plains immediately bordering the Red Sea seem chiefly to consist of a sedimentary formation of the newer tertiary period. The shore is, with the exception of a few parts, fringed by coral-reefs. The water is generally profoundly deep close to the shore; but this fact, which has attracted the attention of most voyagers, seems to have no necessary connection with the presence of reefs; for Capt. Moresby particularly observed to me, that, in lat. 24° 10' on the eastern side, there is a piece of coast, with very deep water close to it, without any reefs, but not differing in other respects from the usual nature of the coast-line. The most remarkable feature in the Red Sea is the chain of submerged banks, reefs, and islands, lying some way from the shore, chiefly on the eastern side; the space within being deep enough to admit a safe navigation in small vessels. The banks are generally of an oval form, and some miles in width; but some of them are very long in proportion to their width. Capt. Moresby informs me that any one, who had not made actual plans of them, would be apt to think that they were much more elongated than they really are. Many of them rise to the surface, but the greater number lie from 5 to 30 fathoms beneath it, with irregular soundings on them. They consist of sand and living coral; coral on most of them, according to Capt. Moresby, covering the greater part of their surface. They extend parallel to the shore, and they are not unfrequently connected in their middle parts by short transverse banks with the main land. The sea is generally profoundly deep quite close to them, as it is near most parts of the coast of the main land; but this is not universally the case, for between lat. 15° and 17° the water deepens quite gradually from the banks, both on the eastern and western shores, towards the middle of the sea. Islands in many parts arise from these banks; they are low, flat-topped, and consist of the same horizontally stratified formation with that forming the plain-like margin of the main land. Some of the smaller and lower islands consist of mere sand. Capt. Moresby informs me, that small masses of rock, the remnants of islands, are left on many banks where there is now no dry land. Ehrenberg also asserts that most of the islets, even the lowest, have a flat abraded basis, composed of the same tertiary formation: he believes that as soon as the surf wears down the protuberant parts of a bank, just beneath the level of the sea, the surface becomes protected from further abrasion by the growth of coral, and he thus accounts for the existence of so many banks standing on a level with the surface of this sea. It appears that most of the islands are certainly decreasing in size. The form of the banks and islands is most singular in the part just referred to, namely, from lat. 15° to 17°, where the sea deepens quite gradually: the Dhalac group, on the western coast, is surrounded by an intricate archipelago of islets and shoals; the main island is very irregularly shaped, and it includes a bay seven miles long, by four across, in which no bottom was found with 252 feet: there is only one entrance into this bay, half a mile wide, and with an island in front of it. The submerged banks on the eastern coast, within the same latitudes, round Farsan Isld., are, likewise, penetrated by many narrow creeks of deep water; one is twelve miles long, in the form of a hatchet, in which, close to its broad upper end, soundings were not stuck with 360 feet, and its entrance is only half a mile wide: in another creek of the same nature, but even with a more irregular outline, there was no bottom with 480 feet. The island of Farsan, itself, has as singular a form as any of its surrounding banks. The bottom of the sea round the Dhalac and Farsan Islands consists chiefly of sand and agglutinated fragments, but, in the deep and narrow creeks, it consists of mud; the islands themselves consist of thin, horizontally stratified, modern tertiary beds, containing but little broken coral;* their shores are fringed by living coral-reefs. From the account given by Rüppell† of the manner in which Dhalac has been rent by fissures, the opposite sides of which have been unequally elevated, (in one instance to the amount of 50 feet,) it seems probable that its irregular form, as well as probably that of Farsan, may have been partly caused by unequal elevations; but, considering the general form of the banks, and of the deep-water creeks, together with the composition of the land, I think their configuration is more probably due in great part to strong currents having drifted sediment over an uneven bottom: it is almost certain that their form cannot be attributed to the growth of coral. Whatever may have been the precise origin of the Dhalac and Farsan archipelagoes, the greater number of the banks on the eastern side of the Red Sea seem to have originated through nearly similar means. I judge of this from their similarity in configuration, (in proof of which I may instance a bank on the east coast in lat. 22°; although it is true that the northern banks generally have a less complicated outline,) and from their similarity in composition, as may be observed in their upraised portions. The depth within the banks northward of lat. 17°, is usually greater, and their outer sides shelve more abruptly (circumstances which seem to go together) than in the Dhalac and Farsan archipelagoes; but this might easily have been caused by a difference in the action of the currents during their formation: moreover, the greater quantity of living coral, which, according to Capt. Moresby, exists on the northern banks, would tend to give them steeper margins. From this account, brief and imperfect as it is, we can see that the great chain of banks on the eastern coast, and on the western side in the southern portion, differ greatly from true barrier-reefs wholly formed by the growth of coral. It is indeed the direct conclusion of * Rüppell Reise in Abyssinie, Band. i. s. 247. † Ibid. S. 245. Ehrenberg, (Über die, &c. pp. 45 and 51,) that they are connected in their origin quite secondarily with the growth of coral; and he remarks that the islands off the coast of Norway, if worn down level with the sea, and merely coated with living coral, would present a nearly similar appearance. I cannot, however, avoid suspecting, from information given me by Dr. Malcolmson and Capt. Moresby, that Ehrenberg has rather under-rated the influence of corals, in some places at least, on the formation of the tertiary deposits of the Red Sea. The West Coast of the Red Sea between lat. 19° and 22°.—There are, in this space, reefs, which, if I had known nothing of those in other parts of the Red Sea, I should unhesitatingly have considered as barrier-reefs; and, after deliberation, I have come to the same conclusion. One of these reefs, in 20° 15', is twenty miles long, less than a mile in width, (but expanding at the northern end into a disk,) slightly sinuous, and extending parallel to the main-land at the distance of five miles from it, with very deep water within; in one spot soundings were not obtained with 205 fathoms. Some leagues further south, there is another linear reef, very narrow, ten miles long, with other small portions of reef, north and south, almost connected with it; and within this line of reefs (as well as outside) the water is profoundly deep. There are also some small linear and sickle-formed reefs, lying a little way out at sea. All these reefs are covered, as I am informed by Capt. Moresby, by living corals. Here, then, we have all the characters of reefs of the barrier class; and in some outlying reefs we have an approach to the structure of atolls. The source of my doubts about the classification of these reefs, arises from having observed in the Dhalac and Farsan groups the narrowness and straightness of several spits of sand and rock: one of these spits in the Dhalac group is nearly fifteen miles long, only two broad, and it is bordered on each side with deep water; so that, if worn down by the surf, and coated with living corals, it would form a reef nearly similar to those within the space under consideration. There is, also, in this space (lat. 21°) a peninsula, bordered by cliffs, with its extremity worn down to the level of the sea, and its basis fringed with reefs: in the line of prolongation of this peninsula, there lies the island of Macowa, (formed, according to Capt. Moresby, of the usual tertiary deposit,) and some smaller islands, large parts of which likewise appear to have been worn down, and are now coated with living corals. If the removal of the strata in these several cases had been more complete, the reefs thus formed would have nearly resembled those barrier-like ones now under discussion. Notwithstanding these facts, I cannot persuade myself that the many very small, isolated, and sickle-formed reefs and others, long, nearly straight, and very narrow, with the water unfathomably deep close round them, could possibly have been formed by corals merely coating banks of sediment, or the abraded surfaces of irregularly shaped islands. I feel compelled to believe that the foundations of these reefs have subsided, and that the corals, during their upward growth, have given to these reefs their present forms: I may remark that the subsidence of narrow and irregularly-shaped peninsulas and islands, such as those existing on the coasts of the Red Sea, would afford the requisite foundations for the reefs in question. The west coast from lat. 22° to 24°:—this part of the coast (north of the space coloured blue on the map) is fronted by an irregularly shelving bank, from about 10 to 30 fathoms deep; numerous little reefs, some of which have the most singular shapes, rise from this bank. It may be observed, respecting one of them, in lat. 23° 10', that if the promontory in lat. 24° were worn down to the level of the sea, and coated with corals, a very similar and grotesquely formed reef would be produced. Many of the reefs on this part of the coast may thus have originated; but there are some sickle, and almost atoll-formed reefs lying in deep water off the promontory in lat. 24°, which lead me to suppose that all these reefs are more probably allied to the barrier or atoll classes. I have not, however, ventured to colour this portion of coast.—On the west coast from lat. 19° to 17°, (south of the space coloured blue on the map,) there are many low islets of very small dimensions, not much elongated, and rising out of great depths at a distance from the coast: these cannot be classed either with atolls, or barrier, or fringing-reefs. I may here remark that the outlying reefs on the west coast, between latitudes 19° and 24°, are the only ones in the Red Sea, which approach in structure to the true atolls of the Indian and Pacific Oceans; but they present only imperfect miniature likenesses of them. Eastern coast:—I have felt the greatest doubt about colouring any portion of this coast, north of the fringing-reefs round the Farsan islands in 16° 10'. There are many small outlying coral-reefs along the whole line of coast; but as the greater number rise from banks not very deeply submerged, (the formation of which has been shown to be only secondarily connected with the growth of coral,) their origin may be due simply to the growth of knolls of corals, from an irregular foundation situated within a limited depth. But between lat. 18° and 20°, there are so many linear, elliptic and extremely small reefs, rising abruptly out of profound depths, that the same reasons, which led me to colour blue a portion of the west coast, have induced me to do the same in this part. There exist some small outlying reefs rising from deep water, north of lat. 20°, (the northern limit coloured blue,) on the east coast; but as they are not very numerous, and scarcely any of them are linear, I have thought it right to leave them uncoloured. In the southern parts of the Red Sea, considerable spaces of the main land, and of some of the Dhalac islands, are skirted by reefs, which, as I am informed by Capt. Moresby, are of living coral, and have all the characters of the fringing class. As in these latitudes, there are no outlying linear or sickle-formed reefs, rising out of unfathomable depths, I have coloured these parts of the coast red. On similar grounds, I have coloured red the northern parts of the western coast, (north of lat. 24° 30') and likewise the shores of the chief part of the Gulf of Suez. In the Gulf of Acaba, as I am informed by Capt. Moresby, there are no coral-reefs, and the water is profoundly deep. WEST INDIES.—My information regarding the reefs of this area, is derived from various sources, and from an examination of numerous charts; especially of those lately executed during the survey under Capt. Owen, R.N. I lie under particular obligation to Capt. Bird Allen, R.N., one of the members of the late survey, for many personal communications on this subject. As in the case of the Red Sea, it is necessary to make some preliminary remarks on the submerged banks of the West Indies, which are in some degree connected with coral-reefs, and cause considerable doubts in their classification. That large accumulations of sediment are in progress on the West Indian shores, will be evident to any one who examines the charts of that sea, especially of the portion north of a line joining Yucutan and Florida. The area of deposition seems less intimately connected with the debouchement of the great rivers, than with the course of the sea-currents; as is evident from the vast extension of the banks from the promontories of Yucutan and Mosquito. Besides the coast-banks, there are many of various dimensions which stand quite isolated; these closely resemble each other; they lie from 2 or 3 to 20 or 30 fathoms under water, and are composed of sand, sometimes firmly agglutinated, with little or no coral; their surfaces are smooth and nearly level, shelving only to the amount of a few fathoms, very gradually all round towards their edges, where they plunge abruptly into the unfathomable sea. This steep inclination of their sides, which is likewise characteristic of the coast-banks, is very remarkable: I may give as an instance, the Misteriosa Bank, on the edges of which the soundings change in 250 fathoms horizontal distance, from 11 to 210 fathoms; off the northern point of the bank of Old Providence, in 200 fathoms horizontal distance, the change is from 19 to 152 fathoms; off the Great Bahama Bank, in 160 fathoms horizontal distance, the inclination is in many places from 10 fathoms to no bottom with 190 fathoms. On coasts in all parts of the world, where sediment is accumulating, something of this kind may be observed; the banks shelve very gently far out to sea, and then terminate abruptly. The form and composition of the banks standing in the middle parts of W. Indian sea, clearly show that their origin must be chiefly attributed to the accumulation of sediment; and the only obvious explanation of their isolated position is the presence of a nucleus, round which the currents have collected fine drift matter. Any one who will compare the character of the bank surrounding the hilly island of Old Providence, with those banks in its neighbourhood which stand isolated, will scarcely doubt that they surround submerged mountains. We are led to the same conclusion by examining the bank called Thunder Knoll, which is separated from the great Mosquito bank by a channel only seven miles wide, and 145 fathoms deep. There cannot be any doubt that the Mosquito bank has been formed by the accumulation of sediment round the promontory of the same name; and Thunder Knoll resembles the Mosquito bank, in the state of its surface submerged 20 fathoms, in the inclination of its sides, in composition, and in every other respect. I may observe, although the remark is here irrelevant, that geologists should be cautious in concluding that all the outlyers of any formation have once been connected together, for we here see that deposits, doubtless of exactly the same nature, may be deposited with large valley-like spaces between them. Linear strips of coral-reefs and small knolls project from many of the isolated, as well as coast-banks; sometimes they occur quite irregularly placed, as on the Mosquito bank, but more generally they form crescents on the windward side, situated some little distance within the outer edge of the banks:—thus on the Serranilla bank they form an interrupted chain which ranges between two and three miles within the windward margin: generally they occur, as on Roncador, Courtown and Anegada banks, nearer the line of deep-water. Their occurrence on the windward side is conformable to the general rule, of the efficient kinds of corals flourishing best where most exposed; but their position some way within the line of deep water I cannot explain, without it be, that a depth somewhat less than that close to the outer margin of the banks, is most favourable to their growth. Where the corals have formed a nearly continuous rim, close to the windward edge of a bank some fathoms submerged, the reef closely resembles an atoll; but if the bank surrounds an island (as in the case of Old Providence), the reef resembles an encircling barrier-reef. I should undoubtedly have classed some of these fringed banks as imperfect atolls, or barrier-reefs, if the sedimentary nature of their foundations had not been evident from the presence of other neighbouring banks, of similar forms and of similar composition, but without the crescent-like marginal reef: in the third chapter, I observed that probably some atoll-like reefs did exist, which had originated in the manner here supposed. Proofs of elevation within recent tertiary periods abound, as referred to in the sixth chapter, over nearly the whole area of the West Indies. Hence it is easy to understand the origin of the low land on the coasts, where sediment is now accumulating; for instance, on the northern part of Yucutan, and on the N.E. part of Mosquito, where the land is low, and where extensive banks appear to be in progressive formation. Hence, also, the origin of the great Bahama banks, which are bordered on their western and southern edges by very narrow, long, singularly-shaped islands, formed of sand, shells and coral-rock, and some of them about a hundred feet in height, is easily explained by the elevation of banks fringed on their windward (western and southern) sides by coral-reefs. On this view, however, we must suppose either that the chief part of the surfaces of the great Bahama sand-banks were all originally deeply submerged, and were brought up to their present level by the same elevatory action, which formed the linear islands; or that during the elevation of the banks, the superficial currents and swell of the waves continued wearing them down and keeping them at a nearly uniform level: the level is not quite uniform; for, in proceeding from the N.W. end of the Bahama group towards the S.E. end, the depth of the banks increases, and the area of land decreases, in a very gradual and remarkable manner. The latter view, namely, that these banks have been worn down by the currents and swell during their elevation, seems to me the most probable one. It is, also, I believe, applicable to many banks, situated in widely distant parts of the West Indian sea, which are wholly submerged; for, on any other view, we must suppose, that the elevatory forces have acted with astonishing uniformity. The shore of the Gulf of Mexico, for a space of many hundred miles, is formed by a chain of lagoons, from one to twenty miles in breadth, (Columbian Navigator, p. 178, &c.) containing either fresh or salt water, and separated from the sea by linear strips of sand. Great spaces of the shores of southern Brazil,* and of the United States from Long Island (as observed by Professor Rogers) to Florida, have the same character. Professor Rogers, in his Report to the British Association, (vol. iii. p. 13,) speculates on the origin of these low, sandy, linear islets: he states that the layers of which they are composed are too homogeneous, and contain too large a proportion of shells, to permit the common supposition of their formation being simply due to matter thrown up, where it now lies, by the surf: he considers these islands as upheaved bars or shoals, which were deposited in lines where opposed currents met. It is evident that these islands and spits of sand parallel to the coast, and separated from it by shallow lagoons, have no necessary connection with coral formations. But in southern Florida, from the accounts I have received from persons who have resided there, the upraised islands seem to be formed of strata, containing a good deal of coral, and they are extensively fringed by living reefs; the channels within these islands are in some places between two and three miles wide, and five or six fathoms deep, though generally† they are less in depth and width. After having seen how frequently banks of sediment in the West Indian Sea are fringed by reefs, we can readily conceive that bars of sediment might be greatly aided in their formation along a line of coast, by the growth of corals; and such bars would, in that case, have a deceptive resemblance with true barrier-reefs. Having now endeavoured to remove some sources of doubt in * In the London and Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, 1141, p. 257, I have described a singular bar of sandstone lying parallel to the coast off Pernambuco in Brazil, which probably is an analagous formation. † In the ordinary sea charts, no lagoons appear on the coast of Florida, north of 26°; but Major Whiting (Silliman's Journal, vol. xxxv. p. 54) says that many are formed by sand thrown up along the whole line of coast from St. Augustine's to Jupiter Inlet. classifying the reefs of the West Indies, I will give my authorities for colouring such portions of coast as I have thought myself warranted in doing. Capt. Bird Allen informs me, that most of the islands on the Bahama Banks are fringed, especially on their windward sides, with living reefs; and hence I have coloured those, which are thus represented in Capt. Owen's late chart, red. The same officer informs me, that the islets along the southern part of Florida are similarly fringed; coloured red.—CUBA: proceeding along the northern coast, at the distance of forty miles from the extreme S.E. point, the shores are fringed by reefs, which extend westward for a space of 160 miles, with only a few breaks. Parts of these reefs are represented in the plans of the harbours on this coast by Capt. Owen; and an excellent description is given of them by Mr. Taylor, (Loudon's Mag. of Nat. Hist. vol. ix. p. 449); he states that they enclose a space called the 'baxo,' from half to three quarters of a mile in width, with a sandy bottom, and a little coral. In most parts people can wade, at low water, to the reef; but in some parts the depth is between two and three fathoms. Close outside the reef, the depth is between six and seven fathoms: these well-characterized fringing reefs are coloured red.—Westward of long. 77° 30', on the northern side of Cuba, a great bank commences, which extends along the coast for nearly four degrees of longitude. In the place of its commencement, in its structure, and in the "cays," or low islands on its edge, there is a marked correspondence (as observed by Humboldt, Pers. Narr, vol. vii. p. 88) between it and the Great Bahama and Sal banks, which lie directly in front. Hence one is led to attribute the same origin to both these sets of banks; namely, the accumulation of sediment, conjoined with an elevatory movement, and the growth of coral on their outer edges: those parts which appear fringed by living reefs are coloured red.—Westward of these banks, there is a portion of coast apparently without reefs, except in the harbours, the shores of which seem in the published plans to be fringed.—The Colorado Shoals, (see Capt. Owen's charts,) and the low land at the western end of Cuba, correspond as closely in relative position and structure to the banks at the extreme point of Florida, as the banks above described on the north side of Cuba, do to the Bahamas. The depth within the islets and reefs on the outer edge of the Colorados, is generally between two and three fathoms, increasing to twelve fathoms in the southern part, where the bank becomes nearly open, without islets or coral-reefs; the portions which are fringed are coloured red.—The southern shore of Cuba is deeply concave, and the included space is filled up with mud and sand banks, low islands, and coral-reefs. Between the mountainous Isle of Pines and the southern shore of Cuba, the general depth is only between two and three fathoms; and in this part, small islands, formed of fragmentary rocks and broken madrepores, (Humboldt, Pers. Narr. vol. vii. pp. 51, 86 to 90, 291, 309, 320,) rise abruptly, and just reach the surface of the sea. From some expressions used in the Columbian Navigator, (vol. i. pt. ii. p. 94,) it appears that considerable spaces along the outer coast of southern Cuba are bounded by cliffs of coral-rock, formed probably by the upheaval of coral-reefs and sand banks. The charts represent the southern part of the Isle of Pines as fringed by reefs, which the Columb. Navig. says extend some way from the coast, but have only from nine to twelve feet water on them; these are coloured red.—I have not been able to procure any detailed description of the large group of banks and "cays" further eastward on the southern side of Cuba; within them there is a large expanse, with a muddy bottom, from eight to twelve fathoms deep: although some parts on this line of coast are represented in the general charts of the West Indies, as fringed, I have not thought it prudent to colour them. The remaining portion of the south coast of Cuba appears to be without coral-reefs. YUCUTAN.—The N.E. part of the promontory appears, in Capt. Owen's charts to be fringed; coloured red. The eastern coast, from 20° to 18° is fringed. South of lat. 18°, there commences the most remarkable reef in the West Indies: it is about 130 miles in length, ranging in a N. and S. line, at an average distance of 15 miles from the coast. The islets on it are all low, as I have been informed by Capt. B. Allen; the water deepens suddenly on the outside the reef, but not more abruptly than off many of the sedimentary banks: within its southern extremity (off Honduras) the depth is 25 fathoms; but in the more northern parts, the depth soon decreases to 10 fathoms, and within the northernmost part, for a space of 20 miles, the depth is only from one to two fathoms. In most of these respects we have the characteristics of a barrier reef; nevertheless, from observing, first, that the channel within the reef is a continuation of a great irregular bay, which penetrates the main land to the depth of 50 miles; and secondly, that considerable spaces of this barrier-like reef are described in the charts (for instance, in lat. 16° 45' and 16° 12') as formed of pure sand; and thirdly, from knowing that sediment is accumulating in many parts of the West Indies in banks parallel to the shore; I have not ventured to colour this reef as a barrier, without further evidence that it has really been formed by the growth of corals, and that it is not merely in parts a spit of sand, and in other parts a worn-down promontory, partially coated and fringed by reefs: I lean, however, to the probability of its being a barrier-reef, produced by subsidence. To add to my doubts, immediately on the outside of this barrier-like reef, Turneffe, Lighthouse, and Glover reefs are situated, and these reefs have so completely the form of atolls, that if they had occurred in the Pacific, I should not have hesitated about colouring them blue. Turneffe Reef seems almost entirely filled up with low mud islets; and the depth within the other two reefs is only from one to three fathoms. From this circumstance, and from their similarity in form, structure, and relative position, both to the bank called Northern Triangles on which there is an islet between 70 and 80 feet, and to Cozumel Island, the level surface of which is likewise between 70 and 80 feet in height, I consider it more probable that the three foregoing banks are the worn-down bases of upheaved shoals, fringed with corals, than that they are true atolls, wholly produced by the growth of coral during subsidence; left uncoloured. In front of the eastern Mosquito coast, there are between lat. 12° and 16° some extensive banks, (already mentioned, p. 197) with high islands rising from their centres; and there are other banks wholly submerged, both of which kinds of banks are bordered, near their windward margins, by crescent-shaped coral-reefs. But it can hardly be doubted, as was observed in the preliminary remarks, that these banks owe their origin, like the great bank extending from the Mosquito promontory, almost entirely to the accumulation of sediment, and not to the growth of corals; hence I have not coloured them. Cayman Island: this island appears in the charts to be fringed; and Capt. B. Allen informs me that reefs extend about a mile from the shore, and have only from 5 to 12 feet water within them; coloured red.—Jamaica: judging from the charts, about 15 miles of the S.E. extremity, and about twice the length on the S.W. extremity, and some portions on the S. side near Kingston and Port Royal, are regularly fringed, and therefore are coloured red. From the plans of some harbours on the N. side of Jamaica, parts of the coast appear to be fringed; but as these are not represented in the charts of the whole island, I have not coloured them.—St. Domingo: I have not been able to obtain sufficient information, either from plans of the harbours, or from general charts, to enable me to colour any part of the coast, except 60 miles from Port de Plata westward, which seems very regularly fringed: many other parts, however, of the coast are probably fringed, especially towards the eastern end of the island.—Puerto Rico: considerable portions of the southern, western, and eastern coasts, and some parts of the northern coast, appear in the charts to be fringed; coloured red. Some miles in length of the southern side of the Island of St. Thomas is fringed; most of the Virgin Gorda Islands, as I am informed by Mr. Schomburgk, are fringed; the shores of Anegada, as well as the bank on which it stands, are likewise fringed; these islands have been coloured red. The greater part of the southern side of Santa Cruz appears in the Danish survey to be fringed (see also Prof. Hovey's account of this island, in Silliman's Journal, vol xxxv. p. 74.); the reefs extend along shore for a considerable space, and project rather more than a mile; the depth within the reef is three fathoms; coloured red.—The Antilles, as remarked by Von Buch (Descrip. Iles Canaries, p. 494,) may be divided into two linear groups, the western row being volcanic, and the eastern of modern calcareous origin; my information is very defective on the whole group. Of the eastern islands, Barbuda and the western coasts of Antigua and Mariagalante appear to be fringed: this is also the case with Barbadoes, as I have been informed by a resident; these islands are coloured red. On the shores of the western Antilles, of volcanic origin, very few coral-reefs appear to exist. The island of Martinique, of which there are beautifully-executed French charts, on a very large scale, alone presents any appearance worthy of special notice. The south-western, southern, and eastern coasts, together forming about half the circumference of the island, are skirted by very irregular banks, projecting generally rather less than a mile from the shore, and lying from two to five fathoms submerged. In front of almost every valley, they are breached by narrow, crooked, steep-sided passages. The French engineers ascertained by boring, that these submerged banks consisted of madreporitic rocks, which were covered in many parts by thin layers of mud or sand. From this fact, and especially from the structure of the narrow breaches, I think there can be little doubt that these banks once formed living reefs, which fringed the shores of the island, and like other reefs probably reached the surface. From some of these submerged banks reefs of living coral rise abruptly, either in small detached patches, or in lines parallel to, but some way within, the outer edges of the banks on which they are based. Besides the above banks which skirt the shores of the island, there is on the eastern side a range of linear banks, similarly constituted, 20 miles in length, extending parallel to the coast-line, and separated from it by a space between two and four miles in width, and from five to fifteen fathoms in depth. From this range of detached banks, some linear reefs of living coral likewise rise abruptly; and if they had been of greater length (for they do not front more than a sixth part of the circumference of the island,) they would necessarily from their position have been coloured as barrier-reefs; as the case stands, they are left uncoloured. I suspect that after a small amount of subsidence, the corals were killed by sand and mud being deposited on them, and the reefs being thus prevented from growing upwards, the banks of madreporitic rock were left in their present submerged condition. THE BERMUDA ISLANDS have been carefully described by Lieut. Nelson, in an excellent memoir in the Geol. Transactions (vol. v. part. i. p. 103.) In the form of the bank or reef, on one side of which the islands stand, there is a close general resemblance to an atoll; but in the following respects there is a considerable difference,—first, in the margin of the reef not forming (as I have been informed by Mr. Chaffers, R.N.,) a flat, solid surface, laid bare at low water, and regularly bounding the internal space of shallow water or lagoon; secondly, in the border of gradually shoaling water, nearly a mile and a half in width, which surrounds the entire outside of the reef (as is laid down in Capt. Hurd's chart); and thirdly, in the size, height, and extraordinary form of the islands, which present little resemblance to the long, narrow, simple islets, seldom exceeding half a mile in breadth, which surmount the annular reefs of almost all the atolls in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Moreover, there are evident proofs (Nelson, ibid. p. 118), that islands similar to the existing ones, formerly extended over other parts of the reef. It would, I believe, be difficult to find a true atoll with land exceeding 30 feet in height; whereas, Mr. Nelson estimates the highest point of the Bermuda Islands to be 260 feet; if, however, Mr. Nelson's view, that the whole of the land consists of sand drifted by the winds, and agglutinated together, were proved correct, this difference would be immaterial; but, from his own account, (p. 118), there occur in one place, five or six layers of red earth, interstratified with the ordinary calcareous rock, and including stones too heavy for the wind to have moved, without having at the same time utterly dispersed every grain of the accompanying drifted matter. Mr. Nelson attributes the origin of these several layers, with their embedded stones, to as many violent catastrophes; but further investigation in such cases has generally succeeded in explaining phenomena of this kind by ordinary and simpler means. Finally, I may remark, that these islands have a considerable resemblance in shape to Barbuda in the West Indies, and to Pemba on the eastern coast of Africa, which latter island is about 200 feet in height, and consists of coral-rock. I believe that the Bermuda Islands, from being fringed by living reefs, ought to have been coloured red; but I have left them uncoloured, on account of their general resemblance in external form to a lagoon-island or atoll. |In the early part of this volume,||for Adm. Lutkè read Lutké.| |for Mr. Stuchbury read Stutchbury.| The names in italics are all names of places, and refer exclusively to the Appendix: in well-defined archipelagoes, or groups of islands, the name of each separate island is not given. Abrolhos, Brazil, coated by corals, 58 Abrolhos (Australia), 174 Absence of coral-reefs from certain coasts, 61 Acaba, gulf of, 196 Admiralty group, 168 Africa, east coast, fringing reef of, 56 Madreporitic, rock of, 136 Africa, east coast, 188 Age of individual corals, 71, 81 Alert reef, 166 Alexander Grand Duke, island, 157 on Holuthuriæ feeding on corals, 14 on quick growth of corals at Madagascar, 77 on reefs affected by currents, 58 America, west coast, 151 Anamouka, description of, 133 Andaman islands, 178 Appoo reef, 179 Arabia Felix, 191 great extent of, interspersed with low islands, 91 of subsidence and of elevation, 142 of subsidence appear to be elongated, 143 of subsidence alternating with areas of elevation, 145 Arru group, 172 Ascidia, depth at which found, 86 Atlantic islands, 163 breaches in their reefs, 28, 107 dimensions of, 20 dimensions of groups of, 91 not based on craters, or on banks of sediment, or of rock, 89, 92, 93, 94, 146 of irregular forms, 20, 111 steepness of their flanks, 22 width of their reef and islets, 20 their lowness, 90 general range, 126 with part of their reef submerged, and theory of, 27, 106 their whole reef submerged, and theory of, 28, 106 Augustin, St. 162 Aurora island, an upraised atoll, 81, 91, 139 Austral islands, recently elevated, 132, 139 Austral islands, 154 Australia, N.W. coast, 174 Australian barrier-reef, 46, 125 Australian barrier, 166 Babuyan group, 180 Bahama banks, 198, 200 of Australia, 46, 125 of New Caledonia, 49 breaches through, 100 not based on worn-down margin of rock, 49 on banks of sediment, 49 on submarine craters, 50 steepness of their flanks, 42 their probable vertical thickness, 47, 99 theory of their formation, 99, 102 Bampton shoal, 166 Banks islds., 165 Banks in the West Indies, 197 Bashee islds., 180 Bass isld., 156 Beaupré reef, 166 obligations of the author to, 21 on submerged reefs, 27 account of Matilda island, 75 Belcher, Capt., on boring through coral-reefs, 73 Belize, reef off, 201 Bermuda islds., 204 Beveridge reef, 160 Bolabola, view of, 3 Bombay shoal, 182 Bonin bay, 177 Bonin group, 171 Borings through coral-reefs, 73 Borneo, W. coast, recently elevated, 135 E. coast, 176 S.W. and W. coast, 178 N. coast, 179 western bank, 183 Brazil, fringing reefs on coast of, 57 Breaches through barrier-reefs, 100 Cargados Carajos, 184 Caroline isld., 156 Caroline arch., 168 Carteret shoal, 172 Caryophyllia, depths at which it lives, 84 Cayman isld., 202 Ceylon, recently elevated, 135 Chagos, Great bank, description and theory of, 39, 111 Chagos group, 113 Chagos group, 183 Chama shells embedded in coral rock, 79 Chamisso on corals preferring the surf, 63 in the state of Keeling atoll, 15 of atolls, 96 leading into the lagoons of atolls, 28, 107 the Maldiva atolls, 32, 36 through barrier-reefs, 100 China sea, 181 Christmas atoll, 74, 130 Christmas atoll, 157 Christmas isld. (Indian ocean), 183 Clipperton rock, 151 Cocos, or Keeling atoll, 5 Cocos (or Keeling), 183 Cocos isld. (Pacific), 151 Cochin-China, encroachments of the sea on the coast, 128 Cochin China, 183 Comoro group, 186 Composition of coral-formations, 116 coral-rock on Keeling atoll, 12 on other atolls, 25 coral rock, 116 Cook islds., recently elevated, 132, 139 Cook islds., 154 Coral-blocks bored by vermiform animals, 14, 117 their distribution and absence from certain areas, 60 destroyed by loose sediment, 65 at Keeling atoll, 12 organic remains of, 117 dead but upright in Keeling lagoon, 15 depths at which they live, 84 off Keeling atoll, 8 killed by a short exposure, 6 living in the lagoon of Keeling atoll, 13 quick growth of, in Keeling lagoon, 13 merely coating the bottom of the sea, 58 standing exposed in the Low arch., 129 Corallian sea, 125 Corallian sea, 166 alleged proofs of recent elevation of the Low arch., 128 on coral-rock at Mangaia and Aurora isl., 81 on external ledges round coral islands, 104 remarks confirmatory of the author's theory, 128 Crescent-formed reefs, 110 Cuming, Mr., on the recent elevation of the Phillippines, 135 Dangerous or Low arch., 152 Danger islds., 157 at which reef-building corals live, 80 at Mauritius, the Red Sea, and in the Maldiva arch., 83 at which other corals and corallines can live, 85 Dhalac group, 192 Diego Garcia, slow growth of reefs, 69 Dimensions of the larger groups of atolls, 91 Disseverment of the Maldiva atolls, and theory of, 37, 108 Distribution of coral-reefs, 60 Domingo, St., 202 Dory Port recently elevated, 134 Dory Port, 171 Duff islds., 165 at Keeling atoll, 18 in groups of atolls, 97 in Navigator arch., 133 East Indian arch. recently elevated, 134 on the banks of the Red Sea, 58, 191 on depth at which corals live in the Red Sea, 83 on corals preferring the surf, 64 on the antiquity of certain corals, 71 Elevated reef of Mauritius, 54 proofs of, 131 immense areas of, 143 Elizabeth isld., 73 recently elevated, 132, 140 Elizabeth isld., 152 Ellice group, 162 their height, 45 their geological composition, 46, 50 Eoua, description of, 133 Erupted matter, probably not associated with thick masses of coral rock, 118 Fais recently elevated, 134, 140 Farallon de Medinilla, 171 Farsan group, 192 Fidji arch., 161 feeding on corals, 14 killed in Keeling lagoon by heavy rain, 19 Fissures across coral islds., 97, 193 on a submerged shed at Keeling atoll, 17 on an inundation in the Low archipelago, 96 Florida, 199, 200 Forster, theory of coral formations, 94 Frederic reef, 166 Friendly group recently elevated, 133, 140 Friendly arch., 160 absent where coast precipitous, 51 breached in front of streams, 66 described by MM. Quoy and Gaimard, 131 not closely attached to shelving coasts, 53 of east coast of Africa, 56 of Cuba, 55 of Mauritius, 51 on worn-down banks of rock, 58 on banks of sediment, 58 their appearance when elevated, 54 their growth influenced by currents, 58 by shallowness of sea, 57 Galapagos arch., 151 Gambier islds. section of, 48 Gambier islds., 152 Gaspar rico, 163 Geological composition of coral-formations, 116 Gilbert arch., 162 Gloucester isld., 96 Glover reef, 202 Gran Cocal, 162 Great Chagos bank, description and theory of, 39, 111 Grey, Capt., on sand-bars, 53 Grouping of the different classes of reefs, 124 Hall, Capt. B., on Loo Choo, 135 Harvey islds. recently elevated, 139 Harvey or Cook islds., 154 Height of encircled islds., 45 Holuthuriæ feeding on corals, 14 Honden isld., height of, 91 Honduras, reef off, 201 Houtman Abrolhos, 174 Huaheine, alleged proofs of its recent elevation, 139 Hurricanes, effects of on coral islds., 96 India, west coast, recently elevated, 135 Irregular reefs in shallow seas, 57 Islets of coral-rock, their formation, 11 Islets of coral-rock, their destruction in the Maldiva atolls, 37 Java recently elevated, 134 Johnston isld., 158 Juan de Nova, 186 Juan de Nova (Madagascar), 187 Kamtschatka, proofs of its recent elevation, 142 Keeling atoll, section of reef, 5 south atoll, 183 north atoll, 183 Kemin, 156, 157 Laccadive group, 184 Ladrones or Marianas, recently elevated, 134 Ladrones arch., 170 Lagoon of Keeling atoll, 13 bordered by inclined ledges and walls, and theory of their formation, 30, 103 of small atolls filled up with sediment, 31 Lagoon-channels within barrier-reefs, 43 Lagoon-reefs, all submerged in some atolls, and all rising to the surface in others, 68 Lancaster reef, 156 Lauglan islds., 166 Ledges round certain lagoons, 30, 103 Lighthouse reef, 202 Lloyd, Mr., on corals refixing themselves, 78 Loo Choo, recently elevated, 135 Loo Choo, 181 Low archipelago, alleged proofs of its recent elevation, 128 Low. arch. 152 Lowness of coral-islands, 90 Loyalty group, 166 Lutké, Adm., on fissures across coral-islands, 97 Luzon recently elevated, 135 on channels into the lagoons of atolls, 29 on the lowness of their leeward sides, 109 on the antiquity of certain corals, 71 on the apparent continuity of distinct coral-islands, 118 on the recently elevated beds of the Red Sea, 137 on the outline of the areas of subsidence, 143 Macassar str., 176 Macclesfield bank, 182 quick growth of corals at, 77 madreporitic rock of, 136 Madura (Java), 176 Madura (India), 183 Mahlos Mahdoo, theory of formation, 109 Malacca recently elevated, 134 on recent elevation of W. coast of India, 135 on recent elevation of Camaran isld., 136 Maldiva atolls, and theory of their formation, 32, 105, 108 steepness of their flanks, 22 growth of coral at, 77 Maldiva arch., 183 Mangaia isld., 81 recently elevated, 132, 139 Marianas recently elevated, 134 Mariana arch., 170 Marquesas arch., 154 Marshall arch., 163 Marshall isld., 171 Mary's St. in Madagascar, harbour made in reefs, 65 Mary isld., 157 Matta or Aurora, 152 Matilda atoll, 75 fringing reefs of, 51 depths at which corals there live, 81 recently elevated, 136 Maurua, section of, 48 Menchicoff atoll, 20, 111 Mendana arch., 154 Mendana isles, 165 Mexico, gulf of, 199 Millepora complanata at Keeling atoll, 7 Molucca islands, recently elevated, 134 Moresby, Capt., on boring through coral-reefs, 73 Mosquito coast, 202 Musquillo atoll, 111 Namourrek group, 110 Navigator arch., elevation of, 133 Navigator arch., 159 on the consolidation of coral-rocks, under water, 73 theory of coral-formations, 94 on the Bermuda islds., 204 New Britain, 168 steepness of its reef, 42 barrier-reef of, 49, 103, 110, 125 New Caledonia, 166 New Guinea (E. end), 168 New Guinea (W. end), 171 New Hanover, 167 New Hebrides recently elevated, 133 New Hebrides, 164 New Ireland recently elevated, 133 New Ireland, 167 New Nantucket, 157 Nicobar islds., 178 at Keeling atoll, 9 on the reefs of atolls, 24 on barrier reefs, 42 their wide distribution and abundance, 86 Objections to the theory of subsidence, 115 Ocean islds., 159, 163 Oscar group, 162 Oscillations of level, 138, 146 Oualan, or Ualan, 168 Ouluthy atoll, 75 Outong Java, 167. S.W. coast, 178 N.W. coast, 179 western bank, 183 Pelew islds., 170 Pemba isld., singular form of, 136 Pernambuco, bar of sandstone at, 54 Persian gulf, recently elevated, 137 Persian gulf, 191 Peyster group, 162 Phillippine arch., recently elevated, 135 Phillippine arch., 179 Pitt's bank, 113 Pitt isld., 163 Porites, chief coral on margin of Keeling atoll, 6 its probable subsidence, 127 Pratas shoal, 181 Puerto Rico, 203 Pulo Anna, 170 Pumice floated to coral islds., 117 Pyrard de Laval, astonishment at the atolls in the Indian ocean, 2 Quoy and Gaimard, depths at which corals live, 84 description of reefs applicable only to fringing-reefs, 131 Range of atolls, 126 banks of rock coated by reefs, 58 proofs of its recent elevation, 136 supposed subsidence of, 138 Red Sea, 191 irregular in shallow seas, 57 rising to the surface in some lagoons and all submerged in others, 68 their distribution, 60 their absence from some coasts, 61 Ring-formed reefs of the Maldiva atolls, and theory of, 33, 105 Rose isld. 160 Rowley shoals, 175 Rüppell, Dr. on the recent deposits of Red Sea, 137 Sable, ile de, 184 Sahia de Malha, 184 St. Pierre, 185 Salomon arch. 167 Samoa, or Navigator arch., elevation of, 133 Samoa arch. 159 Sand-bars parallel to coasts, 53 Sandwich arch, recently elevated, 131 Sandwich arch. 158 Santa-Cruz group, 165 Savage isld. recently elevated, 73, 132, 139 Saya, or Sahia de Malha, 184 Scarborough shoal, 182 Scarus feeding on corals, 14 Scoriæ floated to coral islds. 117 Scott's reef, 175 of islands encircled by barrier-reefs, 48, 99 of Bolabola, 99 in Keeling-lagoon, 14 in other atolls, 26, 34 injurious to corals, 65 Sediment transported from coral-islands far seaward, 117 Ship-bottom quickly coated with coral, 78 Smyth isld. 158 Society arch. 124 stationary condition of, 128 alleged proofs of recent elevation, 138 Society arch. 152 Sooloo islds. recently elevated, 135 Sooloo islds. 179 Sponge, depths at which found, 86 Stones transported in roots of trees, 117 Storms, effects of on coral-islds. 96 on the growth of an Agaricia, 79 on upraised corals in Society arch. 138 of Keeling atoll, 17 extreme slowness of, 115, 145 areas of, apparently elongated, 143 areas of, immense, 142 great amount of, 145 Suez, gulf of, 196 Sulphur islds. 171 Sumatra, recently elevated, 135 Surf favourable to the growth of massive corals, 63 Swallow shoal, 182 Sydney isld. 157 Tahiti, alleged proofs of its recent elevation, 138 Temperature of the sea at the Galapagos arch. 61 Tenimber isld. 172 Theories on coral formations, 88-94 Theory of subsidence, and objections to, 93, 114 Thickness, vertical, of barrier-reefs, 47, 99 Thomas, St. 203 Timor recently elevated, 134 Tokan Bessees, 176 Tongatabou, description of, 133 Traditions of change in coral-islds., 95 embedded in coral-rock, 79 left exposed in the Low arch. 129 Tubularia, quick growth of, 79 Turneffe reef, 202 section of, 48 its state and changes in its reefs, 127 Vine reef, 166 Virgin Gorda, 203 Viti arch. 161 islands, with living corals on their shores, 61 matter, probably not associated with thick masses of coral-rock, 118 authorities for their position on the map, 120 their presence determined by the movements in progress, 140 absent or extinct in the areas of subsidence, 141 Wallis isld. 161 Wells' reef, 166 Wellstead, Lieut. account of a ship coated with corals, 78 banks of sediment, fringed by reefs, 58 recently elevated, 137 West Indies, 196 view of, 2. changes in its state, 96 Williams, Rev. J. on traditions of the natives regarding coral-islds. 95 Williams, Rev. J., on antiquity of certain corals, 81 Xulla islds. 173 York isld. 157 Yucutan, coast of, 201 Zones of different kinds of corals outside the same reefs, 67, 74. London:—Printed by STEWART and MURRAY, Old Bailey. Preparing for Publication, by the same Author. VISITED DURING THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE, (UNDER THE COMMAND OF CAPTAIN FITZROY, R.N.;) SOME BRIEF NOTICES ON THE GEOLOGY OF NEW ZEALAND, AND THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. ON THE SOUTHERN PARTS VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE, (UNDER THE COMMAND OF CAPTAIN FITZROY, R.N.) EDITED AND SUPERINTENDED BY CHARLES DARWIN, M.A., F.R.S., F.G.S., NATURALIST TO THE EXPEDITION. Parts now Complete. PART I.—FOSSIL MAMMALIA. By RICHARD OWEN, Esq. F.R.S., Corres. Memb. of the Institute of France. With a Geological Introduction by Mr. Darwin, Price 1l. 10s. PART II.—MAMMALIA. By GEORGE R. WATERHOUSE, Esq., Curator to the Zoological Society. With Notices of their Habits and Ranges, by Mr. Darwin. Price 1l 18s. PART III.—BIRDS. By JOHN GOULD, Esq., F.L.S. With Notices of their Habits and Ranges, by Mr. Darwin. Price 2l. 15s. PART IV.—FISH. By the Rev. LEONARD JENYNS, M.A., F.L.S. Price 1l. 14s. Two more Numbers, on Reptiles and Amphibia, by THOMAS Esq., F.R.S., F.L.S., will complete this Work. IN THE PRESS OR RECENTLY PUBLISHED BY SMITH, ELDER AND CO. 65, CORNHILL, LONDON. Preparing for Publication. OBSERVATIONS IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE, MADE DURING A RECENT RESIDENCE AT THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. By SIR JOHN HERSCHEL, Bart., F.R.S., &c. To be Illustrated by numerous Plates. Nearly ready, in Two Volumes Demy 8vo., with Plates. NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS ON THE IONIAN ISLANDS AND MALTA, WITH SOME REMARKS ON CONSTANTINOPLE AND TURKEY; And on the system of Quarantine, as at present conducted. By JOHN DAVY, M.D., F.R.S. THE MODERN HISTORY AND CONDITION OF EGYPT. ITS CLIMATE, DISEASES, AND CAPABILITIES; Comprising the Proceedings of Mahommed Ali Pascha, from 1829 to 1842, with Illustrations of Scripture History, The Fulfilment of Prophecy, and the Progress of Civilization in the East. By W. HOLT YATES, M.D., &c. &c. In Two Volumes 8vo., with Illustrations. Preparing for publication. WITH THE APPROVAL OF THE LORDS COMMISSIONERS THE VOYAGE OF HER MAJESTY'S SHIP BEAGLE, Under the Command of Captain Fitzroy, R.N. PART 1.—ON CORAL FORMATIONS. PART 2.—ON THE VOLCANIC ISLANDS OF THE ATLANTIC AND PACIFIC OCEANS, (Together with a brief Notice of the Geology of the Cape of Good Hope and of part of Australia.) PART 3.—ON SOUTH AMERICA. By CHARLES DARWIN, M.A., F.R.S., Sec. G.S., &c. In 3 Vols., 8vo., with numerous Maps and Sections. THE JOURNAL OF AN EXPEDITION INTO THE INTERIOR OF SOUTHERN AFRICA, Fitted out in 1836, by the "Cape of Good Hope Association for Exploring Central Africa." Comprising an Authentic Narrative of the Travels and Discoveries of the Expedition; an Account of the Manners and Customs of the Native Tribes; and of the Natural Productions, Aspect, and Physical Capabilities of the Country. By ANDREW SMITH, M.D. Surgeon to the Forces, and Director of the Expedition. To be Illustrated by a Map, and numerous Plates of African Scenery; and of the Dresses, Weapons, Dances, Religious Ceremonies, &c. of the Natives. A Literary Album, and Christmas and New Year's Present, for 1843. The Twentieth Year of its Publication. Price 12s. in full gilt binding, elegantly embossed. "This most beautiful Annual enjoys the merit of having been the SECOND in existence of all those that now contest with it the palm of celebrity; and it is no exaggeration to say, that both in literary talent and pictorial embellishment it fully maintains the distinguished rank to which its priority of existence gives it a nominal title." THE RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF MAN, In which Religion and Superstition are traced from their source. By D. MORISON. The Second Edition, enlarged. Foolscap 8vo., Price 6s. cloth. A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF THE WOOLLEN TRADE From the earliest Records to the present Period, comprising the Woollen and Worsted Manufactures, and the Natural and Commercial History of Sheep, with the various Breeds, and Modes of Management in different Countries. By JAMES BISCHOFF, Esq. In Two large Volumes, 8vo., Price 1l. 6s. cloth. A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF THE IRON TRADE, THROUGHOUT THE WORLD, From the earliest Records to the present Time. With an Appendix, containing Official Tables, and other public Documents. By HARRY SCRIVENOR, Esq., Blaenavon. In One Volume Demy 8vo. Price 15s. cloth. "Mr. Scrivenor's History is written with elaborate research and anxious care, and goes into and exhausts the entire subject; it contains numerous facts full of interest to common readers."—TAIT's MAGAZINE. A FAMILIAR EXPLANATION OF THE NATURE, ADVANTAGES, AND IMPORTANCE OF ASSURANCES UPON LIVES, And the various Purposes to which they may be usefully Applied: including also a particular Account of the routine required for Effecting a Policy; and of the different systems of Life Assurance now in use, the Principles, Terms, and Tables of Seventy London Assurance Offices, &c. By LEWIS POCOCK, F.S.A. In Post 8vo., Price 7s. cloth. "There are no technicalities in Mr. Pocock's work to prevent its being useful to all; and those, therefore, who are likely to have recourse to Life Insurance will do wisely in consulting this familiar explanation of its nature and advantages."—GLOBE. THE HISTORY OF THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS, From the Discovery of the country up to the present Time; with a description of the Soil, Climate, General Resources, &c., and a New Map. By N. DORAN MAILLARD, Esq. Demy 8vo., Price 15s. cloth. "A picture of Texas and the Texans, no doubt a faithful one. There is much too, in this volume, which we should recommend to the careful perusal of Lord Aberdeen." NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. COMPANION TO SOUTHEY'S LIFE OF NELSON. THE LIFE OF ADMIRAL VISCOUNT EXMOUTH; Drawn up from Official and other authentic Documents supplied by his Family and Friends. By EDWARD OSLER, Esq. New Edition, fcp. 8vo., Price 6s. cloth, with a Portrait and five other Plates. "Here is a valuable addition to our naval biography; a book not to be read by Englishmen without pride of heart. The name of Exmouth occupies on honourable place beside those of Nelson and Collingwood; his services were hardly less numerous or brilliant than theirs."—ATHENÆUM. LAUGHTER FROM YEAR TO YEAR: Being former runnings of his comic vein, with an infusion of new blood for general circulation. "This Volume contains all the choice bits of the Comic Annuals: every page sparkles with wit and genuine humour; while the abundant illustrations would provoke mirth from the most cynical philosopher." It comprises 570 closely printed pages, Demy 8vo., with nearly 300 Wood Cuts, and a Portrait of the Author, handsomely bound, Price 13s, cloth gilt. MR. HOOD'S LAST WORK. UP THE RHINE. The Second Edition, Illustrated by numerous characteristic Cuts. "One of the very best Guide Books for travellers on the Rhine, and withal irresistibly diverting." Price 12s. cloth gilt. MADEIRA, LISBON, &C. THE INVALID'S GUIDE TO MADEIRA; With a Description of Teneriffe, Lisbon, Cintra, and Mafra, and a Vocabulary of the Portuguese and English Languages. By WILLIAM WHITE COOPER, M.R.C.S., Surgeon to the Hon. Artillery Company. In 1 Vol., fcp. 8vo., Price 4s. cloth gilt. "There has recently been published a small work by Mr. Cooper, which may be consulted with advantage."—SIR JAMES CLARK on Climate. THE BENGAL AND AGRA GUIDE AND GAZETTEER; Containing a Geographical and Statistical Account of India, Regulations of the Indian Government, History, the Indian Calendar, complete Army and Civil Official List; the whole comprising a classified body of information concerning India of an extent and variety hitherto unattempted. In Two Large 8vo. Volumes, Price 2l. cloth. BY WILLIAM CARMICHAEL SMYTH, ESQ. Late of the Hon. E. I. Company's Bengal Civil Service. THE HINDOOSTANEE INTERPRETER: Containing the Rudiments of Hindoostanee Grammar; an extensive Vocabulary, English and Hindoostanee; and a useful Collection of Dialogues. 1 Vol. 8vo., Price 8s. boards. THE HINDOOSTANEE JEST BOOK: Containing a choice collection of Humorous Stories in Arabic and Roman Characters; to which is added a Hindoostanee Poem, by MEER MOOHUMMUD TUGEE. Second Edition, 8vo., Price 10s. 6d. THE PERSIAN MOONSHEE: Containing a copious Grammar, and a series of entertaining Stories; also the PUND-NAMU of Shykh-Sadee, being a compendium of Ethics, in verse, by that celebrated poet; to which is added, forms of Addresses, Petitions, Citations, Bonds, &c. The whole in the Arabic and Roman Characters; together with an ENGLISH TRANSLATION. Second Edition, revised, corrected, and translated into the Roman Character. Vol. I., Price 12s. A DICTIONARY, HINDOOSTANEE AND ENGLISH. Abridged from the Quarto Edition of Major JOSEPH TAYLOR, as edited by the late W. HUNTER, M.D.; with the Appendix. Complete in 1 thick 8vo. Vol., Price 3l. 3s. boards. In a neat Portfolio, containing 5 Engravings, 15 inches by 10, with Descriptive Letterpress. Dedicated, By Permission, to Her Majesty. THE ORIENTAL PORTFOLIO: Being a Series of Illustrations of the Scenery, Antiquities, Architecture, Manners, Costumes, &c. of the East. From original Sketches in the collections of Lord William Bentinck, K.C.B., Captain R. M. Grindley, Lady Wilmot Horton, Sir Henry Willock, K.L.S., Thomas Bacon, Esq., James Baillie Fraser, Esq., and other travellers. The Literary department of the work under the superintendence of HORACE H. WILSON, Esq., M.A.F.R.S. &c. &c. In Parts, Price 1l. 1s. each. The object of this undertaking is to supply what has long been felt to be a desideratum; namely, Graphic Illustrations of the Scenery, Antiquities, Architecture, Manners, Costumes, &c. of the East, which, as the theatre of so many brilliant military achievements, and such extensive commercial enterprize, is daily increasing in interesting with the British Public. The Drawings for the Work are made by the first Artists in the Kingdom, from the original sketches taken on the spot. A DICTIONARY ENGLISH AND HINDOOSTANEE; With a Grammatical Introduction. By JOHN BORTHWICK GILCHRIST, LL.D. Hindoostanee Professor in the College of Fort William. Quarto boards, Price 2l. 2s. THE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF SOCIETY IN INDIA; Including Scenes at the Mofussil Stations, interspersed with Characteristic Tales and Anecdotes: to which is added A GUIDE TO CADETS And other Young Gentlemen, during their first Years' Residence in India. By MRS. MAJOR CLEMONS. In 1 Vol., Post 8vo., Price 9s. cloth lettered. "We need not recommend this book; the space we have given to it is an ample proof of the pleasure we have enjoyed in its perusal. We earnestly advise every person interested in India to read it."—ATLAS. MRS. POSTANS' CUTCH; Taken during a Residence in one of the Northern Provinces of Western India; interspersed with Legends and Traditions. By Mrs. POSTANS. In 1 Vol. 8vo., with numerous coloured Engravings and Woodcuts, Price 14s. cloth boards. "A more instructive or entertaining volume than this it has not been our fortune to meet with for a long time."—ATHENÆUM. THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST: A Practical Treatise on the Cultivation and Management of various Productions suited to Tropical Climates, and capable of advantageous production in our Colonies, &c. By GEORGE RICHARDSON PORTER. In Demy 8vo., with 45 Botanical Plates, Price 21s. By the same Author, THE NATURE AND PROPERTIES OF THE SUGAR CANE; With Practical Directions for the Improvement of its Culture, and the Manufacture of its Products. Second Edition. With Plates. "These valuable volumes open to colonial residents such a mine of hitherto concealed wealth, that every proprietor, emigrant, or person interested in the success of an emigrant friend, ought to procure a copy as their surest guide to fortune." THE ONLY COMPLETE AND UNIFORM EDITION OF THE WORKS OF SIR HUMPHRY DAVY. THE LIFE AND COLLECTED OF SIR HUMPHRY DAVY, BART. FOREIGN ASSOCIATE OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE &c. Edited by his Brother, JOHN DAVY, M.D. F.R.S. Now complete, in 9 Vols. post 8vo., Price 10s. 6d. each, in cloth binding. Contents of the Volumes;—sold separately. THE LIFE OF SIR H. DAVY, WITH A PORTRAIT. 'This biography is admirably written—correct details, full of instruction, and amusing throughout."—LONDON REVIEW. THE WHOLE OF SIR H. DAVY'S EARLY MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS, FROM 1799 TO 1805; WITH AN INTRODUCTORY LECTURE, AND OUTLINES OF LECTURES ON CHEMISTRY DELIVERED IN 1802 AND 1804. RESEARCHES ON NITROUS OXIDE, AND THE COMBINATION OF OXYGEN AND AZOTE, AND ON THE RESPIRATION OF NITROUS OXIDE AND OTHER GASES. ELEMENTS OF CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHY. WITH TWELVE PLATES OF CHEMICAL APPARATUS. VOLS. V. AND VI. AND OTHER PAPERS IN PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS, AND JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTION. WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS. VOLS. VII. AND VIII. ELEMENTS OF AGRICULTURAL CHEMISTRY. DISCOURSES DELIVERED BEFORE THE ROYAL SOCIETY, MISCELLANEOUS LECTURES, AND EXTRACTS FROM LECTURES. WITH MANY PLATES. SALMONIA, AND CONSOLATION IN TRAVEL. *** This new and uniform edition of the Writings of Sir Humphry Davy embraces the whole of his Works, during the space of thirty years (1799 to 1829), a period memorable in the History of Chemistry, and made so in no small degree by his own Discoveries. RESEARCHES, PHYSIOLOGICAL AND ANATOMICAL. By JOHN DAVY, M.D. F.R.S. &c. Illustrated by numerous Engravings. The principal subjects treated of are Animal Electricity;—Animal Heat;—the Temperature of different Animals;—Pneumothorax in connexion with the Absorption of Gases by Serous and Mucous Membranes;—the Properties of the Blood in Health and Disease;—the Properties of different Animal Textures;—the Putrefactive Process;—the Preservation of Anatomical Preparations;—the Effects of the Poison of certain Serpents;—the Structure of the Heart of Batrachian Animals, &c. &c. In 2 Vols. 8vo., Price 30s. bound in cloth. "The subjects treated by the author are extremely numerous and interesting; several new facts in the physiology of animals are brought forward, and some curious and instructive experiments are explained and illustrated with remarkable felicity." "This work is written with a clearness and simplicity which renders its scientific details readily comprehensible."—HERALD. NEW WORK ON GEOLOGICAL STUDY, Uniform with the BRIDGEWATER TREATISES. THE CERTAINTIES OF GEOLOGY. By W. SIDNEY GIBSON, Esq., F.G.S. Price 10s. 6d. cloth. "An able and elaborate treatise, to demonstrate that the science of geology is not inconsistent with Christian belief."—LITERARY GAZETTE. "A work calculated to arrest the serious attention of every Christian reader." "The clearest and most comprehensive introduction to the science of geology which has yet fallen under our notice. The principles of geology are moreover explained with a perspicuity and a completeness which we may look for in vain in other works professing the same object."—UNITED SERVICE GAZETTE. THE FIRST VOLUME OF THE TRANSACTIONS OF THE METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON. Illustrated by a Synoptical Chart and numerous Diagrams. Royal 8vo., Price 2l. 2s. The first paper in the volume, entitled DIRECTIONS FOR MAKING METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS ON LAND OR AT SEA, By R. C. WOODS, Esq. May be purchased separately, Price 2s. 6d. IMPORTANT SCIENTIFIC WORKS, NOW PUBLISHING, UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF GOVERNMENT. In Royal 4to. Parts, Price 10s. and 12s. each, containing on an average Ten Coloured Engravings, with descriptive Letterpress, THE ZOOLOGY OF SOUTH AFRICA: Comprising Figures of all the new species of Quadrupeds, Birds, Reptiles, and Fishes, obtained during the Expedition fitted out by "The Cape of Good Hope Association for exploring Central Africa," in the years 1834, 1835, and 1836, with Letterpress Descriptions, and a Summary of African Zoology. By ANDREW SMITH, M.D., Surgeon to the Forces, and Director of the Expedition. *** The whole of the Plates are engraved in the highest style of Art, from the Original Drawings taken expressly for this work, and beautifully coloured after Nature. 15 Parts are now published. Uniform with the above. THE ZOOLOGY OF THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. BEAGLE, UNDER THE COMMAND OF CAPTAIN FITZROY, R.N. DURING THE YEARS 1832 TO 1836. Edited and superintended by CHARLES DARWIN, Esq., M.A. Sec. G.S. Naturalist to the Expedition. Comprising highly-finished representations of the most novel and interesting objects in Natural History, collected during the voyage of the Beagle, with descriptive Letterpress, and a general Sketch of the Zoology of the Southern Part of South America. Figures are given of many species of animals hitherto unknown or but imperfectly described, together with an account of their habits, ranges, and places of habitation. The collections were chiefly made in the provinces bordering on the Rio Plata, in Patagonia, the Falkland Islands, Tierra del Fuego, Chili, and the Galapagos Archipelago in the Pacific. 17 Parts are now published, and 2 more will complete the Work. *** In order to secure to science the full advantage of Discoveries in Natural History, the Lords Commissioners of Her Majesty's Treasury have been pleased to make a liberal grant of money towards defraying part of the expenses of these two important publications. They have, in consequence, been undertaken on a scale worthy of the high patronage thus received, and are offered to the public at a much lower price than would otherwise have been possible. OUTLINES OF NAVAL ROUTINE; Being a Concise and Complete Manual in Fitting, Re-fitting, Quartering, Stationing, making and shortening Sail, Heaving down, Rigging Shears, and, in short, performing all the ordinary duties of a Man-of-War, according to the best practice. By Lieutenant ALEXANDER D. FORDYCE, R.N. In Royal 8vo., Price 10s. 6d. boards. The Anglo-Saxon Language. A GRAMMAR OF THE ANGLO-SAXON TONGUE, WITH A PRAXIS By ERASMUS RASK, of the University of Copenhagen. Translated by BENJAMIN THORPE, F.S.A. In 1 Vol. 8vo, Price 12s. boards. A SELECTION, IN PROSE AND VERSE, ANGLO-SAXON AUTHORS, OF VARIOUS AGES: With a Glossary. Designed chiefly as a First Book for Students. By BENJAMIN THORPE, F.S.A. In 8vo., Price 20s. bds. THE ANGLO-SAXON VERSION STORY OF APOLLONIUS OF TYRE, Upon which is founded the Play of "Pericles," attributed to Shakspeare. From a MS. in the Library of C. C. C., Cambridge; with a Literal Translation, &c. By BENJAMIN THORPE, F.S.A. In small 8vo., Price 6s. bds. Or, a Display of the Topography, History, Customs, Manners, Arts, Manufactures, Commerce, Literature, Religion, Jurisprudence, &c. of the Chinese Empire. By the Rev. CHARLES GUTZLAFF. Revised by the Rev. ANDREW REED, D.D. In 2 Vols., Post 8vo., with a New Map of the Chinese Empire, Price 1l 4s. cloth boards. "We obtain from these volumes more information of a practical kind than from any other publication; a closer view of the Domestic life of the Chinese — of the public institutions — the manufactories — natural resources — and literature. The work in fact is full of information, gathered with diligence, and fairly leaves the English reader without any excuse for ignorance on the subject."—ATLAS. "This is by far the most interesting, complete, and valuable account of the Chinese Empire that has yet been published."—SUN. A HISTORY OF UPPER AND LOWER CALIFORNIA, From their first Discovery to the Present Time; comprising an Account of the Climate, Soil, Natural Productions, Agriculture, Commerce, &c.; a full View of the Missionary Establishments, and condition of the Free and Domesticated Indians. By ALEXANDER FORBES, Esq. With an Appendix relating to Steam Navigation in the Pacific. In 1 Volume, demy 8vo., with a New Map by Arrowsmith, Plans of the Harbour, and numerous Engravings, Price 14s. "This is a very interesting and important work, and will make the public well acquainted with an extensive country known to Europe nearly three hundred years, yet its history, till the appearance of this volume, has been nearly a blank."—SUNDAY TIMES. A NARRATIVE OF TWO EXPEDITIONS INTO THE INTERIOR OF AUSTRALIA, Undertaken by Captain CHARLES STURT, of the 39th Regiment, by order of the Colonial Government to ascertain the Nature of the Country to the West and North-west of the Colony of New South Wales. Second Edition, 2 Volumes 8vo., Price 28s. illustrated with a large Map of Australia, by Arrowsmith; Charts, Fossils, Landscapes, and beautifully coloured Plates of Birds, &c. "We heartily recommend these volumes to public notice. They are full of interest, well and modestly written, carefully illustrated, and, on the whole, make us better acquainted with the interior of Australia and its native tribes, than any other work we have met with."—ATHENÆUM. AN ACCOUNT OF THE SETTLEMENTS OF THE NEW ZEALAND COMPANY, From Personal Observations during a residence there. By the HON. HENRY WILLIAM PETRE. "This is a valuable contribution to our sources of information respecting New Zealand, and the best proof of the Author's very favourable opinion of the country, is his making immediate arrangements to return there as a Colonist." In Demy 8vo., with a Map and Plates. Fourth Edition. Price 3s. cloth. NEW ZEALAND, SOUTH AUSTRALIA, AND NEW SOUTH WALES: A Record of recent Travels in these Colonies, with especial reference to Emigration, and the advantageous employment of Labour and Capital. By R. G. JAMESON, Esq. "Mr. Jameson is an intelligent and unprejudiced observer, and has made good use of his faculties."—SPECTATOR. Post 8vo., Price 8s. cloth, with Maps and Plates. A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON BREWING, Based on Chemical and Economical principles; with Formulæ for Public Brewers, and Instructions for Private Families. By WILLIAM BLACK. Second Edition, much enlarged and improved, in small 8vo. (Revised by DR. BIRKBECK.) Price 12s. in neat cloth binding. "This very useful work re-appears with many valuable additions to its former instructions and information. And the art of Brewing can no longer be a mystery or a matter of difficulty; and neither the wholesale nor the private brewer should be without it." MEDICAL GUIDE FOR MOTHERS, In Pregnancy, Accouchement, Suckling, Weaning, &c., and in some of the more important diseases of Infancy. With an Appendix on the successful Cure of Consumption, by a New Remedy. By J. R. HANCORN, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, &c. Foolscap 8vo., Price 5s. cloth. THE LAST OF THE PLANTAGENETS: An Historical Narrative, illustrating some of the Public Events and Domestic and Ecclesiastical Manners of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Third Edition, in 1 Vol. fcp. 8vo., Price 7s. 6d. cloth boards. "This is a work that must make its way into a permanent place in our literature. The quaintness of its language, the touching simplicity of its descriptions and dialogues, and the reverential spirit of love which breathes through it, will insure it a welcome reception amongst all readers of refined taste and discernment."—ATLAS. THE BYRON GALLERY: A series of 36 Historical Embellishments to illustrate the Poetical Works of Lord Byron; beautifully engraved from Drawings and Paintings by the most celebrated Artists, and adapted by their size and excellence to bind up with and embellish every edition published in England of LORD BYRON'S WORKS, and also the various sizes and editions published in France, Germany, and America; ample directions being given for placing them in the respective editions. Elegantly bound in morocco, Price 1l. 15s., forming a splendid Ornament for the Drawing-Room Table. "Adequately to describe the delicate beauty of these splendid plates does not appear to lie within the power of language. There is not an admirer of the works of the departed noble poet who can feel satisfied that he has a perfect edition of them, unless the 'Byron Gallery' be attached to it. There is no instance in which excellence in poetry and the arts are so admirably combined."—IMPERIAL MAGAZINE. STANFIELD'S COAST SCENERY; A SERIES OF 40 PICTURESQUE VIEWS IN THE BRITISH CHANNEL. From Original Drawings taken expressly for this publication, By CLARKSON STANFIELD, Esq., R.A. This work is published in super-royal 8vo., containing beautifully-finished Line Engravings, by the most eminent Artists, accompanied by highly interesting topographical descriptions, forming altogether one of the most splendid works of the kind which has ever appeared, and may now be had, done up in appropriate and elegant morocco binding, Price 32s, 6d. "It seems almost a sin against patriotism, as well as good taste, not to possess oneself of a work so peculiarly national, and so exceedingly beautiful."—METROPOLITAN. An Historical Tale, from the Prussian and Lithuanian Annals; Translated from the Polish of ADAM MICKIEWICZ, By H. CATTLEY. In 1 Volume Demy 8vo., Price 7s.; with Illustrations, handsomely bound. "Breathes the noble spirit of the original so freely and so forcibly, that it is almost as fresh and true in one language as in the other."—ATLAS. THE VOW OF THE GILEADITE, A Lyric Narrative. By WILLIAM BROWN GALLOWAY, MA., Curate of Barnard Castle. The profits, if any, will be given to the Poor. "The fine flowing style in which it is written, and the pure and hallowed feeling which seems to have dictated every line, are qualities sufficient to ensure for this Poem a lasting reputation."—CITY CHRONICLE. Foolscap 8vo., Price 5s. cloth. UNDER THE PATRONAGE OF THE HIGHLAND SOCIETY OF LONDON. A LITERAL TRANSLATION OF THE GENUINE REMAINS OF OSSIAN, With a Preliminary Dissertation, and an Appendix. By PATRICK MACGREGOR, M.A. In 1 Volume, Post 8vo., Price 12s. neatly bound. "Those persons who wish to cultivate an acquaintance with the Celtic Language, will find Mr. McGregor's volume a valuable and agreeable assistant."—TIMES. THE PROGRESS OF CREATION, CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE EARTH. An interesting and useful work for young People. By MARY ROBERTS, Author of "Annals of My Village," &c. &c. In small 8vo., beautifully illustrated, Price 7s. in fancy cloth. "We have seldom met with a work, in which instruction and entertainment are more happily blended."—TIMES. "This beautiful volume forms an instructive collection of striking facts, interspersed with amiable reflections."—SPECTATOR. THE LIFE-BOOK OF A LABOURER. By a WORKING CLERGYMAN. CONTENS:— The King's Heart — Links of the Past — Newnham Paddex and Mr. Blunt — The Grave of Byron — The Late Lady Howe — A Fastidious Parish — Bishops and their Relatives — Lord Viscount Brome — M. J. J. — Laud's Church Yard — The Rough Clergyman — The Tennis Ball of Fortune — The Dying Request of the Infidels Daughter — The Clergyman Alchemist — What say you to a Ghost Story? — Lady Huntingdon's resting Place —Arnsby and Robert Hall — The Deserted Prophetess — The Crown Prince — Religion and Insanity — Dr. Hawker and Mrs. Jordan, &c. &c. In 1 Vol. small 8vo., Price 7s. cloth boards. "It is the pious offering of one who may be deemed a proper follower in the footsteps of that good man, Leigh Richmond."—ARGUS. "This volume reminds us forcibly of that most delightful of all biographies, 'The Doctor,' to which indeed it is little if at all inferior."—BRITANNIA. A VALUABLE AND INSTRUCTIVE PRESENT FOR THE YOUNG. THE PARENT'S CABINET OF AMUSEMENT AND INSTRUCTION. In 6 neatly bound Vols., Price 3s. 6d. each. Each volume of this useful and instructive little work comprises a variety of information on different subjects—Natural History, Biography, Travels, &c.; Tales, original and selected; and animated Conversations on the objects that daily surround young people. The various tales and subjects are illustrated with Woodcuts. Each volume is complete in itself, and may be purchased separately. "Every parent at all interested in his children must have felt the difficulty of providing suitable reading for them in their hours of amusement. This little work presents these advantages in a considerable degree, as it contains just that description of reading which will be beneficial to young children."—QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF EDUCATION. GRESHAM PRIZE ESSAYS ESSAY ON THE LIFE AND INSTITUTIONS OF OFFA, KING OF MERCIA, A. D. 755-794. By the REV. HENRY MACKENZIE, M.A. In 8vo., Price 3s. 6d. in cloth, gilt leaves. "A very scholarly composition, displaying much research and information respecting the Anglo-Saxon institutions."—SPECTATOR. PRIZE ESSAY, 1840. THE OBLIGATIONS OF LITERATURE MOTHERS OF ENGLAND. By CAROLINE A. HALSTED. In 1 Volume Post 8vo., Price 5s., neatly bound in cloth. "The object of the writer has been to show the services rendered by the mothers of England to religion and the state, and to science and learning generally; and the examples adduced display considerable knowledge and research, and are always happily selected and placed in the most attractive point of view."—BRITANNIA. THE LIFE OF MARGARET BEAUFORT, COUNTESS OF RICHMOND AND DERBY. AND MOTHER OF KING HENRY THE SEVENTH, Foundress of Christ's and of St. John's College, Oxford; Being the Historical Memoir for which the Honorary Premium was awarded by the Directors of the Gresham Commemoration, Crosby Hall. By CAROLINE A. HALSTED, Author of "Investigation," &c. In 1 Vol. Demy 8vo., with a Portrait, Price 12s. "This work cannot fail of success. The subject is deeply interesting, and has been hitherto almost unexplored. The style is chaste and correct, and it has high claims to popularity wide and permanent. On many topics the authoress has accumulated some valuable historical details from sources which have not hitherto been consulted, and has thus compiled a work which, if not entitled to rank amongst the 'curiosities of literature,' is at least one of the most interesting and instructive books of the season."—ATLAS. OR, TRAVELS IN THE BOUDOIR. By CAROLINE A. HALSTED, Author of "The Life of Margaret Beaufort," &c. &c. Small 8vo., with highly-finished Plates, 7s. in embossed cloth. This is an elegantly-written and highly-instructive work for young people, in which a general knowledge of various interesting topics, connected with every-day life, is presented to the youthful mind in an attractive and amusing form. SCENES IN THE HOP GARDENS. In 1 Vol. small 8vo., neatly bound in cloth, with a Frontispiece and Vignette, Price 4s. "There is a tone of unaffected but deep piety throughout this little work; the peculiar truths of the Gospel are kept in view, and reasons for adhering to the national worship of our land are forcibly laid down."—CHURCH OF ENGLAND MAGAZINE. "We strongly recommend the little volume before us to the attention of our readers, and would strenuously advise its adoption as a present to the young, and a reward book to the senior classes in Sunday and other schools."—CHRISTIAN GUARDIAN. SOCIAL EVILS AND THEIR REMEDY: A SERIES OF NARRATIVES By the Rev. C. B. TAYLER, M.A. The First Number, entitled "THE MECHANIC," was pronounced to be "One of the most useful and interesting publications that had issued from the press." The following are the Contents of the different Numbers, Price 1s. 6d. each. |II. THE LADY AND THE LADY'S MAID.||VI. LIVE AND LET LIVE; OR, THE MANCHESTER WEAVERS.| |III. THE PASTOR OF DRONFELLS.| |IV. THE LABOURER AND HIS WIFE.||VII. THE SOLDIER.| |V. THE COUNTRY TOWN.||VIII. THE LEASIDE FARM.| Every two consecutive Numbers form a Volume, which may be procured, neatly bound, Price 4s. each. "The design of Mr. Taylor is praiseworthy; his object being to counteract, by a series of tales illustrative of the power and necessity of religion in the daily and hourly concerns of life, 'the confusion of error with truth in MISS MARTINEAU'S ENTERTAINING STORIES:''—CHRISTIAN REMEMBRANCER. Works by Mrs. Ellis. PICTURES OF PRIVATE LIFE; Containing "An Apology for Fiction;" "The Hall and the Cottage;" "Ellen Eskdale;" "The Curate's Widow;" and "Marriage as it may be." Uniform with the above, the Second Series, comprising "MISANTHROPY," AND "THE PAINS OF PLEASING." The Third Series, containing a highly interesting narrative, under the title of By SARAH STICKNEY, now MRS. ELLIS. Foolscap 8vo., beautifully illustrated, Price 7s. 6d. each, cloth extra; or 10s. 6d. elegantly bound in morocco. "Sarah Stickney is an honour to her sex, and an ornament to literature. How rich in experience — how subtle in thought — how deep in knowledge — what pictures of real life she can call up by the magic of her pen! We would place her volumes in an exquisite small library, sacred to sabbath feelings and the heart's best moods, when love and charity and hope combine to throw over the mind that soft and tranquil glow only to be compared to the later glories of the day."—SPECTATOR. "The aim of the writer is evidently to instruct as well as amuse, by offering these admirable sketches as beacons to warn the young, especially of her own sex, against the errors which have shipwrecked the happiness of so many."—GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE. London: Printed by STEWART & MURRAY, Old Bailey. Return to homepage Citation: John van Wyhe, editor. 2002-. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. (http://darwin-online.org.uk/) File last updated 2 July, 2012

<urn:uuid:5f596bc4-49b9-4342-899f-a918c974988b>

Farmers’ markets have figuratively replaced the town square, something we have lost over the last decades due to sprawl and urbanization. In many communities around the country, farmers’ markets are where we chat with neighbors, make new connections and find out about the issues at play in our communities. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, there are 7864 farmers’ markets operating today — a 348% increase since 1994. Clearly they are providing value to the American public. The pace of modern American life is such that we want — maybe even need — to boil complex issues down to essential truths. Yet isolating a few specific factors and extrapolating solely from these to proclaim that local food is not eco-friendly, or not a viable solution, is irresponsible. This is not to say that measuring a single issue like carbon emissions as it relates to food production and transportation is not important; it is vitally important. But, there are many more factors at play — some very tangible, some less so — in evaluating the importance of local food. We are literally losing ground in this country, and the role that local food plays in ensuring we are preserving and protecting that ground — and the communities built on it, the lives lived on it — should no longer be up for debate.

<urn:uuid:529f9383-b75d-4961-b1b0-88995cce2ca3>

Watchers, carers, and administrators: the smart homes of tomorrowSee on Scoop.it - Web of Things How smart should a smart home be before it’s worthy of the name? Diane Cook’s research into smart homes goes well beyond presence-detecting light switches; she’s interested in homes that observe their residents and make decisions on their behalf. If ambient intelligence is next, it’s logical that the home will be among the first places we experience it. But what will this mean? “The idea is that computer software playing the role of an intelligent agent perceives the state of the physical environment and residents using sensors, reasons about this state using artificial intelligence techniques, and then takes actions to achieve specified goals,” writes Cook. Such goals include “maximizing comfort of the residents, minimizing the consumption of resources, and maintaining the health and safety of the home and resources.” See on arstechnica.com

<urn:uuid:9945bcdb-5bbf-4e7c-bd36-506ae070c19f>

|Heart Sounds & Murmurs|||||[Liver & Ascites]|||||Neck Veins|||||Pulmonary|||||Thyroid| Liver & Ascites Pathophysiology: Liver & Ascites Ascites occurs when there is a disruption in the pressure forces between intravascular and extravascular fluid spaces, which allows extravascular fluid to accumulate in the anterior peritoneal cavity. The most common causes of ascites include chronic parenchymal liver disease (alcoholic liver disease, cirrhosis due to viral hepatitis C), malignancy, and heart failure. Classification by mechanism of ascites formation For more discussion on pathogenesis of ascites, check the references.

<urn:uuid:07fbc75d-b2fc-4254-af7a-eb55b7a2ed4c>

Declares a cursor definition. A cursor is declared in accordance with the select-statement or the result set procedure call specified in procedure-call-statement. The select-statement may be specified explicitly in ordinary embedded SQL applications or by the name of a prepared select-statement, identified by statement-name, in dynamic SQL statements, see the Mimer SQL Programmer's Manual, chapter 11, Dynamic SQL. The cursor is identified by cursor-name, and may be used in FETCH, DELETE CURRENT and UPDATE CURRENT statements. The cursor must be activated with an OPEN statement before it can be used. A cursor declared as REOPENABLE may be opened several times in succession, and previous cursor states are saved on a stack, see OPEN. Saved cursor states are restored when the current state is closed, see CLOSE. A cursor declared as SCROLL will be a scrollable cursor. For a scrollable cursor, records can be fetched using an orientation specification. See the description of FETCH for a description of how the orientation can be specified. A cursor will be non-scrollable if NO SCROLL is explicitly specified. The cursor will be non-scrollable and not reopenable by default. select-statement, see SELECT Statements. procedure-call-statement, see CALL. If an execute-statement-command is used, the precompiled statement must be a select or a result-set procedure. If a procedure-call-statement is specified, it must specify a result set procedure. The following restrictions apply to procedural usage: - The cursor cannot be declared as REOPENABLE - The select-statement cannot be in the form of a prepared dynamic SQL statement, i.e. specifying statement-name is not allowed - If the cursor declaration contains a select statement, the access-clause for the procedure must be READS SQL DATA or MODIFIES SQL DATA, see CREATE PROCEDURE. The DECLARE CURSOR statement is declarative, not executable. In an embedded usage context, access rights for the current ident are checked when the cursor is opened, not when it is declared. In a procedural usage context, access rights for the current ident are checked when the cursor is declared, i.e. when the procedure containing the declaration is created. The value of cursor-name may not be the same as the name of any other cursor declared within the same compound statement (Procedural usage) or in the same compilation unit (Embedded usage). The select-statement is evaluated when the cursor is opened, not when it is declared. This applies both to select-statement's identified by statement name, and to host variable references used anywhere in the select statement. The execution of the result set procedure specified in a CALL statement is controlled by the opening of the cursor and subsequent fetches, see the Mimer SQL Programmer's Manual, chapter 12, Result Set Procedures. REOPENABLE cannot be used if evaluation of select-statement uses a work table, or if the cursor declaration occurs within a procedure. If the declared cursor is a dynamic cursor, the DECLARE statement must be placed before the PREPARE statement. A reopenable cursor can be used to solve the 'Parts explosion' problem. Refer to the Mimer SQL Programmer's Manual, chapter 8, The 'Parts explosion' Problem for a description. ExampleDECLARE cur1 CURSOR FOR EXECUTE STATEMENT seltaba EXTENDED The EXECUTE STATEMENT command is a Mimer SQL extension.Support for the keyword REOPENABLE is a Mimer SQL extension. Note: See also standard compliance for SELECT. Upright Database Technology AB Voice: +46 18 780 92 00 Fax: +46 18 780 92 40

<urn:uuid:b1993193-d6e1-462e-bd4a-4801beb1522b>

The earliest of the maps was drawn by Thomas Kitchen for the Reverend Dr. Robertson's History of America and is titled 'Mexico or New Spain in Which the Motion of Cortes May be Traced." Another of the early maps appears as the frontispiece in Henderson Yoakum's History of Texas, and shows rivers, location of Indian tribes, Indian Villages, missions, crossings, roads with dates of origin, presidios and trails. Texas is listed as "New Phillipines." There is a set of military maps of the Texas Revolution, which accompanies Andrew Jackson Houston's Texas Independence. The U. S. War Department's map by W. H. Emory is titled 'Map of Texas and the Countries Adjacent,' dated 1844, prior to annexation. The Walker map of 1949 and the Marcy maps of 1850 and 1853 show additions to knowledge of Indian tribes, fortifications, wagon routes, rivers and numerous notes on topography. In 1857-60, the United State Department of the Interior, J. H. Clark, Commissioner, produced the 'Map of the United States and Texas-Boundary Line and Adjacent Territory Determined and Surveyed.' The 'New Map of Texas as it is in 1874,' was prepared "expressly for Morphis' History of Texas." Robert T. Hill produced the 'Map of Texas and Parts of Adjoining Territories' for the U. S. Geological Survey in 1899. Many of the map descriptions are found in Day's Maps of Texas 1527-1900: The Map Collection of the Texas State Archives, Austin, 1964.

<urn:uuid:135bfdab-2278-4b7d-b21d-b231cdef6a12>

If you assign a task to the computer. It can only complete the task if it can understand everything you want to say to computer. If your words are signs that you use to deliver the message to computer. The computer will not be able to fulfill the requirement and cannot perform according to your instructions. Contextual computing is the source for computer to understand user and to deliver the best services according to the instructions of the users. Dictionary definition of context is it is the general situation of an idea that is associated with that idea and helps that idea to be understood by people. In Contextual computing the used context enables the computer to understand the user and his situation for a proper output. Various contextual computing techniques are working for different fields of life like education, engineering, health-care etc. Many applications have no use without contextual computing like GPS devices used in Cars are useless without proper direction guidelines - Top Emerging TechnologiesNew innovative technology moving towards the height of development is called Emerging technologies. Top 10 Disruptive Technologies - Distributed Computing A field of computer sciences being very popular now a day is called distributed computing. - Social Media networksSocial media network has been very popular during the last few Years. - Cloud ComputingA computer based technology that reduces the pain of running a business with a mess of employees. - Web MashupsA next step to a largely experimental work in web 2.0 environment is known as web mashups. - User InterfaceInteraction between a computer and a human being is called a user interface. - Ubiquitous ComputingHave you ever thought about an invisible force watching your activities and participating. - Contextual ComputingIf you assign a task to the computer. It can only complete the task if it can understand. - Augmented RealityMost of us can watch Cartoons, Movies and games which are not actually in real environment. - SemanticsA very important area of linguistic study is called Semantics. - Multicore and Hybrid ProcessorsTo reduce the consumption of power and increase the performance of a computer.

<urn:uuid:be8c328d-0611-452e-8182-7908000f6143>

Examples of Python source code or interactive sessions are represented as \verbatim environments. This environment is a standard part of LaTeX. It is important to only use spaces for indentation in code examples since TeX drops tabs instead of converting them to spaces. Representing an interactive session requires including the prompts and output along with the Python code. No special markup is required for interactive sessions. After the last line of input or output presented, there should not be an ``unused'' primary prompt; this is an example of what not to do: >>> 1 + 1 2 >>> Within the \verbatim environment, characters special to LaTeX do not need to be specially marked in any way. The entire example will be presented in a monospaced font; no attempt at ``pretty-printing'' is made, as the environment must work for non-Python code and non-code displays. There should be no blank lines at the top or bottom of any \verbatim display. Longer displays of verbatim text may be included by storing the example text in an external file containing only plain text. The file may be included using the standard \verbatiminput macro; this macro takes a single argument naming the file containing the text. For example, to include the Python source file example.py, use: Use of \verbatiminput allows easier use of special editing modes for the included file. The file should be placed in the same directory as the LaTeX files for the document. The Python Documentation Special Interest Group has discussed a number of approaches to creating pretty-printed code displays and interactive sessions; see the Doc-SIG area on the Python Web site for more information on this topic. See About this document... for information on suggesting changes.

<urn:uuid:8e8afdb8-adcd-4d41-a263-cdcb0e2a135e>

The modules described in this chapter support storing Python data in a persistent form on disk. The pickle and marshal modules can turn many Python data types into a stream of bytes and then recreate the objects from the bytes. The various DBM-related modules support a family of hash-based file formats that store a mapping of strings to other strings. The bsddb module also provides such disk-based string-to-string mappings based on hashing, and also supports B-Tree and record-based formats. The list of modules described in this chapter is:

<urn:uuid:9658ddde-001b-43ce-b86a-c2ce800a0eb2>

Phlebitis is the term for the swelling of a vein, most often in one’s leg. Thrombophlebitis is the term for inflammation of a vein caused by a blood clot. The term is often shortened to phlebitis. The condition is easily treatable, though it sometimes leads to more serious health concerns. There are two kinds of phlebitis: superficial phlebitis (affecting veins near the skin's surface) and deep venous thrombosis (DVT). When the clot is embedded into a deep vein, thrombophlebitis can become much more serious. The condition, appropriately named deep vein thrombosis , can cause blood clots in the lungs ( pulmonary embolism ), heart attack , and stroke . Phlebitis is often caused by: - Prolonged bed rest following an operation - Use of estrogen - Lack of exercising your legs over an extended period of time (eg, long airplane trips) - Prior episodes of phlebitis - Trauma to the lower extremity - Cancer malignancy—Certain cancers may put you at risk for a clotting condition. This condition can lead to venous thrombosis. Cancers such as pancreatic , stomach , prostate , and colon cancer, as well as acute leukemia are known to increase clots. A risk factor is something that increases your chance of getting a disease or condition. The following factors increase your chance of developing phlebitis: - Sitting for long periods of time, such as on an airplane or being confined to bed rest Health conditions that increase the risk of blood clots - These include cancers particularly of the pancreas which is associated with recurrent phlebitis Blood disorders which increase the clotting potential of blood - These include Protein C deficiency due to Factor V Leiden (hereditary blood coagulation disorder) - Very visible, cord-like vein that is tender and sensitive to pressure. This cord may develop over several hours to days. - Redness and warmth surrounding the vein. - Swelling around the vein. - A low-grade fever may be seen, however a high fever and drainage that is purulent (pus) indicate infection. - Call your physician immediately should you develop a fever, shortness of breath (which may indicate that the clot may have traveled to the lung), and severe pain and swelling in the arm or leg. Your doctor will ask about your symptoms and medical history, and perform a physical exam. Tests may include the following: - Physical exam - X-ray or ultrasound to check for deeper blood clots - Venogram in which dye or contrast is injected - In case of recurrent episodes of phlebitis, screening for blood disorders is done. Talk with your doctor about the best treatment plan for you. Treatment options include: - Anti-inflammatory medication—you may be advised to take over-the-counter pain relievers, like aspirin or ibuprofen. - Exercise—walking is typically recommended. - Compress—another option is applying a warm compress over the inflamed vein. - Elevation—elevating the arm or leg with the inflamed vein to a level above the heart may be beneficial. If you are diagnosed with phlebitis, follow your doctor's instructions . Phlebitis can sometimes be prevented by the following actions: - If you fly for long periods of time, walk around the cabin and stretch your limbs every hour or so. - If you drive for long periods of time, pull over and stretch your limbs ever hour or so. On flights or car rides lasting more than four hours, take additional precautions to reduce your risk of thrombosis. These include: - Avoid wearing tight clothing around your waist. - Drink plenty of fluids to avoid dehydration. - Reviewer: Michael J. Fucci, DO - Review Date: 09/2012 - - Update Date: 00/92/2012 -

<urn:uuid:34cf8425-0429-45cf-9892-c14ad51da724>

Scientists have long projected that areas north and south of the tropics will grow drier in a warming world –- from the Middle East through the European Riviera to the American Southwest, from sub-Saharan Africa to parts of Australia. These regions are too far from the equator to benefit from the moist columns of heated air that result in steamy afternoon downpours. And the additional precipitation foreseen as more water evaporates from the seas is mostly expected to fall at higher latitudes. Essentially, a lot of climate scientists say, these regions may start to feel more like deserts under the influence of global warming. Now scientists have measured a rapid recent expansion of desert-like barrenness in the subtropical oceans –- in places where surface waters have also been steadily warming. There could be a link to human-driven climate change, but it’s too soon to tell, the scientists said. [UPDATED below, 3/6, 1 p..m] Read more…

<urn:uuid:71855304-2f8a-4425-8945-02a9b90be1ae>

Dragons are creatures with nearly unlimited life spans. They can survive for long periods of time, and no one has found a dragon that has died of old age. Adolescence is usually marked by the growth of a hatchling’s wings, although not all breeds of dragons grow wings and some breeds have other traits that indicate the beginning of maturation. Once they hit adolescence, hatchlings change quickly, maturing to their full forms in only 2 years. Dragons don’t communicate with each other verbally, but they will growl to scare off predators and frighten prey. Young dragons will emit an extremely high-pitched squeal when they are frightened. To communicate, they use telepathy with each other and to speak to other creatures. Dark green dragons, once they mature, appear to become an entirely different species. However, this isn’t true. Rather, they burrow underground and get nutrients from their vines. These vines are sometimes referred to as Dragon Grass. These dragons are very violent, and will use their vines to capture, kill, and eat anything that moves, as well as nearby plants. Luckily, their range is limited and they cannot use magic. Dark green dragons tend to be easy to spot since they usually kill all plants around them and thus are usually surrounded by a large clearing.

<urn:uuid:26002123-0ea3-41da-bda3-e2300e94cf78>

This project is a result of Cambridge University Library being presented with a unique opportunity of rescuing from a bank vault in Paris a collection of precious medieval Hebrew and Arabic documents from the Cairo Genizah. The aging family who owns it is anxious to make institutional arrangements in the near future and if this does not prove possible will simply sell it off (or give it away) as individual items to collectors without any concern for accessibility. In the past hundred years, the documents found in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, Egypt, have revolutionised the study of most aspects of medieval Jewish culture in the Mediterranean area. Some 200,000 items (comprising almost a million leaves), held in various libraries around the world, have not only made possible the reconstruction of many of the best-known Hebrew, Aramaic and Judeo-Arabic works of the 10-13th centuries but have also brought to light the existence of numerous, previously unknown, literary items. In addition, the Genizah materials have also illuminated the daily lives and culture of Jews, Muslims and Christians in the eastern Mediterranean during a period that included the Crusades and that saw contacts with the western Mediterranean and North Africa on the one hand and with India on the other. These fragmentary pieces, in vellum and paper, include bills, lists, itineraries, letters and cheques that have fascinated social and economic historians. Their linguistic characteristics have furnished specialists with insights into the development of various Semitic and a number of European languages (the latter because of their transcription in Hebrew characters). The Genizah texts are undoubtedly as important as the Dead Sea Scrolls for scholarly and popular understanding of cultural history. Cambridge University Library now has the rare opportunity of obtaining a collection of 5,000 unconserved fragments that are currently unavailable for consultation and research. Much of it dates from the classical Genizah period (10-13th centuries) but there appears to be a greater preponderance of 16th century items and of less “standard” material with magical and mystical content. The current plan is that, as soon as the first batch of 1,000 fragments is received, work will commence on its conservation. The cost of this part of the work is not included in this project. Once each item has been conserved, a digital image of it will be prepared, accompanied by the necessary metadata. A special area within a new wing of the Library currently being prepared will be assigned to the Mosseri Collection. An efficient and expeditious treatment of these items, and an arrangement to make them widely available to scholars, will demonstrate just how important this collection and this project are to the world of scholarship. If the pilot project to deal with 1,000 fragments is successfully completed, it is hoped then to proceed with the treatment of the remaining 4,000 items. 1000 separate fully-conserved fragments have been identified against existing records with their correct classmark, recto and verso have been assigned, and full and detailed physical and content descriptions have been produced. These descriptions are kept on a UNIX system as a text-only file to facilitate long-term availability of the information. Formatted catalogue entries will be placed online as the images are mounted on Cambridge University Library’s website. All 1000 fragments have been digitally photographed, recto and verso, as 600dpi life-size TIFFs. Lower-quality JPEGs have been prepared of most of the files for mounting online. The 1000 fragments come mainly from the first half of the Collection, Mosseri “boxes” I–VII, with the whole of boxes I and Ia completed (halakhic and documentary material, mostly). Very few fragments come from the end of the Collection VIII–Xa, due to the particular conservation problems that they will pose. The first of the fragments are already available to readers through the University Library’s Manuscripts Reading Room, with all 1000 to follow as they are bound into hardcover volumes. Initial estimates of the Collection suggested that it consists of 5000 fragments, whereas the actual total is in excess of 7000.

<urn:uuid:fd3e8fbe-92c7-42c9-b991-9024e917f5ec>

The white, mottled area in the right-center of this image from NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) is Madrid, the capital of Spain. Located on the Meseta Central, a vast plateau covering about 40 percent of the country, this city of 3 million is very near the exact geographic center of the Iberian Peninsula. The Meseta is rimmed by mountains and slopes gently to the west and to the series of rivers that form the boundary with Portugal. The plateau is mostly covered with dry grasslands, olive groves and forested hills. Madrid is situated in the middle of the Meseta, and at an elevation of 646 meters (2,119 feet) above sea level is the highest capital city in Europe. To the northwest of Madrid, and visible in the upper left of the image, is the Sistema Central mountain chain that forms the “dorsal spine” of the Meseta and divides it into northern and southern subregions. Rising to about 2,500 meters (8,200 feet), these mountains display some glacial features and are snow-capped for most of the year. Offering almost year-round winter sports, the mountains are also important to the climate of Madrid. Three visualization methods were combined to produce this image: shading and color coding of topographic height and radar image intensity. The shade image was derived by computing topographic slope in the northwest-southeast direction. North-facing slopes appear bright and south-facing slopes appear dark. Color coding is directly related to topographic height, with green at the lower elevations, rising through yellow and brown to white at the highest elevations. The shade image was combined with the radar intensity image in the flat areas. Size: 172 by 138 kilometers (107 by 86 miles) Location: 40.43 degrees North latitude, 3.70 degrees West longitude Orientation: North toward the top Image Data: shaded and colored SRTM elevation model, with SRTM radar intensity added Original Data Resolution: SRTM 1 arcsecond (about 30 meters or 98 feet) Date Acquired: February 2000 Image Courtesy SRTM Team NASA/JPL/NIMA

<urn:uuid:e494080f-4b89-4fa9-91cc-95cd733c7b72>

A crocodile large enough to swallow humans once lived in East Africa, according to a May 2012 paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Paper author Christopher Brochu is an associate professor of geoscience at University of Iowa. He said: It’s the largest known true crocodile. It may have exceeded 27 feet in length. By comparison, the largest recorded Nile crocodile was less than 21 feet, and most are much smaller. The newly-discovered species lived between two and four million years ago in Kenya. It resembled its living cousin, the Nile crocodile, but was more massive. Brochu recognized the new species from fossils that he examined three years ago at the National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi. Some were found at sites known for important human fossil discoveries. Brochu said: It lived alongside our ancestors, and it probably ate them. He explains that although the fossils contain no evidence of human/reptile encounters, crocodiles generally eat whatever they can swallow, and humans of that time period would have stood no more than four feet tall. We don’t actually have fossil human remains with croc bites, but the crocs were bigger than today’s crocodiles, and we were smaller, so there probably wasn’t much biting involved. Brochu added that there likely would have been ample opportunity for humans to encounter crocs. That’s because early man, along with other animals, would have had to seek water at rivers and lakes where crocodiles lie in wait. The crocodile Crocodylus thorbjarnarsoni is named after John Thorbjarnarson, famed crocodile expert and Brochu’s colleague who died of malaria while in the field several years ago. Brochu says Crocodylus thorbjarnarsoni is not directly related to the present-day Nile crocodile. This suggests that the Nile crocodile is a fairly young species and not an ancient “living fossil,” as many people believe. Borchu said: We really don’t know where the Nile crocodile came from. But it only appears after some of these prehistoric giants died out. Bottom line: A paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology in May, 2012 reports the discovery of an ancient crocodile large enough to swallow humans that lived two to four million years ago in East Africa.

<urn:uuid:f9cc2710-09a0-4ee3-8011-9574d0e64b2a>

Activity Plan for Respect Wildlife Exploring Respect for Wildlife This activity should take about 70 minutes. What Your Group Will Learn After participating in this activity plan, which calls for participants to observe impacts on wildlife, participants will be able to - Describe what activities cause impacts to wildlife. - Identify the actions that can be taken to minimize impacts to wildlife. Your participants are going on an imaginary hike to a marshland area where they will encounter a flock of ducks, a doe, and a fawn. This activity will help them think about their potential impacts to wildlife and how these impacts can Materials and Preparation - A garden hose or some other means of marking the marshland - Duck decoys, silhouettes, or pictures of ducks - Pictures or silhouettes of a doe and fawn deer - Read the entire lesson plan and the Background on the Principles of Leave No Trace thoroughly. - Lay out the garden hose or some other means or marking the - Place the duck, doe, and fawn pictures or silhouettes in the Grabbing Your Group's Attention (20 minutes) Explain to participants that they will be hiking along a trail and will come to a marsh area with ducks, a doe, and a fawn. Ask them to explain the actions they will take so they do not disturb the ducks and deer. Steps for Teaching the Activity (30 minutes) How Wild Is Wildlife? The participants will demonstrate the techniques they feel will help minimize impact to wildlife in the marshland area. After demonstrating these techniques, group members will move past the marshland. The activity will help them become more aware of their potential effects on wildlife and how they can avoid As they approach the marked marshland, ask group members to demonstrate how they will avoid disturbing the wildlife and how they will be able to tell if they were successful. After participants have passed the marshland, ask them why they used the techniques they did to minimize their impacts to the ducks and deer in the marsh. Ask them if there are any other techniques they could use. Emphasize that the best means of determining their success is the degree to which the wildlife may have altered their normal behavior. In contrast, if the ducks fly or the deer run away quickly, you know you have gotten too close. Quick movement and loud noises are stressful to animals. Considerate campers should - Observe wildlife from afar to avoid - Give animals a wide berth, especially during breeding, nesting, and birthing seasons. - Store food securely so wildlife will not be attracted to - Keep garbage and food scraps away from animals so they will not acquire bad Remember, you are too close to an animal if it alters its normal activities. Wrapping Up the Activity (15 minutes) Your group is considerate of wildlife needs and knows how to respect wildlife. Group members also know the techniques for minimizing their impact on wildlife and means of determining if they have been successful. Do the - Discuss some of the local areas participants might visit that have wildlife. What additional techniques or specific precautions should they use to avoid disturbing the wildlife species in these areas? - Talk about the behavior of some group members or the behavior observed of others on previous outdoor activities that may have disturbed wildlife. What could have been done differently to avoid disturbing the wildlife? How can the group help encourage others to keep Congratulations on conducting a well-prepared meeting for your group! Visit a local wildlife refuge and have the wildlife managers explain how they recommend viewing wildlife species at the refuge without disturbing them in the wild. Take a walk with the wildlife manager around the refuge to practice the

<urn:uuid:5633521c-7421-4635-a493-f29f4e634353>

Imagine today's world without electricity. Hard to fathom, isn't it? Just as hard to comprehend is today's electrical industry without the people who built it — the workers who designed the structures, strung the wires, laid the conduit, energized systems, and currently maintain and improve the complex electrical systems we all take for granted. EC&M sought out industry leaders — Voices of the Industry, we call them — to talk about how the electrical design, construction, and maintenance fields have changed through the years. In the profiles that follow, you'll read about electrical workers who got their start during or after World War II and worked through good times and bad, laying the groundwork for today's electrical industry. They saw major changes and improvements not only in the systems they designed and built, but also in the tools and processes they worked with. Many talked about changes in electrical training, work processes, and the National Electrical Code. Others commented on the way economic conditions affected their workload, and several noted the growth of specific subsets of the industry such as voice-data-video or the emergence of high technology. Their voices represent all segments of the industry, including electric linemen, designers, journeyman electricians, electrical engineers, plant maintenance personnel, and owners of electrical design or construction shops. All were — and definitely still are — dedicated to making the field of electrical construction and maintenance one of the country's leading industries. None, it would seem, would have chosen anything other than the challenging, exciting, and rewarding careers they have had in this dynamic field. We also asked our experts to make a few predictions for the future. While none were bold enough to predict what the industry would look like 100 years from now, many had interesting comments about developments to watch over the next five to 10 years. Whether they're looking back on the great industry they helped build or looking forward to what might be around the next corner, we think you will enjoy hearing what our Voices of the Industry have to say. Founder, Curator and Volunteer — Ken Mullen Started in Industry: 1934 Ken Mullen did not come to the U.S. electrical industry via the most traditional route. Born in Germany in 1919, Mullen worked as an electrical apprentice in Hamburg, Germany, from 1934 to 1938. In 1938, Mullen, who is Jewish, fled Nazi Germany and ended up in India, where he found work as an electrician and later as a supervisor in a foundry that made ammunition used against the Germans. After WWII, he moved to San Francisco and found a city bursting at the seams and in dire need of electricians. “I walked into the local union office, and they said they could use electricians very badly,” Mullen recalls. Despite not knowing much about U.S. electrical work, he landed his first job doing motor repair in 1947. “In the time since, I have had only five jobs in almost 45 years, all in the electrical field and with some of the finest electrical shops in the San Francisco area,” he says. Mullen's early jobs were with very large contractors working on what he calls “enormous” factories. “San Francisco was a very industrial place then,” Mullen says. “Everything was motors — motors all over. They needed electricians who could wire them up, and for several years I did only motor work. When work slowed at one place, I could simply go to another, because there was so much work to be had. I could go where I wanted and never had to leave San Francisco or the surrounding area to find work.” They had very little machinery, so most work was done by hand. “We had to bend pipe over tires with 2×4s,” he says. “It was unbelievable, we had 2- or 3-in. pipe, and it was bent without any mechanical device. We heated it to bend it. It is so much different today, when the computer figures out the bends in the building, and then you get your pipes already bent. When we had to dig a ditch, it was with a shovel and a wheelbarrow. We had no machinery. We had battery-operated things but no way of doing things when the battery was dead.” Health and safety issues have also changed over the years, Mullen notes. “In India, I had to figure it out myself,” he says of safety and health practices. “The last two years there I got lead poisoning and stopped working in factories. Most of my experience, though, has been in America, and I have never had any bad accidents here. We are much more careful. OSHA is preventing a lot of bad things from happening, and everyone is more oriented to safety. I have gotten two shocks in my life, and they were both 200V. I was very fortunate and have never been in a hospital in my life except for hip replacement.” That's not exactly true — Mullen did visit hospitals as part of his electrical construction work. In the 1950s, he says the city was teaming with new construction for hospitals, breweries, and apartment buildings. “I worked in many breweries in the 1950s,” he recalls. “Hospitals and apartment buildings were very big, too. We always put in pipe and then pulled wire through. It was much slower but did a very good job of protecting the wires. Air conditioning started coming about then, too. All of a sudden, everybody started putting in furnaces and air conditioning after 1960.” Mullen says he has always been a strong supporter of electricians' unions, particularly the IBEW. “I was very strong in the union,” he says. “I was never a business representative, as I had too many other things to do, but I found that without the unions, there was no life here in this country. Many said why don't you go into business on your own, but the unions in my opinion offered a great advantage.” In his post-retirement life, Mullen has partnered with IBEW Local 6 in San Francisco to found the Ken Mullen Electrical Museum of San Francisco in 1991, where many of the tools he used in his life's work are on display. Mullen says he sees good times ahead for the electric industry. “It is still booming, but we still have problems finding people to work,” he says. “There is a lot of work building hotels and high-rise office buildings, not as much industrial any more. We don't know what will happen in the future, but I am one of those persons who does not bother with politics. I am happy to have had a great life doing electrical work.” Retired Lineman and Electrician Crown Point, Ind. Started in Industry: 1946 Glenn Zieseniss got his start in the electrical industry courtesy of a milkman. “I lived on a farm, and the milkman quit his job and went to work for the electric line company,” Zieseniss recalls of his start in electric work. “It was 1946, and I had just come home from World War II, where I met the Russians at the Elbe [River]. [The milkman] told me electric work was good work.” On the milkman's suggestion, Zieseniss tried it and never looked back. Zieseniss started out as a groundman, or “grunt,” on utility line crews, but says circumstances soon led him to work as a lineman. “We were short of workmen then, and there were several of us that started out as apprentice linemen stringing wires,” he recalls. “I started doing mostly 7.2kV line extensions to homes and/or farms in rural areas, and by 1948 was promoted to journeyman lineman, in part because of the shortage of qualified linemen. For the next four years, I worked on increasingly higher voltage lines, and in 1951 and 1952 I worked in an ordnance plant in Illinois that produced ammunition for the Korean War, where I started in the inside wiring field.” From 1952 to 1989, Zieseniss worked as a journeyman lineman and electrician in the Chicago area. Zieseniss says he saw major changes in equipment and safety materials. “I would say the biggest changes in line work were the use of bucket trucks and improvements in safety equipment,” he says. “When we worked in the ordnance plants, it was all either rubber gloves or maybe some hot-stick work. I've been bitten by 2300V a couple of times, but never got burned, just got bit heavily.” From 1947 through 49, Zieseniss did a lot of conversion work in Hammond and smaller cities. For the most part, the work consisted of burying conduit in concrete. He also worked with 17 different contractors on schools, hospitals, and the occasional odd job. “In one case an airplane hit a smokestack and that was a specialty job, reconstructing that,” he says. Zieseniss also served as an electrical inspector for the city of Crown Point, Ind., from April 1984 to March 1998. “On the inspection side, I saw that many contractors were not really keeping abreast of what the Code says for safety,” Zieseniss says. “They seemed to be fighting that all the way.” He says safety is a big thing today for most contractors and utilities, and he points to the increased use of flash hazards and low-impedance transformers as steps in the right direction. Zieseniss says today's emphasis on design-build may be an example of electrical work going in the wrong direction. “When I was working in the mills, the working prints were excellent,” Zieseniss recalls. “Now you don't know what is going on. The engineers have been priced out of the job for detail work. They leave it up to the guy in the field to figure things out. The prints are just not complete when I see them. In the early years, they had a detail for every column for all the electrical. Nowadays, you have to fight for your spot on that column or figure out what should go on the column.” In his long electrical career, Zieseniss always enjoyed the freshness of new challenges. “I was never in the same place for very long,” Zieseniss says. “I never was much of one for the maintenance jobs, and preferred building new things and moving on. I was a free electrician to go wherever I was sent. I never drove more than 50 miles for day-in and day-out work, and could always find plenty of work in the Chicago area.” Zieseniss, who says he has been a faithful reader of EC&M for decades, says something he read in a 1970 editorial has stuck with him through the years. “It was in a ‘Thoughts From Our Shop’ article on page seven of that issue,” Zieseniss recalls. “It said that the inspector must enforce the letter and spirit of the Code that is written, not as the designer or installer would like to see it written. We need to live by laws or else we will have electrical anarchy.” Retired Electrical Engineer Started in Industry: 1948 Dick Porcaro's interest in the electrical trades started as a young boy. “I always had a fascination for electrical things as a kid, starting with radios and crystal sets,” Porcaro says. “I went to a technical high school and had an electrical course there. Then, I was doing part-time electric work and went to City College of New York at night. All that time I was working during the day full-time with engineering and construction companies. I spent some time with Mobil, and then wound up with Bechtel.” Porcaro says most of his work focused on electrical engineering for chemical and petrochemical plants and notes that one thing he always liked about the electrical industry is that it is constantly changing. “Code changes were always interesting things to keep on top of,” Porcaro says. “If you look at the way the Code looked in the early ’40s or ’50s, it was a 5×7 brown soft-cover thing a half-inch thick. Now it is a heck of a lot bigger, and the changes are mostly around different materials — how you can use new things without compromising safety.” Cabling and installation materials, he says, have changed a lot. “Leaded cables used to be popular. They were always interesting in that they required high-caliber mechanical help to make the splices. New methods have come along to simplify the splices, and no one uses lead anymore due to environmental concerns.” “Lighting has also changed quite a bit,” Porcaro adds. “It seemed that equipment was generally a lot more robust in the old days, while today the tendency has been to make things less expensive and still get an adequate amount of light in the facilities. The robust equipment seems to be gone, and everything has been made simpler and lighter.” In the engineering offices, the major activity used to be making drawings, Porcaro adds. “You made them as clear and simple as possible and error-free. Some were so darn good you knew exactly what you had to do. In those days, once the drawing left the designer you could be sure it was right. We have more of a challenge with some drawings today. Drawings made by some computer designers are a heck of a lot different. Some still are making them clear, but there is so much pressure to get the work done as quickly as possible today. I think people sometimes lose sight of the fact that you can build something cheaper by spending more time on engineering and not as much on construction.” Another major change Porcaro saw through the years was the increasing use of trays instead of conduit. “Most installations were wiring conduit. Then, in the 1950s, people were realizing you could get a pretty good installation by installing cable trays and laying cable in the trays rather than pulling conduit,” he says. “That was a major change in terms of wiring technique.” System grounding changes have also been significant, he says. “Everything used to be either solidly grounded or completely ungrounded,” Porcaro says. “One thing companies learned really early was the damage that could happen if things were not grounded properly. You started seeing more medium- and low-resistance grounding systems, rather than having things solidly grounded.” Porcaro also has observed changes in the way electricity is used, citing energy conservation as an example. “We never even thought about it much before — the whole idea of energy conservation using adjustable-speed drives,” he says. “That has been a big change, trying to reduce energy requirements.” Concerning the future of the industry, Porcaro says he sees the U.S. electric industry getting less and less involved with heavy manufacturing and more involved with power generation. “We haven't necessarily created a lot more generating capacity in the last few years,” Porcaro says. “I see a continued emphasis in power plant construction.” Rosendin Electrical Inc., San Jose, Calif. Started in Industry: 1950 Ray Rosendin calls his entry into the electrical-contracting business a “baptism by fire.” Rosendin's father started Rosendin Electrical in 1919, and by the time Ray was 13 he was already working in his father's shop, running errands in the summers. When Ray graduated from college and came on full-time in 1950, the firm had grown to around 30 employees. “My father brought me up around electrical work, so by that time I had a fair knowledge of what was happening,” Rosendin recalls. “But in 1953 he had a heart attack, so I had to take over the business, ready or not.” “They did business on the back of an envelope in those days,” Rosendin says. “If someone didn't have integrity, you just didn't do business with them. Then when I got out of school and into the business you saw more paperwork.” Rosendin says in the 1950s schools and residential work made up the bulk of his business, followed a bit later by industrial growth in and around the San Francisco Bay area. “Industry started coming into the Bay Area in the middle 1950s,” Rosendin says. “That was when Lockheed and IBM came here.” Next, Rosendin says, came the electronics boom of the mid-1960s, spearheaded by companies like Fairchild Industries and Hewlett-Packard. That boom, he says, was nothing like the Silicon Valley explosion that took place a few decades later, but the big electronics companies formed the base from which the area's current “dot-com” economy could mushroom, he says. Rosendin says one major change in the way the electrical industry has developed is that more contractors are now including designers and engineers on their staffs. “We have a complete engineering department,” he says. “We have seen that evolve into pretty much of a science and seen the inherent benefit in having our own engineers.” Another way the industry has changed, he says, is that training and staff development is more crucial than ever. “We have always wanted to maintain as strong and knowledgeable a work force as we could,” Rosendin says. “We started attending trade shows in the 1950s. We attend all the new shows, and we demo new tools here whenever we can. We have always had good apprenticeship programs, but in addition to that, contractors now supplement apprenticeship with their own programs to bring additional knowledge to employees. People in the field need to know a lot more now to solve some of the complex problems that come up. We also have our regular meetings with our people to talk about safety and new procedures.” Rosendin says Silicon Valley itself has changed a great deal over the past 20 years, with computers and the Internet becoming a part of everyday life. “Power requirements are growing exponentially from what we used to know, while people are more concerned than ever about their backup power systems,” he says. This summer in particular should be interesting for California consumers, Rosendin says, as the state tries to work its way through high demand and tight power supplies. As for the future of the industry, Rosendin says he sees strong growth well into the future. President — NECA, Consultant Former part owner, Motor City Electric, Started in Industry: 1953 Dick Martin started in the electrical industry in Detroit in the early 1950s, and is now in his sixth decade in the electrical trade as the current president of NECA and a consultant and former owner of Motor City Electric. The son of an electrical contractor, Martin started as an apprentice in 1953, became an estimator in 1967, and became part owner of Motor City Electric in 1992. “The 1950s was kind of a tough period, with a lot of unemployment,” Martin says. “I never got laid off, though, because there were lots of schools and hospitals to be built, plus new auto plants. By the end of the decade, we were also starting to put in a lot of central air conditioning. They were also starting to build a lot of expressways, and so the 1960s were really pretty good times.” However, as imported Japanese and German cars became more popular in the U.S., the Big Three American automakers suffered sales losses, and business tapered off. Work in and around Detroit became a bit slower, he says, but much of the slack was taken up by hospital and school construction, particularly in the suburbs. Those building booms went on, Martin says, until the late 1970s and early 1980s, when higher interest rates froze construction and the local economy slowed. By the 1990s, electrical workers in the area were busy again, with automakers upgrading plants and factories. Another booming business, he says, was the construction of casinos. Martin says the tools and technologies of the electric construction trades have changed in several important ways over the years. “Flex wiring made our productivity go up immensely,” he says. “We now use mobile rigs in all our work, and electric scaffolds are a big thing today. All the tools are so much more sophisticated, like for instance one-shot benders. Today, you dial the bend you want, and it's done. All the cordless tools today make a big difference, and the use of PVC conduit became more prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s because it is easier to install and work with. The use of computers in our estimating has been fabulous. Years ago, you did it by hand. An estimate would take you two weeks. Today it's done in three days.” As befits the current president of NECA, Martin says he and his companies have always been very active with unions and industry associations. He estimates about 65% of Detroit-area contractors belong to NECA, and says unionization is “on the upswing” in Michigan and elsewhere around the country. Among the reasons, he says, is the unions' and union shops' tendency to offer some of the best training. Not only that, electrical workers today understand that comprehensive and ongoing training is critical to their success. Martin has been in his local for 48 years. Looking toward the future, Martin says a big change in the industry may be a move toward distributed generation, particularly in fuel cells that will sit on-site and produce power for local use. “We will need some training for that,” he says, predicting that fuel cells could “revolutionize our industry.” President and Owner Electrical Corp. of America, Started in Industry: 1961 Jim Lacy is closing in on his 40th anniversary in the electrical contracting industry — all in and around the Kansas City metropolitan area. He started in the industry as part of an electrical apprenticeship program at a junior college in the Kansas City area in 1961. For the first six months, he worked for a contractor doing strictly residential work. In January 1962, Lacy went to work for Great Northern, which focused on petrochemical and refinery work, and he stayed with that company until December 1978, working his way up the ladder from apprentice to journeyman, then foreman, estimator, vice president, and eventually president. Today, he is president and owner of Electrical Corp. of America in Raytown, Mo. “The work I did back then was heavy industrial work,” Lacy recalls of the 1960s. “The scaffolding was all hand-built on wheels, and we had a man on the ground pushing the scaffold from place to place. There was no such thing as a rotohammer or rotodrills. Drilling was done with a drill or an impact hammer — a mini-jackhammer — and when the rotohammer came out with a drill and hammer all at once we thought that was the end of the world. Most of the anchoring was done with lead anchors, and now so much is done with epoxy. Cable and wire has also changed considerably. The wires you see today are much smaller, and the insulation is much thinner.” Lacy says the increasing importance of electrical work in the construction industry has been a major change over the last several decades. Electric work, he argues, has grown and changed considerably more than most of the other building industries. “It has become a larger portion of any building or home,” Lacy says. “If you go back to a house built 40 years ago that hadn't been modernized, you will see how much the electric industry has changed — with a lot more outlets and many more things running off electricity. It is no longer a question whether every home will have a refrigerator, television, and a lot of other electrical appliances running all or most of the time.” Looking toward the future, Lacy says he sees the telecom or voice-data-video (VDV) segment of the business growing larger and larger. “That area is growing more technical, and the people that are in the business are receiving more and better training than ever. We are going to see more and more time out of every employee's year spent in training. If 25 years ago someone went to a three-day seminar that was a big deal, but today my technicians are spending six to nine weeks per year staying up with the changes — that will be a trend hitting every employer in the future.” Another trend Lacy sees is a move toward private generating facilities. “We are going to see all kinds of energy growth requirements, and people doing private investment rather than generation being done strictly by utilities,” Lacy predicts. Retired Plant Engineer Started in industry: 1964 George House is an electric maintenance guru — at least that's what they called him at Amoco in Houston, where he was a plant manager for 22 of his 30 years in the business. His knowledge of the maintenance field was what took him so far, but his entry into the field, he says, was due to one overriding personality trait — curiosity. “I started, like everyone else, in the engineering department doing projects,” House explains. “It really interested me to figure out what was causing equipment to fail. Outages were a big cost factor. Not only that but when we had outages there were safety concerns like loss of cooling water or loss of power to the safety systems themselves.” House calls the evolution of equipment during his electrical maintenance career extraordinary. “When I first started, a 23kV switchgear was an open device with long arc shoots, and many were encased in oil,” he says. “Even for 480kV stuff, we were using oil-encased gear. It was big and bulky. That was before the development of metal-enclosed switchgear, which has been a huge improvement. Metal-enclosed gear is easier to keep clean, and in the event that there is a problem, it doesn't migrate and you don't burn the whole switch room down.” Electrical meters were very different too, House adds. “The meters were all analog,” he says. “The old Simpson 260 was the mainstay, and it was nothing like the digital meters we have today. I don't see the day-to-day fix-it type of tools having changed that much, but the way we go about our work has really changed. House notes a big change has been trying to figure out how to spend your maintenance money. “So much today is based on signature analysis, while it used to be that you would take a breaker down and put it back together and that was maintenance. Half the time, we didn't put it back together right, so we caused many of our own problems. Today, everyone has some type of advanced, computerized diagnostics to make sure things are functionally adequate. You can figure out what is going to go wrong before it is going wrong, and do something about it before you have a bunch of damage to fix,” he says. “The reliability of the equipment has improved so much over the years that it does not take as many people to maintain that equipment,” House continues, “so there has been a steady decline in the number of people needed for maintenance. Also, a motor that we might have rewound a few years ago five or six times, now we just buy another one.” Computers have also changed the electrical maintenance field, House says. “This is certainly true in terms of process control,” he says. “The idea today is to use computerized analysis to wring every bit you can out of the process and make it more efficient. We have also gone away from the individual controller and more to the controllers where we use a computer to turn them on and off. Reliability, though, is more important than efficiency. You can't even afford one failure today.” House says his fondest memories of working in electrical maintenance are of the people he has worked with. “The things I remember most are the people,” he says. “I hear so many times that people have changed, that the old guys had the work ethic and the young people don't have it. I'd love to think us old dogs were that good, but I think the young people today are pretty good, too — maybe even better than some of us were then.” Director of Building Facilities Started in industry: 1976 John Weber is director of building facilities for LEGO Systems in Enfield, Conn., the U.S. headquarters of the Danish toy giant. Before working in plant management, he spent eight years at Allen Bradley Inc., of Milwaukee, now the Industrial Control and Automation Products Division of Rockwell Automation. Weber says he has seen major advances in electrical industry safety. Terminal strips and terminations, he says, are inherently safer today, with a “dead front” design. He says he remembers working as an electrician's helper in the 1970s with terminations that had exposed or protruding screw heads, leaving little room for mistakes — if a screwdriver made contact with a termination screw, it could arc and destroy equipment. Most, if not all, equipment today features recessed screw heads, he says, reducing that particular safety risk. Another example, he says, is the development of ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI) equipment. “It used to be two-pronged plugs for everything,” Weber says. “You would buy a refrigerator and it was just floating electrically. Now even if there is a leakage of current, it will trip a breaker at 3mA to 5mA.” Weber also credits OSHA standards for lockout/tagout, fall protection, and cord inspections that contribute to greater on-the-job safety. “When I worked my first electrical job there was not nearly as much safety training,” he says. “Today it is a federal law to make sure I know all the lockout/tagout training.” A major technological advancement, Weber says, was the introduction and use of electronics for controls and relays. “I remember opening up panels that were as big as a closet, with rows and rows of relays,” he says. “Those were complex control panels and just to get logic you were expending so much energy. They also threw off enough heat that the control rooms needed huge air conditioners.” Today, he says, companies can take advantage of compact electronic programmable logic controllers that offer dense packaging and a lot more input/output in a small space. Weber notes, though, “Electronics had a slow acceptance by the field. Electricians resisted it, because they did not like the fact that they could not see what was happening within a circuit. The industry wanted to promote the high-tech aspect, but it fell on deaf ears on the part of the electricians, until they finally had to accept it as the way things were going to go anyway.” Another important change, Weber says, comes in the form of increased power-metering capabilities. “I can remember standing in front of the old electro-mechanical, very maintenance-prone equipment,” Weber says. “At the end of the month, someone had to replace the paper. If you forgot to do that, the pen ended up writing through the paper and onto the metal drum. The pens would also run out of ink or get stuck. They were a nightmare to clean or maintain. Today we have electronic meters that collect information and send it back to where I am sitting now. I can do archiving and look at very complex electrical measurements that weren't available before. Metering can be integrated into the IT functions of the building, and you can translate that information into other systems.” Weber is optimistic about the future of the electrical industry and the promise inherent in new technologies. “If we can produce power somewhere else and transport it with no line loss, maybe the future isn't as bleak as we anticipate,” he says. “Maybe everything will not be as bleak as California's power situation is today. We shouldn't base all our expectations for the future on what is out there today. Technology can change things in ways we really cannot anticipate.”

<urn:uuid:03cc5b3c-3b8a-4ea6-8a6b-7868829400ac>

The Seine, the scenic river running through Paris, has inspired artists, attracted tourists and served as the soul of the city, and now it will also be a source of renewable energy. Paris officials have announced a plan to place river turbines beneath four bridges on the Seine. The Pont du Garigliano, Pont de la Tournelle, Pont Marie and Pont au Change will each have two turbines installed underwater at their base. These bridges were chosen because the speed of the current accelerates in those locations. While river currents don't produce the kind of electricity that wave power can, the current-harvesting technology has come a long way and more devices are being introduced that can generate energy from even the slowest moving waters. City officials have put a call out to power companies to come up with the best plan for installing the turbines, with a winner being chosen in January and installations starting next spring. via The Guardian written by Quiet-Environmentalist, June 29, 2010 written by David Brockes, July 08, 2010 |< Prev||Next >|

<urn:uuid:e338e7ab-37e4-40ee-98f0-254c81baa630>

Presented by Lars-Erik Jonsson and Roger Säljö from Gothenburg University, Sweden. Students attending seminars can sometimes leave the seminar either annoyed that they were not able to make a full contribution or relieved they were not found out! Online seminars can help both groups of students. The project tried to encourage useful participation by structuring the online experience: - Sharing an experience - Friendly atmosphere - Synchronising activities - Aiming for dialogue rather than monologue Participants must be prepared. In a face to face-to-face seminar, students can hide. Online, you have to contribute or effectively you are not there. To contribute, you have to prepare. Harder to hide your lack of preparation. Writing is a powerful tool for the development of thinking. Asynchronous contributions allow thinking time More or less eliminates plagiarism - difficult to see how you could get someone else to write all your contributions for you. Also, during the discussions, you get to know the students and listen to their written "voice". See Jonsson and Säljö's chapter in Institutional Transformation through Best Practices in Virtual Campus Development: Advancing E-Learning Policies Question and Answer: It is of course possible for a participant's post is ignored. Partly this is the job of the tutor to ensure students are not overlooked. Student moderators may not be necessary but makes students active and is valuable. However you cannot expect students to have a productive discussion on their own. You need a tutor asking difficult questions and pushing for better discussion. Social chat is encouraged but shouldn't be allowed to dominate. Do some students benefit more than others from these seminars than others. [To be fair, this is true of any seminar - probably any form of learning! - DM] Some students will feel more of an outsider and as tutors we must be aware of this. Is there a problem in using eLearning to learn about eLearning? The reponse was along the lines of, "Well that's what we do!" :-) Learning about learning is almost inherently circular in nature!

<urn:uuid:06c7a1d1-1d3f-47d4-bf3b-c662521caec7>

Filed under: Boomer's Health Morton's neuroma is a painful condition that affects the ball of your foot, most commonly the area between your third and fourth toes. Morton's neuroma may feel as if you are standing on a pebble in your shoe or on a fold in your sock. Morton's neuroma involves a thickening of the tissue around one of the nerves leading to your toes. In some cases, Morton's neuroma causes a sharp, burning pain in the ball of your foot. Your toes also may sting, burn or feel numb. Morton's neuroma may occur in response to irritation, injury or pressure. Common treatments for Morton's neuroma include changing footwear or using arch supports. Sometimes corticosteroid injections or surgery may be necessary. |Most Viewed||Most Emailed|

<urn:uuid:663955af-0fc7-4ad8-96d8-0ca1057ad9bf>

The AND gate is an electronic circuit that gives a high output (1) only if all its inputs are high. A dot (.) is used to show the AND operation i.e. A.B. Bear in mind that this dot is sometimes omitted i.e. AB. "If both Inputs are true the Output will be true" 3 Input AND gate Truth table : TTL AND gate : TTL Logic gates are constructed by Transistor-Transistor Logic. Fig-2 shows a RTL- Resistor Transistor Logic. The TTL based AND gate ICs are as below : - 74LS08 Quad 2-input - 74LS11 Triple 3-input - 74LS21 Dual 4-input CMOS AND gate : Three(3) p-type and three(3) n-type MOSFETs constructs a 2 input AND gate logic. The first 2 p-type and 2 n-type MOSFET construct a NAND gate logic and the rest two p-type and n-type construct an Inverter logic. So the first portion gives NAND output and the second part getting that output gives AND output doing the NOT logic operation (inverting) see the Fig-3. The CMOS type AND gates are shown below : - CD4081 Quad 2-input - CD4073 Triple 3-input - CD4082 Dual 4-input AND gate analogy : Fig-4 shows an analogy of AND logic gate. Which constructed by a battery, 2-switches(SPST) and a electric bulb; where 2 switches are indicates AND inputs and the electric bulb as the AND output. If the switch A is closed and B is open the bulb will not light. If again switch A is opened and B is closed the output will be the same as previous, the bulb will not light. But if the both switches ( A and B) are closed the bulb will give light. That means this circuit follows the Truth table of an AND logic gate.

<urn:uuid:75b34f49-2cd9-4a8b-bf2c-b6f3a1a77214>

Professional and Technical Writing/About Professional Writing This is a wikibook created by students and teachers of Technical and Professional Writing. It is intended to be used as a guide for anything from writing a resume and cover letter to a company memo, report, or proposal once you are on the job. When exploring this wikibook you will discover details and tips that you will find helpful when composing various writing structures common in today's work place. This book begins with The Rhetorical Nature of Technical and Professional Writing and ends with an Appendix. The following gives insight to each area discussed in the book in addition to displaying an outline of the wiki book. The Rhetorical Nature of Technical and Professional Writing The goal of rhetorical writing is to effectively communicate information to a group or an audience. It can be used for general or professional communication. The main focus here is the communication with your co-workers or the boss. The Rhetorical Nature of Technical and Professional Writing Ethics and Technical Communication This section covers legal and ethical issues associated with the managing of communication between different cultures. Ethics and Technical Communication This section offers guidelines as well as tips in constructing documents such as resumes and cover letters. These two documents are critical for obtaining a desired job. An excellent resume and cover letter will make you stand out among other competitors and help you get the job you want. Career Documents Business Communications are the tools that would be used in the workplace. They teach us how to create a communication between coworkers. This includes having a main point to your writing, as well as something to attract your readers attention. This section offers a "how to" of writing a business letter, to composing business worthy e-mails, and memos. In addition, there is also a focus on website design, which is an essential tool in today's business world. Business Communications This is the nitty gritty of document design. Subjects discussed in this section include the details of front matter (i.e. table of content) and back matter (i.e appendix), how to organize a document, and usability testing. Having the ability to properly create, display, and organize the front and back matter of your document places you at a distinct advantage. The front matter is where most readers get the most interested and those who wish to look further into your document can view the appendix. These two sections are very important because of their effect on the reader. Designing Documents Composing Business Reports and Proposals This section starts by giving the reader the 3 P's of Reports and Proposals: Planning, Preparing, and Presenting. In addition is the "how to" of writing feasibility studies. Composing Business Reports and Proposals Writing Technical Instructions A comprehensive guide to writing instructions is offered in this section. Including the importance of using visuals with your documents. Using visuals properly not only helps the audience to understand but gives the writer some credit for his work. Visuals help convey the intended message much faster than words. The skills offered in this section will give you the ability to send a more powerful message to your intended audience. Writing Technical Instructions This section explains the art of planning and managing to attain a specified goal by offering strategies that will lead to successful team management. Project Management This Technical and Professional Writing WikiBook is an in-depth book that covers a broad area in business writing. This wikibook is a great reference aid and will benefit you in all your future professional communications.

<urn:uuid:7cc0709d-df25-4bf5-83f6-037fba756915>

SL Psychology/Intro to Research Methods The following items should be included in this section: The Hypothetico-deductive (scientific)method, types of psychological research methods, research designs, sampling, reliability, validity, and triangulation. Research into mind can be traced back to Ancient Greece. However, empirical psychological research has its roots in investigations into cognitive functions such as introspection and memory. While early psychological researchers attempted to bring the same standards of rigor and control to their investigations as physical scientists enjoy, psychological research poses unique obstacles. Psychological research investigates mind. Only recently the contents of the mind become observable since the advent of neuro-imaging technologies such as EEGs, PET scans, and fMRIs, thus early psychological research was focused on disagreements between different schools or generations of researchers that used varied approaches toward their investigations into the invisible mind. For example, cognitive researchers rely on inferences made from activities aimed at employing cognitive functions such as memory as opposed to examining how or where actual memories are laid down. Conversely Behaviorist researchers employed a more empirically rigorous method seeking only to make generalizations about phenomena that were directly observable and replicable in controlled settings. Contemporary psychological research is derived from these disparate traditions and perspectives. It utilizes the hypothetico-deductive or scientific method: 1. observation and data gathering 2. inference of generalizations 3. construction of explanatory theories 4. deduction of hypothesis to test theories 5. hypothesis testing 6. support or challenges to existing theories and commensurate adjustments. Theories and Hypothesis Two key steps, theory construction and hypothesis deduction/testing pose special problems for researchers. Theories are sets of related generalizations explaining a specific mental phenomena e.g. schema and memory organization and hypotheses are specific predictions for research investigations. These steps are derived from empirical data, but are heavily influenced by an individual researcher’s perspective. Thus, researchers seek to clearly articulate operational definitions in an effort to make their research easily replicable. Additionally, controls are implemented to ensure credibility of results and subsequent conclusions. Finally, published research contributing to knowledge in the discipline is peer reviewed and usually rigorously scrutinized. Psychological research can take many forms ranging from: controlled laboratory true experiments (involving the manipulation of independent variables and controls for confounding variables) to field research (involving deliberate manipulation of independent variables in natural uncontrolled environments) to naturalistic/quasi experimental method (involving observation and analysis of independent variables changed by natural incidence). No matter which research method is employed, controls are carefully implemented to ensure the credibility of research. Key issues surrounding controls are: research design, sampling, reliability and validity. The underlying structure of an investigation. It involves how psychologists use subjects/participants in their experiments. The three most common designs are: 1.Repeated Measures: using the same subjects in the experimental and control conditions 2.Independent Measures :using different subjects/participants in the experimental and control conditions 3. Matched Pairs :using different subjects/participants in the experimental and control conditions with each sample having similar characteristics. The process of selecting participants/subjects to examine derived from a target population (a specified subpopulation of all humans). The results of a study are inferred from examination of the sample’s performance on a given measure, thus the sample is key in the line of reasoning from initial design to examination of results. Several methods can be employed when choosing a sample: random, stratified and convenience. Random sampling provides the best chance for the sample group to be representative of the target population. Stratified samples reflect similar proportions of various sub-groups within a sample. Convenience sampling involves choosing participants/subjects that are available at the time of data collection. Convenience samples do not control for possible biases that may within certain subgroups of a population and thus the results and conclusions from a convenience sample must be analyzed with caution and triangulated. A study is reliable if it is replicable and the same results are achieved repeatedly. There are four types of reliability in regard to psychological study: - Test-Retest Reliability (also called stability reliability) - Interrater Reliability - Parallel Forms Reliability - Internal Consistency Reliability To judge for reliability in this case, the test is administered two different times to the exact same or similar subjects. This judges for consistency of results across time, and to make sure the results were not affected by context of the time. Reliability is higher if the retest is close in chronological proximity to the original test. Research psychologists tend to replicate older studies to generate theories or to amend findings to account for reliability. In attention for example, Treisman consistently retested findings to amend the attention models. Two or more judges score the test. The scores are then compared to determine how much the two raters agree on the consistency on a rating system. An example of interrater reliability would be that of teachers grading essays for an AP or IB exam. If a scale from 1 to 5 was used (where 1 is the worst and 5 is the best), and one teacher gave an essay a score of 2 and another gave a score of 5, then the reliability would be inconsistent. Through training, practice, and discussion, the individual raters can reach a consistent level of assessing an experiment, test, or result. Often, the raters are moderated by a higher rater who will assist in reaching consistency. Parallel Forms Reliability A large set of questions that are related to the same construct are generated and then divided into two sets. The two different sets are given to the same sample of people at the same time. Therefore, the two tests that study the same content are judged against each other for consistency. An example would be a pretest-posttest, where the two groups would either receive form 1 or form 2, and in the posttest situation, the groups would be switched. Internal Consistency Reliability In this case, the tool is used as the tool to determine reliability. Thus would be a test situation in which the items on the test measure the same content. Often, questions can be strikingly similar, which shows that the test is also a measure for internal consistency reliability. Therefore, the similar questions should be answered in the same way. There are different ways to measure internal consistency reliability: - Average Inter-item Correlation - Average Itemtotal Correlation - Split-Half Reliability - Cronbach's Alpha (a) Quantitative versus Qualitative Measures Coolican, H. (2004). Research methods and statistics in Psychology. Cambridge University Press. 1. In what ways has new technology changed the science of psychology? Provide three examples. 2. How does the importance of validity and reliability change depending on the type of study? 3. In what ways will the different aspects of an experiment (sampling, methods, reliabilty, and validity) affect the results and conclusions of an psychology study?

<urn:uuid:defcc62e-94ff-4b7f-9ff7-845347fa405d>

Anatolian Weights and Measures The use of metal in Anatolia increased significantly towards the end of the Chalcolithic period, reflecting the development of trade relations in the region, and from commercial documents that have been deciphered, we know that units of weight originating in Mesopotamia were used in Anatolia. Although there is no firm evidence about the use of weights and measures in Anatolia prior to the Assyrian Colonies period, finds made of valuable metals with graduated markings are thought to have been used for measuring or for exchange in trade. For example, at Troy small gold bars and in particular graduated rods seem beyond doubt to show the existence of trade based on measurement. The Hittites, like the other tribes of the Near East, used silver as a medium of exchange, in the form of rings or rods of specific size and weight. As in earlier times, hematite weights continued to be used to measure shekels and manas, units of weight that originated in Babylon. Anatolian Weights and Measures in the Hellenic Period The laws of Solon implemented around Athens in the Greek period are also thought to have been used in Anatolia. Solon ruled that the talent of weight (Greek talanton) should be 3 manas heavier than the monetary talent, distributing the difference between the constituent parts of the weight talent. This unit was the stater (873.2 g), equivalent to the old currency unit, the didrachmon. Fractions of this unit were also used. The main Greek units of weight were the talent and mana, but these were not identical everywhere. For example, in Athens after the introduction of the Solonian standard this was equivalent to 36.39 kg when weighing commodities. As a monetary unit it was equivalent to metal weighing 25.92 kg. One sixtieth of a talent was a mna or mana. The principal liquid measures were the katule (0.27 litres) and the amphora (1.27 litres), while dry measures were the khonix (1.08 litres) and medimnos (51.84 litres). In the famous History by Herodotus of Halicarnassus we find almost all the measurements of length used in Anatolia during the ancient Greek period: foot: 0.296 cm (the modern foot is 30.48 cm) finger: one sixteenth of a foot, 0.0185 metres cubit: 1.5 feet, 0.444 metres fathom: 6 feet, 4 cubits, 1.776 metres plethron: 100 feet stadium: 600 Greek feet. The Athens stadium was equivalent to 177.6 metres. palm: one quarter of a foot, 6 palms equalled one cubit skenes: Egyptian unit equivalent to 60 stadiums, 10.656 km parasang: Iranian unit equivalent to 30 stadiums, 5.328 km

<urn:uuid:281b5975-6ce8-4853-91d2-99b761b2b493>

Octet: Selected Works from the School of Visual Arts, New York Relational Aesthetics, a term coined in 2002 by Nicolas Bourriaud refers to a kind of art that interacts with its onlookers. Not based on formal concerns of aesthetic experience, audience participation is a necessary and required aspect of this type of work. Like the Situationists before them, practitioners in this field aim towards developing collective social experiences, and endeavors to fuse art with life. Word As Image To conceive of words as flesh, or breath or abstract signs, integrating words with the visual arts has had a cross-cultural history. From the Rosetta Stone to oracle bones, from bark cloth paintings, to illuminated manuscripts, words turn sounds into a concrete script. Simple lines and dots, dabs and flows, arabesques and undulating rhythms displace the articulating voice in the external world. Identity and Identity Politics What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be part of a marginalized social group? How do race, religion, and/or gender, constitute an identity? The manner in which the self is defined is expressed through physical attributes, shared social values or political persuasions. In heterogeneous societies, such as America, a melting pot of citizens from Italian, Irish, Jewish, Arab, African, Chinese, Hispanic and Turkish descent among others, form distinct communities. Assimilating variegated cultural identities into the larger fabric of American life creates a multi-racial, multi-ethnic composite population. What does it mean to be an Asian-American or a Latino in the USA? Although we all share the primary structure of DNA, making us human, we each are also distinctly unique.

<urn:uuid:9b863cdd-5c64-48fa-89fe-4edbf3d08558>

Hummus with olive oil |Place of origin||Egypt, Levant| |Main ingredient(s)||Chickpeas, tahini| Hummus (Arabic: حُمُّص) is a Middle Eastern and Arabic food dip or spread made from cooked, mashed chickpeas blended with tahini, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and garlic. Today, it is popular throughout the Middle East, Turkey, North Africa, Morocco, and in Middle Eastern cuisine around the globe. Hummus is an Arabic word (حمّص ḥummuṣ) meaning "chickpeas," and the complete name of the prepared spread in Arabic is حمّص بطحينة ḥummuṣ bi ṭaḥīna, which means "chickpeas with tahini". Spellings of the word in English can be inconsistent. "Houmous" is the standard spelling in British English. Among other spellings are hummus, hummous, hommos, humos, hommus and hoummos. Many cuisine-related sources describe hummus as an ancient food, or connect it to famous historical figures such as Saladin. Indeed, its basic ingredients—chickpeas, sesame, lemon, and garlic—have been eaten in the region for millennia. But in fact, there is no specific evidence for this purported ancient history of hummus bi tahini. Though chickpeas were widely eaten in the region, and they were often cooked in stews and other hot dishes, puréed chickpeas eaten cold with tahini do not appear before the Abbasid period in Egypt and the Levant. The earliest known recipes for a dish similar to hummus bi tahini are recorded in cookbooks published in Cairo in the 13th century. A cold purée of chickpeas with vinegar and pickled lemons with herbs, spices, and oil, but no tahini or garlic, appears in the Kitāb al-Wusla ilā l-habīb fī wasf al-tayyibāt wa-l-tīb; and a purée of chickpeas and tahini called hummus kasa appears in the Kitab Wasf al-Atima al-Mutada: it is based on puréed chickpeas and tahini, and acidulated with vinegar (though not lemon), but it also contains many spices, herbs, and nuts, and no garlic. It is also served by rolling it out and letting it sit overnight, which presumably gives it a very different texture from hummus bi tahini. |Nutritional value per 100 g (3.5 oz)| |Energy||695 kJ (166 kcal)| |Percentages are relative to US recommendations for adults. Source: USDA Nutrient Database Hummus is high in iron and vitamin C and also has significant amounts of folate and vitamin B6. The chickpeas are a good source of protein and dietary fiber; the tahini consists mostly of sesame seeds, which are an excellent source of the amino acid methionine, complementing the proteins in the chickpeas. Depending on the recipe, hummus carries varying amounts of monounsaturated fat. Hummus is useful in vegetarian and vegan diets; like other combinations of grains and pulses, it serves as a complete protein when eaten with bread. As an appetizer and dip, hummus is scooped with flatbread, such as pita. It is also served as part of a meze or as an accompaniment to falafel, grilled chicken, fish or eggplant. Garnishes include chopped tomato, cucumber, coriander, parsley, caramelized onions, sautéed mushrooms, whole chickpeas, olive oil, hard-boiled eggs, paprika, sumac, ful, olives, pickles and pine nuts (as photographed in the "History" section). Outside the Middle East, it is sometimes served with tortilla chips or crackers. In Vegetarian Dishes from the Middle East, Arto der Haroutunian calls hummus, "One of the most popular and best-known of all Syrian dishes" and a "must on any mezzeh table." Syrians in Canada's Arab diaspora prepare and consume hummus along with other dishes like falafel, kibbe and tabouleh, even among the third and fourth-generation offspring of the original immigrants. Hummus is a common part of everyday meals in Israel. A significant reason for the popularity of hummus in Israel is the fact that it is made from ingredients that, following Kashrut (Jewish dietary laws), can be combined with both meat and dairy meals. Few other foods can be combined with a wide variety of meals consistently with the dietary laws. It is seen as almost equally popular amongst Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. As a result of its popularity, Israelis elevated hummus to become a "national food symbol" and consume more than twice as much hummus as neighbouring Arab countries, according to figures by Tsabar Salads, a hummus manufacturer in Israel. Commenting on its popularity, Gil Hovav, an Israeli food editor interviewed on the BBC program Cooking in the Danger Zone, stated that "even during the intifada years Jews would sneak [...] into the Muslim quarter just to have a vital, really genuine good humous [sic]," and noted that like many dishes considered to be Israeli national foods, hummus is actually Arab. However, he also said, commenting on Iraqi, Egyptian, Syrian or Yemeni food in Israel, that "Jews came from these countries to Israel and they brought their food with them". Many restaurants run by Mizrahi Jews and Arab citizens of Israel are dedicated to hot hummus, which may be served as chick peas softened with baking soda along with garlic, olive oil, cumin and tahini. One of the fancier hummus versions available is hummus masabacha, made with lemon-spiked tahini garnished with whole chick peas, a sprinkling of paprika and a drizzle of olive oil. Hummus is sold in restaurants, supermarkets and hummus-only shops (known in Hebrew as humusiot). For Palestinians, hummus has long been a staple food, often served warm, with bread, for breakfast, lunch or dinner. All of the ingredients in hummus are easily found in Palestinian gardens, farms and markets, thus adding to the availability and popularity of the dish. In Palestinian areas, hummus is usually garnished, with olive oil, "nana" mint leaves, paprika, parsley or cumin. A related dish popular in the region of Palestine and Jordan is laban ma' hummus ("yogurt and chickpeas"), which uses yogurt in the place of tahini and butter in the place of olive oil and is topped with pieces of toasted bread. By the end of the 20th century, hummus had emerged as part of the American culinary fabric. In 2008, more than fifteen million Americans consumed hummus on a regular basis. Hummus became a popular staple in American restaurants with the Armenian migration from Lebanon to Southern California and the East Coast after the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990). It was further popularized in the United States by Jews returning from visits in Israel and by Israeli expatriates. According to a 2010 market research, hummus consumption in the United States has increased by 35% over a period of 21 months, with sales reaching nearly $300 million. In 2006, hummus was present in 12% of American households, rising to 17% by early 2009. One commentator attributed the growth of Hummus to America’s embrace of ethnic foods, and to experimentation with exotic foods. In November 2009, Gadi Lesin, President & CEO of the Israeli Strauss group food manufacturer said that market share of co-owned Sabra Dipping Company in the USA makes it the largest packaged hummus dip manufacturer in the world. In October 2008, the Association of Lebanese Industrialists petitioned to the Lebanese Ministry of Economy and Trade to request protected status from the European Commission for hummus as a uniquely Lebanese food, similar to the Protected Geographical Status rights held over regional food items by various European Union countries. Fadi Abboud, president of the Lebanese Industrialists Association, stated that "Israelis have usurped several Lebanese and oriental products". According to Abboud, Lebanon exported the first hummus dish in 1959. As a response, food critic Janna Gur wrote: "The success of certain brands of Israeli hummus abroad may have been what brought about Abboud's anger", leading him to claim that Israel has been "stealing" their country's national dishes, like hummus, falafel, tabbouleh, and baba ghanouj. Also in response to Abboud's statement, Shooky Galili, an Israeli journalist specialising in food and who writes a blog dedicated to hummus, said that "trying to make a copyright claim over hummus is like claiming for the rights to bread or wine. [...] Hummus is a centuries old Arab dish — nobody owns it, it belongs to the region". As of late 2009, the Lebanese Industrialists Association was still "preparing documents and proof" to support its claim. In May 2010, the Guinness World Record for the largest dish of hummus in the world returned to Lebanon. The winning dish, cooked by 300 cooks in the village of al-Fanar, near Beirut, weighed approximately 10450 kg (roughly 23000 lb), more than double the previous record set by 50 Israeli Arabs and Jews who cooked approximately 4100 kg (roughly 9000 lb) in January 2010 in the Arab-Israeli village of Abu Ghosh. According to local media, the recipe included 8 tons of boiled chick peas, 2 tons of tahini, 2 tons of lemon juice and 70 kg (154 lb) of olive oil. - Sami Zubaida, "National, Communal and Global Dimensions in Middle Eastern Food Cultures" in Sami Zubaida and Richard Tapper, A Taste of Thyme: Culinary Cultures of the Middle East, London and New York, 1994 and 2000, ISBN 1-86064-603-4, p. 35. - Maan Z. Madina, Arabic-English Dictionary of the Modern Literary Language, 1973, s.v. ح م ص - Newman, Joni Marie (2007), Cozy Inside, Lulu.com, p. 67, ISBN 1604028955, 9781604028959 Check - Pam Peters (2007), The Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage, Cambridge University Press, p. 370, ISBN 0-521-87821-7 - mideastfood.about.com, Hummus 101, retrieved 28 February 2008 - choice.com, More about hummus, "Hummus has existed for thousands of years." retrieved 5 May 2008 - insidehookah.com Food - Hummus, "...it is evident that it’s been a Middle Eastern/Mediterranean favorite, and sometimes staple, for thousands of years." retrieved 5 May 2008 - Percival, Jenny, Lebanon to sue Israel for marketing hummus as its own, guardian.co.uk, 7 October 2008, retrieved 9 November 2009 - Tannahill p. 25, 61 - Brothwell & Brothwell passim - www.straightdope.com, Who invented hummus?, 21 March 2001, "Hummus has been around for too long, in too many forms, and the origin is lost in antiquity... There's no way of knowing where it started...", retrieved 5 May 2008 - e.g. a "simple dish" of meat, pulses and spices described by Muhammad bin Hasan al-Baghdadi in the 13th century, Tannahill p. 174 - Lilia Zaouali, Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World, University of California Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-520-26174-7, translation of L'Islam a tavola (2004), p. 65 - Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, John Wiley & Sons, 2010, By Gil Marks, page 270 - Perry et al., p. 383 - Bricklin, 1994, p. 115. - Hummus NutritionData.com - Arto der Hartoiunian Vegetarian Dishes from the Middle East, London 1983, p.33. - Paul R. Magocsi (1999), Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples, University of Toronto Press, p. 1244, ISBN 0-8020-2938-8 - Even mentioned by the Israel Defense Forces Cookbook, see Houston Chronicle "Diversity in the dining room helps ring in Israel's new year" - Middle East, 2006, Lonely Planet, page 282 - Hummus brings Israelis, Palestinians to the table, The Christian Science Monitor, by Joshua Mitnick, July 25, 2007 - BBC Cooking in the Danger Zone: Israel and Palestinian Territories, pp. 5-6: "Humous is Arabic. Falafel, our national dish, our national Israeli dish, is completely Arabic and this salad that we call an Israeli Salad, actually it's an Arab salad, Palestinian salad." - Cooking in the Danger Zone: Israel and Palestinian Territories, page 3 - Food & Wine, May 2008; On the Hummus Hunt in Israel by Jen Murphy, p. 66, - The perfect hummus debate - Salloum and Peters, 1996, p. 204. - Ibrahim, Lailie, Institute for Middle East Understanding, Hummus, a Palestinian staple, 31 March 2006, retrieved 9 March 2008. - Marks, Gil (2010), Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, John Wiley and Sons, pp. 269-271 - John Powell, "Encyclopedia of North American Immigration", Infobase Publishing, 2005, ISBN 1-4381-1012-X, 9781438110127, p. 176. - There’s Hummus Among Us By Elena Ferretti, Fox News, April 05, 2010 - Aviv Levy (25 November 2009), זינוק במכירות חומוס שטראוס בארה"ב: כבשה 40% מהשוק, Globes, retrieved 25 November 2009 Unknown parameter - Karam, Zeina, "Hummus war looms between Lebanon and Israel", Associated Press, 7 October 2008, retrieved 10 December 2008. - Carolynne Wheeler (11 October 2008), "Hummus food fight between Lebanon and Israel", The Daily Telegraph - "Whose hummus is it anyway?", The Times of South Africa, November 9, 2008 - YaLIBNAN. JANUARY 9, 2010 http://www.yalibnan.com/2010/01/09/hummus-war-between-lebanon-israel-escalates/ |url=missing title (help). Retrieved 4 July 2010. - Gur, Janna (cited as 'Jana'), Santa Fe New Mexican, "Hummus History: Tales of a Wandering Chickpea", 21 October 2008, retrieved 11 December 2008 - Lebanon claims latest title in 'Hummus War' (CNN) - "Lebanese score in hummus war with Israel", Associated Press, 24 October 2009 - "Lebanon breaks Israel's hummus world record". Yahoo. AP. 8 May 2010. - "Abu Gosh mashes up world's largest hummus". YNet. AFP. 8 January 2010. - "Abu Ghosh secures Guinness world record for largest dish of hummus". Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 11 January 2010. Retrieved 31 March 2010. - Jack Brockbank (12 January 2010). "The largest serving of hummus". Guinness World Records. Retrieved 31 March 2010. - Edited by Fawzia Afzal-Khan and Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, Fawzia; Seshadri-Crooks, Kalpana (2000), The Pre-occupation of Postcolonial Studies, Duke University Press, ISBN 0-8223-2521-7, 9780822325215 Check |isbn=value (help) More than one of - Edited by Linda Amster; introduction by Mimi Sheraton, Linda; Sheraton, Mimi (2003), The New York Times Jewish Cookbook: More Than 825 Traditional and Contemporary Recipes from Around the World, St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-29093-4, 9780312290931 Check |isbn=value (help) More than one of - Mark Bricklin,, Mark (1994), Prevention Magazine's Nutrition Advisor: The Ultimate Guide to the Health-Boosting and Health-Harming Factors in Your Diet, Rodale, ISBN 0-87596-225-4, 9780875962252 Check |isbn=value (help) More than one of - Don Brothwell and Patricia Brothwell, C. D.; Brothwell, B. (1998), Food in Antiquity: A survey of the Diet of Early Peoples, Expanded Edition, Johns Hopkins University, ISBN 0-8018-5740-6 More than one of - Marks, Gil (2010), Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, John Wiley and Sons, pp. 269–271 - Charles Perry, A. J. Arberry, Maxime Rodinson,, Maxime; Perry, Charles (1998), Medieval Arab Cookery, Prospect Books (UK), ISBN 0-907325-91-2, 978-0907325918 Check |isbn=value (help) More than one of - Habeeb Salloum and James Peters ; drawings by Lynn Peterfreund ; photographs by Neal Cassidy., Habeeb; Peters, James (1996), From the Lands of Figs and Olives: Over 300 Delicious and Unusual Recipes, I.B.Tauris, ISBN 1-86064-038-9 More than one of - Tannahill, Reay (1973), Food in History, Stein and Day, ISBN 0-517-57186-2 - McKenna, Alix. "Lebanon vs. Israel: A Delicious Culinary War", Moment, March/April 2011. |Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Cookbook:Hummus| |Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Hummus| |Look up hummus in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.|

<urn:uuid:4a2cbf67-a0b7-4461-961c-840e7501abb4>

||This article needs additional citations for verification. (January 2008) The October Manifesto (Russian: Октябрьский манифест, Манифест 17 октября), officially The Manifesto on the Improvement of the State Order (Манифест об усовершенствовании государственного порядка), is a document that served as a precursor to the Russian Empire's first constitution, which would be adopted the next year. The Manifesto was issued by Emperor Nicholas II, under the influence of Count Sergei Witte, on 30 October [O.S. 17 October] 1905 as a response to the Russian Revolution of 1905. The October Manifesto addressed the unrest application throughout the Russian Empire and pledged to grant basic civil liberties, including personal immunity; and freedom of assembly, association, press, religion, and speech. Other provisions include the allowance of a broad participation in the Duma (parliament), the introduction of universal male suffrage, as well as a decree that no law should come into force without the consent of the Duma. The Manifesto was a precursor to the Empire's first constitution. Neither document, however, resulted in significant reform, and the Emperor continued to exercise absolute veto power over parliamentary legislation. Between 1906–7 the Duma was dissolved and reformed twice. The October Manifesto divided opposition to the Emperor. The Kadets were appeased by the idea of having freedom of speech and a truly representative government, and the Union of October 17 (informally known as the Octobrists, this party took its name from the October Manifesto). The Marxists, however, maintained that Nicholas had only made small concessions, arguing that the Duma was only a shell of democracy as it could not pass laws without the approval of the monarch, and that freedom of speech was heavily regulated. - The Memoirs Of Count Witte New York & Toronto (1921), Armonk, New York (1990). ISBN 0-87332-571-0. - Fiehn, Terry. (1996). Russia & The USSR 1905-1941. Hodder Headline Group, London. ISBN 0-7195-5255-9. The October Manifesto of 1905

<urn:uuid:d57c9b0a-a80d-48f0-b543-da5437bafddc>

|Jmol-3D images||Image 1| |Molar mass||169.18 g mol−1| | (what is: / ?) Except where noted otherwise, data are given for materials in their standard state (at 25 °C, 100 kPa) Pyridoxine is one of the compounds that can be called vitamin B6, along with pyridoxal and pyridoxamine. It differs from pyridoxamine by the substituent at the '4' position. Its hydrochloride salt pyridoxine hydrochloride is often used. Function in the body Pyridoxine assists in the balancing of sodium and potassium as well as promoting red blood cell production. It is linked to cardiovascular health by decreasing the formation of homocysteine. Pyridoxine may help balance hormonal changes in women and aid the immune system. Lack of pyridoxine may cause anemia, nerve damage, seizures, skin problems, and sores in the mouth. It is required for the production of the monoamine neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine, as it is the precursor to pyridoxal phosphate: cofactor for the enzyme aromatic amino acid decarboxylase. This enzyme is responsible for converting the precursors 5-hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP) into serotonin and levodopa (L-DOPA) into dopamine, noradrenaline and adrenaline. As such it has been implicated in the treatment of depression and anxiety. Very good sources of pyridoxine are grains and nuts. Medicinal uses Pyridoxine is given to patients taking isoniazid to combat the toxic side effects of the drug. It is given 10–50 mg/day to patients on to prevent peripheral neuropathy and CNS effects that are associated with the use of INH. In one form of homocystinuria, activity of the deficient enzyme can be enhanced by the administration of large doses of pyridoxine (100-1000 mg/day). Vitamin B6 can be compounded into a variety of different dosage forms. It can be used orally as a tablet, capsule, or solution. It can also be used as a nasal spray or for injection when in its solution form. Vitamin B6 is usually safe, at regular intakes up to 200 mg per day in adults. However, vitamin B6 can cause neurological disorders, such as loss of sensation in legs and imbalance, when taken in high doses (200 mg or more per day - 10,000% of US RDA) over a long period of time. Vitamin B6 toxicity can damage sensory nerves, leading to numbness in the hands and feet as well as difficulty walking. Symptoms of a pyridoxine overdose may include poor coordination, staggering, numbness, decreased sensation to touch, temperature, and vibration, and tiredness for up to six months. One study reported that over a 6 month period or longer, 21% of women taking doses greater than 50 mg daily experienced neurological toxicity. The effect of doses below 50 mg was not reported. Pyridoxine's fetal safety is "A" in Briggs' Reference Guide to Fetal and Neonatal Risk. Its also used to treat a Vitamin B6 deficiency. - Pyridoxine at Sigma-Aldrich - Kashanian, M.; Mazinani, R.; Jalalmanesh, S. (2007). "Pyridoxine (vitamin B6) therapy for premenstrual syndrome". International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics 96 (1): 43–4. doi:10.1016/j.ijgo.2006.09.014. PMID 17187801. - Vitamin B1, www.HowStuffWorks.com[full citation needed] - Vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) - sources, benefits, dosage, deficiency, overdose, toxicity[full citation needed] - Dalton, K.; Dalton, M. J. T. (1987). "Characteristics of pyridoxine overdose neuropathy syndrome". Acta Neurologica Scandinavica 76 (1): 8–11. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0404.1987.tb03536.x. PMID 3630649. - Briggs GG, Freeman RK, Yaffe SJ. Drugs in Pregnancy and Lactation: A Reference Guide to Fetal and Neonatal Risk, 8th edition. 2008. Published by: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

<urn:uuid:2f33fdf9-4e4f-482b-be3b-3118a324974c>

|Minimalism in Art| |Minimalism in Music| Postmodern music is both a musical style and a musical condition. As a musical style, postmodern music contain characteristics of postmodern art—that is, art after modernism (see Modernism in Music). It favors eclecticism in form and musical genre, and often combines characteristics from different genres, or employs jump-cut sectionalization. It tends to be self-referential and ironic, and it blurs the boundaries between "high art" and kitsch. Daniel Albright (2004) summarizes the traits of the postmodern style as bricolage, polystylism, and randomness. As a musical condition, postmodern music is simply the state of music in postmodernity. In this sense, postmodern music does not have any one particular style or characteristic, and is not necessarily postmodern in style. However, the music of postmodernity is thought to differ from that of modernity in that whereas modern music was valued for its fundamentals and expression, postmodern music is valued as both a commodity and a symbolic indicator of identity. For example, one significant role of music in postmodern society is to act as a language by which people can signify their identity as a member of a particular subculture. Table of contents The postmodern musical style Modernist influences and postmodern philosophy In the modern period, recording of music was seen as a way of transcribing an external event, as a photograph is supposed to record an moment in time. However, with the invention of magnetic tape in the 1930's the ability to directly edit a recording, and create a result which did not actually occur, made it possible for a recording to be viewed as the end product of artistic work itself. Through the 1950's, most music, even popular music, presented itself as the capturing of a performance, even if that performance was mic'ed to improve hearing of different parts. Antecedents to this process, including the electronic music of Edgar Varèse, can be found dating back for several decades, and in 1948 Pierre Schaeffer would use tape to "compose" pieces, however it is with the advent of Rock 'n' Roll and particularly producer Phil Spector and Glenn Gould in classical music in the late 1950's that the idea of using tape to create a stand alone artistic work became more and more prevalent. However, it was with the studio recordings of the Beatles where the full use of multi-track recording and layering became common to popular music. The creation of this recording process transformed pop music. Rock and Hip Hop both extend this process further, by using more and more sophisticated techniques to layer and mix individual tracks. The rise of popular music created another pressure on music, which would lead to another strand of post-modernity, namely the ability to create a sufficiently large audience for works. In the Modernist view, such a connection was unnecessary – people would naturally gravitate towards "serious" music as the place where ideas could be presented in musical form, rather than "popular" music, which was seen, as the Victorians had seen it, as subsidiary to the more "weighty" genres. As with Post-modern philosophy, post-modern music questioned whether this hierarchy of "high" and "low" culture was correct or appropriate. A third strand of post-modern music is a change in the fundamental idea of what music is supposed to be "about". As the period wore on, the idea that "music is mainly about itself", became more and more firmly entrenched. Reference was not merely a technique, but the substance of music. Musical works reference other musical works, not because they can, but because they must. This is part of the general change from Modernism which saw the basic subject of art being the most pure elements of musical technique – whether intervals, motivic fragments or rhythms – to Postmodernism which sees the basic subject of art being the stream of media, manufactured objects, and genre materials. In otherwords, post-modernity views the role of art to be commenting on the consumer society and its products, where as modernism sought to convey the "reality" of the universe in its most fundamental form. Postmodern techniques and their application The ability to record and mix, and later sample, would feed into this idea, with the inclusion of "found sounds", snippets of other recordings, spoken voices, noises, and sampled tableux into music. Pioneers include Edgar Varèse, who began to experiment with the possibilities of new electronic instruments, using synthesizers and tape loops. John Cage used tapes, radios, and record players to reproduce prerecorded sounds in a wide variety of ways in works such as the series "Imaginary Landscape" and "Europera." Early examples in popular music include Abbey Road, Pink Floyd's Meddle and the "dub" style of music of Lee 'Scratch' Perry. As digital technology has made sampling easy, it has become very common in hip hop, and is taken to its extreme in Bastard pop. As composers became interested in incorporating pre-existing sounds, they also looked to emulate the effect using only conventional instruments, by extensive quotation from pre-existing material. Quotation and reference to earlier work in principle was not new, as composers such as Richard Strauss and Charles Ives are famous for its use in their tone poems and symphonies nearly a century before, and it is essentially the basis behind organum, parody mass, and other early musical genres. However, the completeness of the collage or thorough use of a pre-existing piece went far beyond earlier composers' brief quotations or use of a cantus firmus. George Rochberg has used pieces from the classical repertoire as the basis for many of his compositions, essentially composing a frequently ironic commentary on an earlier work. Olivier Messiaen's "Oiseaux Exotiques" and "Catalogue d'Oiseaux" are collages of bird songs, precisely notated by species in the score, gathered together in a musical form. A tour-de-force of post-modern musical collage is the third movement of Luciano Berio's "Sinfonia," which uses the scherzo of Gustav Mahler's "Resurrection Symphony" as a musical foundation, and text from Samuel Beckett's "The Unnameable," but adds quotations spanning classical repertory, as though they were sampled or found haphazardly by spinning a radio dial. A related aspect of post-modern classical music was an interest in reducing the role of a composer in musical composition, not by the use of pre-composed material, but instead by the use of random procedures in composition and performance. This began as a reaction to elements of late modernism, in particular, the modernist project of atonality, begun by Arnold Schoenberg, which had been taken to its logical conclusion, total serialism, by such late modernist composers as Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and others. A group of composers, including Boulez, Stockhousen, and especially John Cage began introducing elements of 'chance' in their music to create aleatory music. Cage is famous for using the I Ching to direct his compositions, essentially removing himself from the compositional procedure. On the other hand, his piece 4'33" is performed by a silent pianist, and is said to consist entirely of environmental noise. Aleatory music began to blur the boundaries between the composer and the audience, and between the musician and the environment, which was a postmodern trend. At the same time, there was also a new interest in non-Western music, early music (typically meaning pre-Baroque), and popular music. This attention to all musical traditions is a general post-modern feature; for them the division between "high" and "low art" is illusory. György Ligeti found rhythmic elements of Pygmy song that fit his own sensibilities, and they influenced his later compositions. Olivier Messiaen studied thoroughly Indian music and medieval music, and some of his scores make reference to Indian tala or plainchant. Tan Dun, born in China, has sought ways in his compositions to unite the Chinese and Western strands of music. Steve Reich studied West African drumming, Indonesian gamelan, and Hebrew cantillation, and his works are sometimes compared to Perotin or rock music. Further eroding the wall between "art music" and "popular music," a number of DJs have remixed his work on the album "Reich Remixed." Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham have worked with rock musicians and combined the techniques of classical and popular music. The approach of post-modern composers with regard to foreign, obsolete or popular musical idioms differs substantially from the "exotic" references of earlier composers. One key difference is the thoroughness of the study. Mozart's "Rondo alla Turca" is supposedly influenced by Turkish music, but it is a superficial and stereotypical reference imposed in a pure classical form. Post-modern composers have generally sought in earnest to understand the underlying principles of exotic music by years of study or performance in the idiom. The result is often more subtly incorporated into the composer's vocabulary, so much that one may not imagine the source of the foreign elements until they are pointed out. The emergence of postmodern styles In the late 1950s and 1960s a series of styles, influenced by pop and post-modern conditions began to form, and existing styles began to incorporate post-modern elements. In popular music, jazz, rhythm and blues, and early rock and roll are all begin to become shaped by not only new technology, but a fundamentally different way of producing recordings. Instead of trying to achieve a rounded three dimensional sound in imitation of the concert experience, recordings increasingly foregrounded the vocals and made the rest of the sounds a single "wall" behind the main track. By the mid 1960s this "wall of sound" style was the standard of most commercial radio. The full incorporation of the studio mixing techniques, electronics and use of layering would lead to the establishment of rock. "Pop" music, as a specific sub-genre, would eschew the electric guitar driven sound of rock in favor of synthesizers, acoustic instruments, and more subdued rhythm sections. At the same time, dance music, particularly the "disc jockeys" at urban parties were creating a different road into post-modernity in music. Their approach was to take records on turntables, and by hand control the speed of the turntable, and using the mixing board as an instrument, add reverb and other sound effects. At the same time they would speak into the microphone, using the dance tracks as a background for their own speech, which would lead, eventual to eventually evolving into the DJing and MCing of hip hop music. Further evolution in the 1990s turntablism movement focused on the DJing aspect of hip hop, with music made almost entirely of samples. DJ Shadow is the most well known turntablist DJ, but Q-Bert and Mixmaster Mike of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, DJ Spooky and Cut Chemist were also highly influential. In classical music, minimalism is usually regarded as the first "post-modern" style. Minimalism was in part a reaction to the perceived inaccessibility and sterility of modernist classical music of such composers in the tradition of Arnold Schoenberg, Pierre Boulez, the early John Cage, and others among the avant-garde. The earliest minimalist composers included LaMonte Young, who had studied under Schoenberg and incorporated elements of serialism in his early minimalist works, and Terry Riley, who was largely influenced in his composition by the repetitiveness of Indian music and rock music. Minimalism and related postmodern musical styles laid the groundwork for re-integrating popular and 'highbrow' music, which had been separated since the rise of modernism. By the 1970s, avant-garde rock and pop musicians (such as Suicide and Throbbing Gristle) had become interested in electronic instrumentation, the use of Eastern rhythms and unconventional instruments (for example the use of the sitar by the Beatles) and drone-like or repetitive music, stylistically similar to minimalism (such as the music of The Velvet Underground, Tangerine Dream, and Kraftwerk). Tape loops also prefigured the use of 'sampling' in techno music and house music, and the 'scratching' of hip-hop. Moreover the 'ironic' 'cut and paste' approach of Stockhausen's later work (which used elements from both 'high' and 'low' art) was highly influential on many pop and rock composers in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s: see, for example, Frank Zappa or The Residents. (See contemporary music). It should also be noted that postmodern jazz has also been highly influential on contemporary pop/rock music. This has developed from two main sources, the innovations of Charlie Parker in the immediate post-war period, and (again) Arnold Schoenberg: this time, however, not so much his serial work as his pre-WWI 'atonal' style, where all forms of tonality were abandoned. The merging of these two traditions led to the development of free Jazz in the 1950s by Ornette Coleman who went onto inspire a new generation of musicians in the 1960s and 1970s: for example, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler and Sun Ra. Free jazz was hugely influential on many avant-garde rock musicians: for example Captain Beefheart, and, in a completely different way The Stooges and Lou Reed (who eventually worked with Coleman in 2003 on the Raven album). These artists themselves were influential on a generation of punk musicians in the 1970s and 1980s (see for example The Lounge Lizards and The Pop Group). In the 1970s Miles Davis repaid the compliment by incorporating elements of funk and rock into his sound, most notably on his Bitches Brew album. Again, this has been hugely influential on contemporary rock and jazz. The postmodern musical condition: the condition of music in postmodernity As a musical condition, postmodern music is music situated after the modern age, during the present period, where music has become valued primarily a commodity and a culture, rather than a form of idealized modernist expression for its own sake. Some authors have suggested that the transition in music from modern to postmodern occurred in the late 1960s, influenced in part by psychedelic music and the late Beatles albums. (Sullivan, 1995, p.217.) In the 1970s, the postmodern condition continued with the advent of disco, punk rock, heavy metal, hip-hop, and a newly-commodified country music. The difference between modern music and postmodern music then is that modernist music was characterized by a focus on musical fundamentals and expression. In postmodern music, however, the commodity being sold by record companies and pop stars is not the fundamentals of the music, but the cultural image surrounding the music, which reverberates through film, television, and other media. Causes and Theories of Post-Modernity in Music Another theory advanced is that post-modernity is the explicit reaction to the rise of a mass production consumer society, and is linked to the need to create coherence and aesthetic value from the artifacts and patterns of that society. Postmodern musical artists - Patricia Barber - Luciano Berio - John Cage - Ornette Coleman - John Adams - Philip Glass - Steve Reich - George Rochberg - Alfred Schnittke - Ezequiel Viñao - LaMonte Young - John Zorn - The Beatles - The Velvet Underground - Pink Floyd - Frank Zappa - Wire (band) - The Butthole Surfers - Throbbing Gristle - King Tubby - Kurtis Blow - Grandmaster Flash - Grand Wizard Theodore - Run DMC - Pete DJ Jones - Kool DJ Herc - Public Enemy - Invisibl Skratch Piklz - Mixmaster Mike - DJ Shadow - Cut Chemist - DJ Spooky - list of turntablists - Albright, Daniel (2004). Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226012670. - Sullivan, Henry W. (1995) The Beatles with Lacan: Rock ‘n’ Roll as requiem for the modern age. (Sociocriticism: Literature, Society and History Series Vol. 4). New York: Lang. xiv. - Larkin, C., ed. (1995). The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music, vol 1–5. England: Guinness Publishing.

<urn:uuid:fc484d76-f99e-459f-9102-77964ed90d7c>

Vitovsky, Dmytro [Vitovs’kyj], b 8 November 1887 in Medukha, Stanyslaviv county, Galicia, d 8 July 1919 near Ratibor, Silesia, Germany. (Photo: Dmytro Vitovsky.) Military officer. A student activist at Lviv University, he later organized educational and paramilitary organizations in Stanyslaviv. During the First World War he served in the Legion of Ukrainian Sich Riflemen as a company commander and carried out special assignments. He was chairman of the Ukrainian Military Committee, which staged the November Uprising in Lviv, 1918. He was briefly (1–5 November 1918) the first commander of the Ukrainian Galician Army and then minister of defense of the Western Ukrainian National Republic (until 13 February 1919). On 1 January 1919 he was promoted from major to colonel. After serving on the Ukrainian National Rada (February–April 1919) he attended the Paris Peace Conference as a member of the Western Ukrainian delegation. On the return flight his plane crashed, and he was killed. [This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).] Encyclopedia of Ukraine

<urn:uuid:e8053f17-9347-442a-a04f-bdd5dec73eb5>

The Environmental Bureau of Investigation (EBI) is dedicated to the protection of public resources through the application and enforcement of environmental laws. A citizen-based investigative outfit, EBI investigates pollution sources and, when necessary, prosecutes those responsible. EBI's methods include investigation, prosecution, exposure and education. The goals of EBI are to investigate and prosecute environmental crime, assist individuals and groups in their fight against polluters, develop public education tools to empower citizens to stop pollution, and publish and publicize information on pollution sources and sites. To ensure scientifically and legally strong arguments, EBI researches its cases thoroughly and focuses on a few projects that directly relate to its objectives. EBI's success in these endeavours is determined by the environmental action and clean-up taken as a result of our involvement. It is hoped that as a result of EBI's activities, our environment and resources will be better protected.

<urn:uuid:35336c2d-2f62-498a-ad1d-e4980292d812>

Toilets are by far the main source of water use in the home, accounting for nearly 30 percent of an average home's indoor water consumption. Older, inefficient toilets that use as much as 6 gallons per flush also happen to be a major source of wasted water in many homes. Recent advancements have allowed toilets to use 1.28 gallons per flush or less while still providing equal or superior performance. This is 20 percent less water than the current federal standard of 1.6 gallons per flush. The WaterSense label is used on toilets that are independently certified to meet rigorous criteria for both performance and efficiency. Only water–saving toilets that complete the certification process can earn the WaterSense label. By replacing old, inefficient toilets with WaterSense labeled models, the average family can reduce water used for toilets by 20 to 60 percent—that's nearly 13,000 gallons of water savings for your home every year! They could also save more than $110 per year in water costs, and $2,200 over the lifetime of the toilets. Nationally, if all old, inefficient toilets in the United States were replaced with WaterSense labeled models, we could save 520 billion gallons of water per year, or the amount of water that flows over Niagara Falls in about 12 days. Look for the WaterSense Label! Whether remodeling a bathroom, starting construction of a new home, or simply replacing an old, leaky toilet that is wasting money and water, installing a WaterSense labeled toilet is a high-performance, water-efficient option worth considering. WaterSense labeled toilets are available at a wide variety of price points and a broad range of styles and in many areas, utilities offer rebates and vouchers that can lower the price of a WaterSense labeled toilet. Are you a manufacturer interested in labeling your high-efficiency toilet, or a retailer or distributor interested in selling WaterSense labeled toilets? Please visit the Final Specification for Toilets page for more detailed information.

<urn:uuid:6f99bd13-cf03-403a-8baf-ba4a353615ac>

Two-way approaches to Indigenous mental health literacy Nagel, Tricia M., Thompson, Carolyn, Robinson, Gary, Condon, John, and Trauer, Thomas (2009) Two-way approaches to Indigenous mental health literacy. Australian Journal of Primary Health, 15 (1). pp. 50-55. |PDF (Published Version) - Repository staff only - Requires a PDF viewer such as GSview, Xpdf or Adobe Acrobat Reader| View at Publisher Website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/PY08052 This study was designed to provide important new information about relapse prevention in Indigenous 1 people with chronic mental illness. It aimed to explore Indigenous mental health promotion with Aboriginal mental health workers (AMHW) in order to develop strategies for effective mental health intervention. The research was conducted in three remote Indigenous communities in the top end of the Northern Territory with AMHW. Assessment, psycho-education, and care-planning resources were developed with local AMHW through exploration of local Indigenous perspectives of mental health promotion. Qualitative research methods and an ethnographic approach were used to elicit information, and data included key informant interviews, participant observation, music, photography and story telling. The study confirms that Indigenous people in remote communities prefer to use story telling and local language, local artwork and local music to convey health information. It also confirms that family and local practitioners are key cultural informants and that indirect, holistic and ‘two-way’ messages are preferred. |Item Type:||Article (Refereed Research - C1)| |FoR Codes:||11 MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES > 1117 Public Health and Health Services > 111701 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health @ 50%| 11 MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES > 1117 Public Health and Health Services > 111712 Health Promotion @ 50% |SEO Codes:||92 HEALTH > 9203 Indigenous Health > 920399 Indigenous Health not elsewhere classified @ 100%| |Deposited On:||02 Jun 2010 10:09| |Last Modified:||12 Feb 2011 21:36| Last 12 Months: 0 |Citation Counts with External Providers:| Repository Staff Only: item control page

<urn:uuid:8e348766-b138-471b-979d-ac10664bc74a>

The thesis describes in detail the area of the uranium lodes in the South Alligator River valley in the Northern Territory of Australia. The four land forms are described, together with the soils developed on them, and the morphological and genetic relationships of the latter are discussed. The published stratigraphy of the area is recapitulated, and some changes of viewpoint are advocated: an unconformity within the Upper Proterozoic rocks is described; the characteristics of the Scinto Breccia unit are ascribed to silicification of diverse stratigraphic units; the allegedly organic origin of calcareous rocks of the Koolpin Formation is disputed; and the lack of obvious signs of unconformity between the Stag Creek Volcanics (Archaeozoic?) and the Lower Proterozoic sequence is pointed out. A petrological study of a collection of rocks from the area is made, and this includes a description of some diaspore-rich volcanics in which the uranium mineralisation appears to be of syngenetic origin. The characteristics of the ore bodies or radioactive prospects are described, together with the ore-deposition controls. An epigenetic origin is postulated for most of the uranium deposits. Exploration techniques employed in the discovery or evaluation of the ore bodies are discussed, and the results are reported of a programme of geochemical testing of stream waters in the drainage basin. It is concluded that, in this area, the geochemical technique has only limited usefulness for the discovery of uranium. The extraction of ore, and its subsequent treatment by solvent-extraction processes is described. An account is given of some other uranium occurrences in northern Australia viz., the Rum Jungle, Mary Kathleen and Pandanus Creek ore bodies, and the radioactive or mineralised prospects at Denham River and Saunders Creek in Western Australia. A general account of theories of emplacement of uranium ore in Australia and elsewhere postulates an epigenetic origin from a magmatic source for most of the Australian deposits, but accepts a sedimentary origin for the uranium associated with conglomerates. A brief historical survey of developments in the uranium industry pays special attention to events in Australia.

<urn:uuid:7ac3dae2-82cc-4eaa-9425-179a450f3e21>

- FREE unlimited amendments - FREE bibliography page - Free title page - Free Plagiarism report - Free Formatting - Unique customer support - Properly cited paper - 100% original papers - 275 words per page - Any citation style - Guaranteed Privacy - 24/7 customer support A literature review gives an account of works published by researchers and scholars. Students may write literature reviews in form of assignments or in form of annotated bibliography. It is written in form of a discursive prose, and does not summarize one piece of literature after the other. Literature review is often part of an essay’s introduction, research report or thesis’ introduction. Students should organize literature reviews into sections presenting themes or including a relevant story. Literature reviews aim at evaluating and synthesizing published material in accordance to the guiding concept of the research question. Students write literature reviews in order to inform the readers about their knowledge and ideas concerning a topic. Moreover, literature reviews show the strengths and weaknesses of a literature topic. Literature review is a kind of writing defined by a guiding concept. Such a guiding concept may be the problem or issue under discussion, research objective or an argumentative thesis. Students are not supposed to use a set of summaries or mere descriptive list of available material when writing literature reviews. Literature reviews help students to enhance their knowledge about a topic, and help them gain a wide variety of skills. The skills demonstrated by students writing literature reviews are as following: The first skill is information seeking which is the ability of students to efficiently scan literature. Scanning is done using computerized methods or manually in order to identify the useful books and articles. The second skill is critical appraisal. This refers to the ability of students to apply analytical principles in order to identify valid and unbiased studies. A literature review should portray organization, and must relate to the research question or thesis formulated. A literature review must also synthesize results by summarizing them to known and unknown. The other vital point is for a literature review to identify controversial areas in literature and lastly, to formulate questions that require in-depth research. A student needs to identify the research question that his or her literature review helps to define. Moreover, a student must identify or know the scope of the literature review, and the types of publications used when writing the literature review. It is essential for a student to do enough research in order to gather relevant material for writing a literature review. Moreover, the research has to be narrow enough to exclude the irrelevant material that do not form part of the literature review. Critical analysis of a literature review is of the essence. This ensures that a student or writer writers a high-quality literature review. When writing annotated bibliography, students should not summarize each item but instead they should follow themes and critically assess the literature review material. Students should state the scope of the literature review using an overall introduction and conclusion. Grouping of items into sections helps students to show relationships and comparisons. Literature review writing can be a complicated task to students. Hence, students should seek literature review writing help from writing sites and companies. A reliable company should provide custom literature review papers at an affordable price. Moreover, the customized literature review papers must be written from scratch by professional, academic writers. It is essential for a reliable company to hire writers who can write literature reviews on diverse literature books and based on several topics. Our company provides the best literature review papers for sale.

<urn:uuid:5a4a3cc5-e220-47fd-8be8-74b2fde12a23>

- tomato (n.) - 1753, earlier tomate (c.1600), from Spanish tomate (mid-16c.) from Nahuatl tomatl "a tomato," literally "the swelling fruit," from tomana "to swell." Spelling probably influenced by potato (1565). A member of the nightshade family, all of which contain poisonous alkaloids. Introduced in Europe from the New World, by 1550 they regularly were consumed in Italy but grown only as ornamental plants in England and not eaten there or in the U.S. at first. An encyclopedia of 1753 describes it as "a fruit eaten either stewed or raw by the Spaniards and Italians and by the Jew families of England." Introduced in U.S. as part of a program by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson (1789), but not commonly eaten until after c.1830. Alternative name love apple and alleged aphrodisiac qualities have not been satisfactorily explained; perhaps from Italian name pomodoro, taken as from adorare "to adore," but probably actually from d'or "of gold" (in reference to color) or de Moro "of the Moors." Slang meaning "an attractive girl" is recorded from 1929, on notion of juicy plumpness.

<urn:uuid:df48412b-20e8-4c8f-b786-b0c10729930a>

Rewriting PTR salinity, alkalinity, chemical toxicity and drainage based on the wrb-standard Review of available information in the SGDBE In the SGDBE, the attribute WR gives information about the water regime of the STU following 4 classes. This attribute gives information about the duration and the depth where the soil is saturated by water during the year. The relation between the values of this attribute and the drainage classes used for CGMS is given in Table 4-21. The class 4 of WR is corresponding to the VP (very poorly drained) class used in CGMS. But for the other classes of WR, there are several CGMS classes that correspond. For these WR classes, it is necessary to use other information to choose which CGMS class corresponds. To do so, the information from the soil name (FAO85- FULL, FAO90-FULL and WRB-FULL) and the agricultural limitations (AGLIM1, AGLIM2) will be used. These attributes will also be used when WR is not given (that is the case for all the data coming from the Digital Soil Map of the World). The current CGMS rule for drainage class on the part of the SGDBE where soil names were given in the FAO-UNESCO 1974 legend is evaluated. Note that not each individual record is compared separately. First, all records of the CGMS rule have been applied. Thus, for example, not all Gleysols will receive value ‘P’; only the STUs that have not been assigned ‘W’ or ‘VP’ because of a drained or flooded phase. For each occurrence of the rule, the values taken by the WR attribute (except when WR = 0) were counted (Table 4-22). Some occurrences show a good correlation with WR: - with a good estimation (in bold): for Gleysols, gleyic soils, Podzoluvisols, Arenosols and coarse-textured soils; - with a bad estimation (in light grey): for Histosols, Placic Podzols, Plinthic Acrisols, Stagnic soils, Humic Podzols, Albic Luvisols, Orthic Greyzems and Vertisols. The occurrences using the phase are generally dispatched in several WR classes. This result is not surprising because phases are generally not well defined. Moreover, the use of phases was very heterogeneous from one country to another. Some soil types have more or less a high variability in their water regime: - for Planosols, the water regime is mainly between 2 and 3; - for Fluvisols, the water regime is mainly 1, but could be 2 or 3. In the FAO-UNESCO 1974 legend, the water regime of soils is described by: - hydromorphic properties; - aridic moisture regime; - presence of an albic E horizon overlying a slowly permeable horizon; - presence of a sulphuric horizon or sulphidic materials (see 4.4). The different soil names for which one or more of these characteristics are present, or are not allowed, are listed in Table 4-23. Hydromorphic properties mark soils showing one or more of the following properties: - saturation by groundwater; - occurrence of a Histic H horizon; - dominant hues that are neutral N, or bluer than 10Y; - saturation with water at some periods of the year, or artificially drained, with evidence of reduction processes or of reduction and segregation of iron reflected by different criteria like for example: - in Podzols, the presence of a duripan or a thin iron pan; - in soils having an argillic horizon, iron-manganese concretions larger than 2 mm; - in Ferralsols, plinthite that forms a continuous phase within 30 cm. For some soil groups, the presence of hydromorphic properties was not defined because it was not possible to separate them at the scale of the Soil Map of the World. It is the case for Fluvisols, Regosols, Luvic Kastanozems, Luvic Chernozems and Nitosols. In the Soil Map of the European Communities (CEC, 1985), several subdivisions were added: - showing hydromorphic properties: - within 50 cm from the soil surface: Gleyo-eutric, Gleyo-calcaric and Gleyo-dystric Fluvisols, - related to surface water stagnation during most of the year: Stagno-eutric, Stagno-Calcaric Stagno-dystric Gleysols, Stagno-gleyic Cambisols, Stagno-gleyic Luvisols, Stagnogleyic Podzoluvisols, Stagno-gleyic Podzols. - having a thin iron pan: Placi-dystric Histosols. If the soil name can give information about the presence of hydromorphic properties and their depth of appearance, it gives no information about the duration of the saturation by water periods. In the Digital Soil Map of the World, there is a rule for drainage estimation based on FAO soil name, topsoil texture, slope and phases (Table 4-24). The estimation gives a repartition in % to each drainage class that enables calculation of areas. The FAO rule for drainage class on the part of the SGDBE where soil names were given in the FAO-UNESCO 1974 legend was evaluated. For each occurrence of the rule, the values taken by the WR attribute (except when WR = 0) were counted (Table 4-25). All the occurrences for which we have WR values show a good correlation with WR: • with a good estimation (in bold) • with a bad estimation (in light grey): An estimation is considered as bad if the dominant FAO drainage class doesn’t correspond to the WR value, or if there are two classes having equal percentage, even if one corresponds to the WR value. Topsoil texture, slope and phase don’t show an impact on WR values. In the FAO-UNESCO 1990 legend, the water regime of soils is described by: - gleyic properties; - stagnic properties; - presence of an E horizon abruptly overlying a slowly permeable horizon; - presence of a sulphuric horizon or sulphidic materials (see 4.4); - well drained; - imperfect to very poor drainage; - very poor drainage or undrained. The different soil names for which one or more of these characteristics are present or are not allowed, are listed in Table 4-26. Gleyic and stagnic properties refer to soil material which is saturated with water at some periods of the year, or throughout the year, in most years, and which show evidence of reduction processes or of reduction and segregation of iron. Gleyic properties are related to saturation by groundwater. Stagnic properties are related to saturation by surface water within 50 cm. In WRB the water regime is described by: - Gleysols: soils having gleyic properties within 50 cm from the soil surface; - Planosols: soils having an eluvial horizon, the lower boundary of which is marked, within 100 cm from the soil surface, by an abrupt textural change associated with stagnic properies above that boundary; - Histosols: soils having: - a folic horizon which one of its characteristics is to have water saturation for less than one month in most years; - or a histic horizon which one of its characteristics is to have water saturation for at least one month in most years; - Gelistagnic soils present a temporary water saturation at the surface caused by a frozen - Gleyic soils are soils having gleyic properties within 100 cm from the soil surface. Two specifiers can be used: - endogleyic: soils having gleyic properties between 50 and 100 cm from the soil surface; - epigleyic: soils having gleyic properties within 50 cm from the soil surface. - Oxyaquic Cryosols: Cryosols saturated with water during the thawing period and lacking redoximorphic features within 100 cm from the soil surface; - Planic soils are soils having an eluvial horizon abruptly overlying a slowly permeable horizon within 100 cm from the soil surface; - Rheic Histosols: Histosols having a water regime conditioned by surface water; - Stagnic soils are soils having stagnic properties within 50 cm from the soil surface; - Endostagnic soils are soils having stagnic properties between 50 and 100 cm from the soil surface. Gleyic properties refer to soil materials which are, at least temporarily, completely saturated with groundwater for a period that allows reducing conditions to occur and show a gleyic colour pattern. Stagnic properties refer to soil materials which are completely saturated with surface water for a period long enough to allow reducing conditions to occur and show a stagnic colour pattern. Attributes AGLIM1 and AGLIM2 Several phases are related with the water regime of the soils: drained, fragipan, flooded, phreatic. The drained phase has no definition, and becomes ‘excessively drained’ in the Instructions guide for version 4.0. When looking at the STUs having a dominant phase drained, all the values for WR are represented; the values 1, 2 and 3 are representing each of them around 30% of these STUs, the value 4 representing 8%. There is a low correlation between the phase drained and the water regime showing its bad quality. It is proposed to ignore this value in the rule. The fragipan phase is defined in the FAO-UNESCO 1974 legend. It marks soils which have the upper level of the fragipan occurring within 100 cm from the soil surface. A fragipan is a loamy (uncommonly a sandy) subsurface horizon which has a high bulk density relative to the horizons above it. It is slowly to very slowly permeable. The flooded phase has no definition. The phreatic phase is defined in the FAO-UNESCO 1974 legend. It marks soils which have a groundwater table between 3 and 5 m from the soil surface. At this depth the presence of a groundwater is not normally reflected in the morphology of the solum; however, its presence is important for the water regime of the soil. The petrocalcic phase marks soils in which the upper part of a petrocalcic horizon occurs within 100 cm from the soil surface (FAO-UNESCO, 1974). The petrocalcic horizon is a continuous cemented or indurated calcic horizon. The hydraulic conductivity is moderately slow to very slow. When the current CGMS rule for drainage was evaluated, it appears that phases have often a high variability for the WR attribute. In this case it is proposed not to use them for estimating the drainage class.

<urn:uuid:d3dbef6b-a4b3-4f9e-9468-5cf3dba27c57>

I have been discussing a multitude of issues including quantitative easing, Ricardian Equivalence, and the current state of monetary policy with Scott Sumner over the in comments of his excellent blog and it has given me the inspiration to provide a more thorough outline of my thinking. I think that the best way to think about money is, as Leland Yeager might say, in terms of monetary equilibrium. In other words, if we view money as being just one other good in a Walrasian general equilibrium model, then an excess demand (supply) of money is accompanied by an excess supply (demand) of goods and services. Thus, maintaining monetary equilibrium is essential to achieving economic stability. What’s more, the particular problem with an excess demand (or supply) of money is that money has no market of its own. Or as Keynes would say, labor cannot be shifted away from the production of goods where there is an excess supply to the manufacture of money. Further, the fact that money does not have a market of its own implies that an excess demand (supply) of money will have an impact on all markets because money is a medium of exchange. My view here is not unique. In fact, Nick Rowe recently wrote an excellent post on this very topic that rightfully referenced the work of Robert Clower. The central point is that individuals have notional demands for money, goods, and services. Notional demand is understood as the intended demand. Thus, suppose for example that everyone arrives at some centralized market with their own plans for consumption and ultimate real money balances. If there is an excess demand for say lemonade, individuals can bid up the price of lemonade and the market will clear. If the excess demand is for money, however, there exists no price to adjust to clear the market and the effective demand for goods and services will fall short of supply. A very simple way to think about monetary equilibrium is in the context of the equation of exchange: MV = PY where M is money, V is velocity, P is the price level, and Y is real output. Thus, M is the supply of money and V can be seen as the demand for money. (A particular note: velocity is understood as the number of times that the average dollar — or other medium of account* — is turned over. Thus an decrease in velocity reflects an increase in the demand for money.) Monetary equilibrium therefore implies that the product MV should be constant (and thus so should nominal GDP, or PY. Keep in mind that this is a static analysis). The maintenance of monetary equilibrium essentially implies that monetary policy should be aimed at satisfying money demand (or nominal income) rather than the price level (as is currently the case). Thus, in a growing economy, the price level should actually be falling as increases in real output and productivity put downward pressure on prices. This type of thinking loosely forms the basis for what George Selgin calls the productivity norm. Such a maintenance of monetary equilibrium has a rich history in the course of economic thought (see Selgin, 1995). So how does this framework relate to the current situation? Scott Sumner believes that the current recession could have been avoided using a nominal income target (more specifically, using nominal income futures targeting). I am not sure that I agree with this assertion, but it does fit with this framework. Allow me to explain. If Sumner is correct, then (using our simple equation of exchange model) anticipations of lower nominal income would be reflected in an increase in the demand for money or a decrease in spending (a fall in V). (Alternatively, it is possible that the increase in the demand for money could be an exogenous event such as described by Keynes when there is an increase in uncertainty.) If the central bank was targeting nominal income, they would respond by increasing the money supply to offset the fall in velocity such that nominal income remains at the target level. Sumner, however, likes to view this phenomenon through the lens of nominal income and expectations rather than through a monetary equilibrium framework (or at least that is my impression). Thus, in his mind, the nominal income target signals to economic agents that the Federal Reserve will do everything that it can to make sure that nominal income does not fall. If the Fed is credible on this point, then nominal income will not fall because people expect the Fed to follow through on this promise. I actually think that my view of monetary equilibrium is consistent with this view, but that Sumner simply has a different way of describing the policy. In any event, Sumner has recently expressed his concern with the productivity norm view because (as I understand it) he is concerned with nominal wage rigidity. Thus, the falling prices implied by the productivity norm might actually produce malign effects. He would prefer a broader idea of a nominal income target. He might be correct, but I do not share this concern about wage rigidity. The reason is because wage rigidity should only be a concern when prices are falling due to adverse aggregate demand shocks. Falling prices due to productivity advances should have no effect on the nominal wage. In fact, rising productivity should be consistent with higher real wages (in this case due to falling prices). In any event, one need not worry about this problem under the current circumstances because the decline in nominal income is the result of a severe adverse aggregate demand shock. I am inclined to think that nominal income targeting is certainly more desirable than the current regime. However, the ultimate question is whether or not the current situation could have been avoided under a nominal income targeting regime. Scott Sumner believes that we could have avoided the recession and simply experienced a burst of the housing bubble had we followed a nominal income target. I actually think that we might not have even had a housing bubble if we had a nominal income target (that allows for falling prices). In any event, the current situation has raised interesting questions about the state of monetary policy and monetary stability. Hopefully, we will also stumble upon some of the answers. * “Money is here called a medium and not, as customary, a unit of account because, clearly, money itself is not a unit, but the good whose unit is used as the unit of account” Niehans (1978).

<urn:uuid:022cf86e-2bef-4d01-b35d-75aefbb0ba4c>

The Farmers Alliance The populist movement first came into being in small communities far from any cities or centers of political or cultural activity. During the summer of 1890 farm families in the agrarian South and West gathered in their respective areas to discuss their problems. At these gatherings, agrarian families listened to the speeches of recruiters from the “National Farmers’ Alliance.” The Farmers’ Alliance grew at an astounding speed. During the late 1800’s discontent among the agrarian population was becoming a worldwide issue. With the advent of advanced forms of transportation and communication the farmers were suddenly hurled into a far larger market that they no longer were in control of. Due to the increased opportunity for competition, prices of crops began to drop. However, this same phenomenon affected other products as well and, although farmers were making less profit quantitatively, their actual purchasing power (or qualitative profit) was increasing. Farmers expressed grievances about the cost of shipping their goods, however during this period the price of shipping actually decreased. All of these things, however, were still detrimental to the agrarian community because, up until this point, they had not required the services of the railroad to ship crops, and they had not been in need of as many manufactured goods to support their farms. All of this can be deceiving. While general economic trends were more positive than anything else, the situation of farming communities varied widely from location to location. In fact, no nationwide patters could be clearly defined. In reality there was a more pressing issue that lead to the ascension of the populist movement: Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, farmers were having the distinct feeling that their situation was becoming worse. It is said that reality is perception, and this is certainly true in any social science because people do not react to their environment, they react to their perception of their environment. The farmers perceived doomsday. In the 1870’s and 80’s there was a growing social trend favoring cities and industry. Farmers’ children were leaving their homes and family businesses to make it big in the city. Literature was published during this time describing the drab and meaningless existence of farm life. During this time multitudes of farmers' organizations were changing and merging with each other. Two major organizations emerged, both calling themselves the Farmers’ Alliance: The Northwestern Alliance in Mississippi and the West, and the Southern Alliance (however, the geographical coverage of these two organizations is not highly clear-cut). The Southern Alliance was started in Texas in 1875 and began absorbing other agrarian societies after 1886. The primary concerns of this society were residual systems from the old Civil War South. The sharecropping system, crop-liens, and overworked land ranked at the top of their lists. The Northwestern Alliance was similar to the Southern alliance, but differed on policies of the Southern alliance such as secrecy, and segregated organizations for Blacks. In 1889 the Southern alliance took on the “National Farmers’ Alliance” title and absorbed the greater part of the Northwestern alliance. The Alliance then formed its own political party due to a disapproval of both the Republican and Democratic parties. The first Peoples’ Party was formed in 1890. The party’s demands were for a federal farmers reserve (the sub-treasury) that would allow crops to be temporarily sold to the government, which would then hold them until the most opportune selling time presented itself, then distribute the profits back to the farmers. They also demanded, and much more within reason, the free coinage of both gold and silver, an abolition on tariffs, a federal income tax, the direct election of senators, and railroad regulation. During the elections of 1890 the fledgling people’s party gained thirty-eight supporters in congress. The sub-treasury was a system devised by the populists to combat what they perceived to be a bad market for their products. It would allow farmers to store their crops in government warehouses and then take out a government loan for up to 80% of the market price of said goods. The loan would come to term upon the sale of the crops, which could be held until ideal market conditions presented themselves. This is an ingenious idea, except that it is basically asking for government aid for farmers and therefore it was slightly harder to gain acceptance at the national level than it was to convince their neighbors that it was a good idea. The Federal Income Tax Why would a farmer who is struggling to keep their home ask for a new tax? Well, boys and girls, is it simple. How does the government make money? Collecting taxes. How did the government make their money at this time? Property taxes. Who had the most money? Factory owners and businessmen did. Who had the most land? Farmers. Who paid the most money? Farmers. Is this fair?. The Election of 1892 After the 1890 elections the populists formed the political party that gave them their name, the new People’s party was also known as the Populist Party. Up until this time the Populists had been participating with the Democratic Party to avoid splitting the white vote by forming a new party, and thus neutering the White’s Supremacy. The new party was formed because the Populists were not content with the false support provided to them by their democratic congressmen. The Democrats played off of the popularity of the populist movement, but rarely followed through on their campaign promises. The new Populist Party gained over one million votes in the election of 1892 and gained 22 electoral votes. Populist governors were installed in Kansas and North Dakota, and ten congressmen, five senators, and approximately fifteen hundred state legislators were installed. The populists never ran a more successful election, but the Democrats, through coercion, fraud, and manipulation, suppressed the populists’ following during the election of 1892. Push for Equality There was one unintended side effect of the populist movement. In the South, where racism was most rampant, there were certain populist politicians who saw a definite similarity of condition between white and black farmers. Both were in the same bad situation. Blacks and Whites served together on populist election committees, spoke from the same platforms, and even served on the same juries. It was unheard of for a black to be called for jury duty at this time. In 1892 a black populist was threatened with a lynching. Two thousand white populist farmers gathered in the area and protected him. Some of these farmers rode all night to get there. The populist sheared across race lines in many ways. Then there was The Panic of 1893. Primary Source: "America Past and Present" by Divine, and Lecture from Mr. Gruver's American History Class.

<urn:uuid:c33d073b-2ea0-475d-accb-a6ce40ed0fd8>

A means of controlling a horse mostly used in western riding. For most of history, horses were controlled using the two reins independently to indicate which direction you wanted the horse to go. Of course, in the old west , this caused a problem becuase you might need a hand for say, shooting or roping . And you know, training your horse to repsond to leg pressure is just too much work I guess. Insert neck reining. So basically what you do is train the horse to respond to the pressure of the reins on the neck. The reigns are tied in a knot so it kinda forms a loop. To move the horse right, you move the reins to the right so that the left rein falls against his neck. When the horse feels the rein on the left side of his neck, he is trained to move away from it, hence he goes in the direction you want. And there you go, one handed control with very little pressure on the mouth being invovled. And now you know.

<urn:uuid:89317606-0827-4536-b1e4-77141c663946>

On 26 June 2012 it is the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. This important day was created by the United Nations General Assembly to help create a society free of illegal drugs and drug abuse. The date raises awareness of two important world issues -World Drug Day and theBlue Heart Campaign against Human Trafficking.Established in 1987, the day is now in its 25th year and its pro-health campaign is stronger than ever. Each year the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) selects a theme for the day and this year it is Health. Events will be held all over the world, from Australia to Vietnam, to look at the effects of drugs in local communities and how we can stop them. From the dangerous effects of cannabis to the prevention of HIV/AIDS and needle sharing, there will be lots of information available to get educated and join the fight against drug abuse.

<urn:uuid:63c7c11e-2f34-44bf-82d7-4bd289e35b9f>

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, already keen interest in prayer has increased as part of the frenzied upsurge in religion in general. Topping The New York Times' bestseller list is a small book called The Prayer of Jabez, with "its message that lives can be profoundly changed by the power of prayer." Images bombard us on television regularly of masses of humanity kneeling in supplication, praying to some all-powerful deity. These images only increase the perception that prayer is a potent force in dealing with the world's problems that is endorsed by almost all of humanity. Many religious people want to cling to the ancient belief in the supernatural, including prayer, and yet accept the conclusions and benefits of modern science. They can't have it both ways. To study the natural world, scientists must have an implicit assumption that it operates only by natural, predictable processes, which cannot be affected arbitrarily by an all-powerful deity. One of the major ways that scientists provide proof of theories is through well-designed studies, of which the "gold standard" is the large, randomized, prospective, controlled, double-blind type. If such a study could be influenced by a personal god who responded to prayers to change the results, science would be in shambles. There would be no way ever to do a valid experiment since investigators couldn't be sure that someone, somewhere, hadn't uttered a specific or generic prayer that would affect the study. In short, science by its very nature, rejects any influence of prayer on the physical world. Even though prayer is an irrational concept, could it nevertheless be tested scientifically? Francis Galton, the brilliant and eccentric cousin of Charles Darwin, thought so and gave the idea scientific legitimacy. Galton was the father of biometry and a central figure in the founding of modern statistical analysis. He argued that regardless of how the prayers "may be supposed to operate," the efficacy of prayer . . . is a perfectly appropriate and legitimate subject of scientific inquiry" because it can be tested statistically. He then proceeded to set up such studies. In one statistical study, Galton examined the longevity of clergy. He reasoned that clergy should be the longest lived of all since they were the most "prayerful class" of all and among the most prayed for. When Galton compared the longevity of eminent clergy with eminent doctors and lawyers, the clergy were the shortest lived of the three groups. In this study of the clergy, he cited a previous study by Guy (Galton wasn't the first to think of analyzing prayer statistically but usually gets the credit) where Guy found prayer did not protect royalty, who were much prayed for, when compared to other members of the aristocracy. In analyzing the data on royalty, Galton concluded: "Sovereigns are literally the shortest lived of all who have the advantage of affluence." Galton looked for other statistical data. He examined the insurance rates for ships. He reasoned that ships carrying missionaries and pilgrims should have lower rates since frequent praying by the occupants should decrease the number of accidents. He found that the rates were the same; ships carrying missionaries and pilgrims sank just as often as other ships. Following up on Galton's statistical studies on prayer, Rupert Sheldrake, a Cambridge-trained plant biologist, did one of his own, examining the effects of prayer in India. Most people there prefer having a son, and a tremendous amount of praying goes into the effort to produce one. Sheldrake examined statistics of live male births in India and used data from England as a control where the preference for sons was less strong. He found that in both England and India there were 106 males to 100 females, just as in every other country. He stated, "if this enormous amount of psychic effort and praying of holy men were working, you would expect on average the percentage of live male births to be higher." Although these statistical studies from the nineteenth century strongly suggest that prayer is not effective, they do not meet the "gold standard" of a completely valid scientific study. The media regularly mention a large number of contemporary studies that supposedly scientifically validate the beneficial effects of prayer on human health. So what is the truth in this matter? Actually, there are only three that meet the "gold standard." Happily, the fact that there are only three studies considerably reduces the amount of information freethinkers need to acquire to refute frequent and erroneous claims. When we say that a finding in a scientific study is statistically significant, "significant" has a specific statistical meaning. To be considered significant, a finding must be (.05) or less, which means the probability that it could be due to chance is 5 in 100. The main point to appreciate is that this figure, although reasonable, is strictly arbitrary. Therefore, the figure of (.05) is borderline significant, .04 (a probability of 4 in a 100 of being due to chance) is considered significant, and .06 (6 in 100) is considered not significant. The figure (.05) is the one accepted for "ordinary" scientific studies. But what criterion should be applied in proving a supernatural finding? After all, as the old saw goes, extraordinary claims should require extraordinary proof, and this requirement should especially apply to claims of the supernatural. The James Randi Educational Foundation has a standing offer of one million dollars to anyone who can demonstrate any supernatural event under carefully controlled scientific conditions. The foundation has never had a single person who even got past the preliminary testing. Its members think that a study that would prove a claim of the supernatural should eliminate the possibility that the result could be by chance, in the range of 1 in 10,000,000, a far cry from 5 in 100. Robert Park, in his excellent book, Voodoo Science, observes that a characteristic of voodoo science is that there are always very small differences in studies, just barely detectable, and that can't be amplified in further investigations. These barely detectable positive results usually indicate flaws in the studies themselves rather than real findings. Let's examine in some detail the three studies on intercessory prayer that were large, prospective, randomized, double-blind ones--the only three that pass muster as valid scientific investigations of the effects of prayer on human health. Intercessory prayer (prayer at a distance) was chosen so that the placebo effect of direct prayer would be eliminated. All of these studies were done on coronary care unit (CCU) patients. The first study was entitled "Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population" by Randolph Byrd, M.D., published in the Southern Medical Journal, July 1988. Dr. Byrd stated: "My study concerning prayer and patients in a general hospital coronary care unit was designed to answer two questions: (1) Does intercessory prayer to the Judeo-Christian God have any effect on the patient's medical condition and recovery while in the hospital? (2) How are these effects characterized, if present?" Over ten months, 393 patients admitted to the CCU at San Francisco General Hospital were randomized to an intercessory prayer group (192 patients) or to a control group (201 patients). After randomization, each patient in the prayer group was assigned to three to seven intercessors, who were all "born-again Christians (according to the Gospel of John 3:3)" of various denominations. Dr. Byrd wrote: "The patients' first name, diagnosis, and general condition, along with pertinent updates on their condition, were given to the intercessors. The intercessory prayer was done outside the hospital daily until the patient was discharged from the hospital. Under the direction of a coordinator, each intercessor was asked to pray daily for a rapid recovery and for prevention of complications and death, in addition to other areas of prayer they believed to be beneficial to the patient." The results were summarized in "Table 2" of the Byrd study entitled "Results of intercessory Prayer." There was no statistically significant difference between the prayer and control group in these measurements: days in CCU after entry; days in hospital after entry; number of discharge medications. Only when a list of 26 "New Problems, Diagnoses, and Therapeutic Events After Entry" was compiled was any statistically differences found and then only in 6 of the items: congestive heart failure (.03); diuretics (.05); cardiopulmonary arrest (.02); pneumonia (.03); antibiotics (.005); intubation/ ventilation (.002). When Dr. Byrd subjected these items to multivariate analysis (a statistical method of analyzing the overall significance when multiple factors are positive), he found the prayer group to better the control group at the statistically significant level of (.0001). In "Table 3," "Results of Scoring the Postentry Hospital Course," he constructed three categories, "Good, Intermediate, and Bad," using a self-designed and previously not scientifically validated method. The prayer group bettered the control group at a level of (.01). Although this study appears to meet the "gold standard" of a large, prospective, randomized, double-blind investigation, scientists have pointed out a number of flaws: The study was not "blinded' in two respects: 1) Janet Greene, the coordinator of the study, on whom Dr. Byrd depended for the collection of data, knew exactly who was being prayed for, and interacted regularly with the patients in the study. 2) "Table 3" was formulated by Dr. Byrd at the request of editors who initially evaluated his paper after the "blinding" had been removed. There was no difference in clear-cut end points such as days in the CCU, days in the hospital, or mortality between the two groups. Only when complicated statistical analyses were done on a long list of items do any data emerge that favor the prayed-for group--hardly evidence of an all-powerful deity. Also, if prayer had any effect, an overall improvement would be expected. Of the six items where the prayer group did better, four were of borderline statistical significance and only two were clearly significant. Are we to conclude that the deity is only concerned with reducing antibiotic use and ventilating patients in the CCU? This study provides no information on the physicians involved in this study. This information could be important since certain physicians use antibiotics and intubate patients much more readily than others. The method that Dr. Byrd used in his scoring in "Table 3" had not been validated by any previous studies. When Irwin Tessman, Ph.D., professor of biological sciences at Purdue University, requested of Dr. Byrd that Dr. Tessman be allowed to review the raw data that went into the study, he was refused. Since Dr. Byrd's claim is one of the supernatural, it would seem appropriate that all aspects of the study be reviewed by independent investigators. The degree of obvious religiosity communicated by Dr. Byrd raises doubts that he could be completely objective on a scientific investigation of prayer, something that he deeply believes is effective. Under "Acknowledgments" at the end of the paper, he writes: "I thank God for responding to the many prayers made on behalf of the patients." The second study that appears to meet the "gold standard" for scientific studies is "A Randomized, Controlled Trial of the Effects of Remote, Intercessory Prayer on Outcomes in Patients Admitted to the Coronary Care Unit" published in the October 25, 1999 edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine. The investigators were William S. Harris, Ph.D., plus eight others of the Mid America Heart Institute. The study was conducted at Saint Luke's Hospital, Kansas City, Missouri, a private, university-associated hospital. "The purpose of the present study was to attempt to replicate Byrd's findings by testing the hypothesis that patients who are unknowingly and remotely prayed for by blinded intercessors will experience fewer complications and have a shorter hospital stay than patients not receiving such prayer," admitted the investigators. The intercessors (five to pray for each patient compared to three to seven in Byrd's study), were to pray for "a speedy recovery with no complications" plus "anything else that seemed appropriate to them." 1013 patients were randomized, 484 to the prayer group and 529 to the usual care group. After removal of those patients who spent less than 24 hours in the CCU (prayer was not started until 24 hours after admission), 524 remained in the usual care group and 466 in the prayer group (a high drop-out rate). A list of events after entry into the study was compiled, much like the one in the Byrd study, but with 34 events instead of the 26 in the Byrd Study. Again, a scheme was devised to evaluate the overall hospital course, a totally new and untested system, but different from the also new and untested one devised by Byrd. The Harris study scheme was called the Mid America Heart Institute Cardiac Care Unit (MAHI-CCU) Scoring System, and its criteria are presented in "Table 1" of his paper. The only finding in the Harris study that indicated the prayer group outperformed the control group was in using the MAHI-CCU Scoring System and then only at a probability level of (.04), a figure very close to the cut-off level of (.05). The Harris study is a much better study than the Byrd study because the number of patients is larger, it appears to be completely blinded, and the degree of religiosity of the investigators appears to be lower (although Dr. Harris supposedly supports the idea of "intelligent design"). Nevertheless, scientific investigators have noted flaws: 1) As already noted, the MAHI-CCU Scoring System has never been previously scientifically validated. Without such validation, any result produced by it is subject to question. 2) The much higher dropout rate in the first 24 hours in the prayer group is a very serious criticism of the study. The statistical probability that this finding would appear by chance is (.001), or 1 chance in a 1000, a statistically very significant finding. This higher dropout rate, since the mortality rate in the two groups was the same, suggests that the prayer group, for unknown reasons, was not quite as ill as the control group since patients discharged within a day often turn out not to have serious problems. If they were a little less ill at the start, we would expect them to have a more favorable course. 3) The conclusions stated in this investigation, as I'll describe shortly, are not justified by the data. Positive findings in a scientific study are not considered valid until replicated by independent investigators. So did the Harris study replicate the positive findings of the Byrd study? The answer is a resounding no! Of the 6 items in the list of 26 items previously described in the Byrd study where the prayed-for group did better, not one was statistically significant in the Harris study. When the Harris study subjected its data to the same scheme that Byrd had used in his evaluation of the hospital course of the patients (Table 3 in the Byrd study), the Harris study found the difference between the two groups of (.29) was not even close to being statistically significant. The Harris study did replicate the negative findings from the Byrd Study. There was no statistical difference in days in the CCU, days in the hospital, or mortality. In remarks at the end of the Harris study, the investigators stated: "Our findings support Byrd's conclusions despite the fact that we could not document an effect of prayer using his scoring system." This statement is erroneous. Not only do these findings not support Byrd's conclusions, they directly refute them. The most recent study and, I believe, the best designed one, was published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings in December 2001, entitled "Intercessory Prayer and Cardiovascular Disease Progression in a Coronary Care Unit Population: A Randomized Controlled Trial." This third "gold standard" study should settle the matter once and for all scientifically. The investigators were Jennifer M. Aviles, M.D., and six others. This trial was done on patients immediately after discharge from the Coronary Care Unit, a time when the intensity of extraneous intercessory praying by family and friends would generally be waning. Here is their summary of the findings: "Patients and Methods: In this randomized, controlled trial conducted between 1997 and 1999, a total of 799 coronary care unit patients were randomized at hospital discharge to the intercessory prayer group or to the control group. . . . The primary end point after 26 weeks was any of the following: death, cardiac arrest, rehospitalization for cardiovascular disease, coronary revascularization, or an emergency department visit for cardiovascular disease. Patients were divided into a high-group based on the presence of any of 5 risk factors (age > or = 70 years, diabetes mellitus, prior myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular disease, or peripheral vascular disease) or a low-risk group (absence of risk factors) for subsequent primary events." The investigators summarized their findings as follows: "Conclusions: As delivered in this study, intercessory prayer had no significant effect on medical outcomes after hospitalization in a coronary care unit." Not even one difference showed up between the control group and the prayed-for group. The statistical studies from the nineteenth century, and the three CCU studies on prayer are quite consistent with the fact that humanity is wasting a huge amount of time on a procedure that simply doesn't work. Nonetheless, faith in prayer is so pervasive and deeply rooted, you can be sure believers will continue to devise future studies in a desperate effort to confirm their beliefs. Now that you have the scientific information, don't let the statement that the efficacy of prayer has been proven by scientific studies go unchallenged. It's simply untrue. James W. Williamson, a retired medical doctor, is a Foundation member from Florida.

<urn:uuid:b80dbc1a-3a83-4e27-a4ce-94fb8055a252>

Many people are confused about the concepts in DBus. This page gives an analogy to the web which should help to explain things. - unique bus name - well-known bus name - object path - method name - in parameters - out parameters Web Server Analogy - unique bus name is like an IP address. In particular it is dynamic. - well-known bus name is like a hostname. It can be held by different programs at different times, but they should all implement the same API - object path is like the path on the server - interface/method name is like GET or POST - in parameters are like like GET/POST variables - out parameters are like the page which is returned. Object-Oriented Language Analogy - an object path refers to an object, such as a java.lang.Object - an interface is exactly like a Java interface - in parameters are method arguments - out parameters are method return values - unique bus name identifies the running process or application uniquely (these bus names are never re-used by a different process) - well-known bus name is a "symlink" that points to the process providing a particular API - an API is made up of objects that are expected to exist, which are expected to implement certain interfaces - see also http://log.ometer.com/2007-05.html#17

<urn:uuid:cb0bcce9-2024-41cc-84bb-9ebb601e44b8>

Most Americans believe that the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776 began American independence. While this date announced the formal break between the American colonists and the “mother country,” it did not guarantee independence. Not all Americans favored independence and most historical estimates place the number of Loyalist, or Tory, Americans near one-third of the population. Winning independence required an eight-year war that began in April, 1775 and ended with a peace treaty finalized on September 3, 1783. Unfortunately the infant nation found itself born in a world dominated by a superpower struggle between England and France. The more powerful European nations viewed the vulnerable United States, correctly, as weak and ripe for exploitation. Tragically, few Americans know of this period of crisis in our nation’s history because of the irresponsible neglect of the American education system. American independence marked the end of one chapter in American history and the beginning of another. As with all historical events this declaration continued the endless cycle of action and reaction, because nothing occurs in a vacuum. Tragically, most Americans’ historical perspective begins with their birth, rendering everything that previously occurred irrelevant. Furthermore, most educators conveniently “compartmentalize” their subjects and do not place them in the proper historical context. Since most Americans only remember the United States as a superpower they do not know of our previous struggles. Unfortunately our agenda driven education system also ignores this period and often portrays America in the most negative light. Without delving too deeply into the deteriorating relations between the American colonists and their “mother country,” declaring independence came slowly. None of the thirteen colonies trusted the other colonies and rarely acted in concert, even during times of crisis. Regional and cultural differences between New England, mid-Atlantic and the Southern colonies deeply divided the colonists. Even in these early days of America slavery proved a dividing issue, although few believed in racial equality. The “umbilical cord” with England provided the only unifying constant that bound them together culturally and politically. The colonies further possessed different forms of government as well, although they steadfastly expressed their liberties and “rights as Englishmen.” Some colonies existed as royal colonies, where the English monarch selected the governor. Proprietary colonies formed when merchant companies or individuals, called proprietors, received a royal grant and appointed the governor. Charter colonies received their charters much as proprietary colonies with individuals or merchants receiving royal charters and shareholders selected the governor. Each colony elected its own legislature and local communities made their laws mostly based on English common law. Any form of national, or “continental,” unity remained an illusion largely in the minds of the delegates of the First Continental Congress. The Second Continental Congress convened on May 10, 1775 because England ignored the grievances submitted by the First Continental Congress. Furthermore, open warfare erupted in Massachusetts between British troops and the colonial militia at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. Known today as Patriot’s Day few Americans outside of Massachusetts celebrate it, or even know of it. Setting forth their reasons for taking up arms against England, they established the Continental Army on June 14, 1775. For attempting a united front, they appointed George Washington, a Virginian, as commander-in-chief. On July 10, 1775, the Congress sent Parliament one last appeal for resolving their differences, which proved futile. While Congress determined the political future of the colonies fighting continued around Boston, beginning with the bloody battle on Breed’s Hill on June 17, 1775. Known as the Battle of Bunker Hill in our history the British victory cost over 1,000 British and over 400 American casualties. This battle encouraged the Americans because it proved the “colonials” capable of standing against British regulars. British forces withdrew from Boston in March, 1776 and awaited reinforcements from England as fighting erupted in other colonies. While Washington and the Continental Army watched the British in Boston, Congress authorized an expedition against Canada. They hoped for significant resentment of British rule by the majority of French inhabitants, something they misjudged. In September, 1775 the fledgling Continental Army launched an ambitious, but futile, two-pronged invasion of Canada. Launched late in the season, particularly for Canada, it nevertheless almost succeeded, capturing Montreal and moving on Quebec. It ended in a night attack in a snowstorm on December 31, 1775 when the commander fell dead and the second-in-command fell severely wounded. American forces did breach the city walls, however when the attack broke down these men became prisoners of war. For disrupting the flow of British supplies into America Congress organized the Continental Navy and Continental Marines on October 13, 1775 and November 10, 1775, respectively. Still, no demands for independence despite the creation of national armed forces, the invasion of a “foreign country” and all the trappings of a national government. The full title of the Declaration of Independence ends with “thirteen united States of America,” with united in lower case. I found no evidence that the Founding Fathers did this intentionally, or whether it merely reflected the writing style of the time. Despite everything mentioned previously regarding “continental” actions, the thirteen colonies jealously guarded their sovereignty. Although Congress declared independence England did not acknowledge the legality of this resolution and considered the colonies “in rebellion.” England assembled land and naval forces of over 40,000, including German mercenaries, for subduing the “insurrection.” This timeless lesson proves the uselessness of passing resolutions with no credible threat of force backing them up. Unfortunately our academic-dominated society today believes merely the passage of laws and international resolutions forces compliance. We hear much in the news today about “intelligence failures” regarding the war against terrorism. England definitely experienced an “intelligence failure” as it launched an expedition for “suppressing” this “insurrection” by a “few hotheads.” First, they under estimated the extent of dissatisfaction among the Americans, spurred into action by such “rabble rousers” as John Adams. They further under estimated the effectiveness of Washington and the Continental Army, particularly after the American victories at Trenton and Princeton. British officials further under estimated the number of Loyalists with the enthusiasm for taking up arms for the British. While Loyalist units fought well, particularly in the South and the New York frontier, they depended heavily on the support of British regulars. Once British forces withdrew, particularly in the South, the Loyalist forces either followed them or disappeared. A perennial lesson for military planners today, do not worry about your “footprint,” decisively defeat your enemy. This hardens the resolve of your supporters, influences the “neutrals” in your favor and reduces the favorability of your enemies. Regarding the “national defense” the Continental Congress and “states” did not fully cooperate against the superpower, England. The raising of the Continental Army fell on the individual colonies almost throughout the war with the Congress establishing quotas. Unfortunately, none of the colonies ever met their quota for Continental regiments, with the soldiers negotiating one-year enlistments. Continental Army recruiters often met with competition from the individual colonies, who preferred fielding their militias. The Congress offered bounties in the almost worthless “Continental Currency” and service far from home in the Continental Army. Colonial governments offered higher bounties in local currencies, or British pounds, and part-time service near home. Congress only possessed the authority for requesting troops and supplies from the colonial governors, who often did not comply. For most of the war the Continental Army remained under strength, poorly supplied, poorly armed and mostly unpaid. Volumes of history describe the harsh winters endured by the Continentals at Valley Forge and Morristown, New Jersey the following year. Colonial governments often refused supplies for troops from other colonies, even though those troops fought inside their borders. As inflation continued devaluing “Continental Currency” farmers and merchants preferred trading with British agents, who often paid in gold. This created strong resentment from the soldiers who suffered the hardships of war and the civilians who profited from this trade. In fairness, the staggering cost of financing the war severely taxed the colonial governments and local economies, forcing hard choices. Congress further declared independence as a cry for help from England’s superpower rival, France, and other nations jealous of England. Smarting from defeat in the Seven Years War (French and Indian War in America), and a significant reduction in its colonial empire, France burned for revenge. France’s ally, Spain, also suffered defeat and loss of territory during this war and sought advantage in the American war. However, France and Spain both needed American victories before they risked their troops and treasures. With vast colonial empires of their own they hesitated at supporting a colonial rebellion in America. As monarchies, France and Spain held no love of “republican ideals” or “liberties,” and mostly pursued independent strategies against England. Fortunately their focus at recouping their former possessions helped diminish the number of British forces facing the Americans. On the political front the Congress knew that the new nation needed some form of national government for its survival. Unfortunately the Congress fell short on this issue, enacting the weak Articles of Confederation on November 15, 1777. Delegates so feared the “tyranny” of a strong central government, as well as they feared their neighbors, that they rejected national authority. In effect, the congressional delegates created thirteen independent nations instead of one, and our nation suffered from it. Amending this confederation required the approval of all thirteen states, virtually paralyzing any national effort. This form of government lasted until the adoption of the US Constitution on September 17, 1787. Despite these weaknesses the fledgling “United States” survived and even achieved some success against British forces. Particularly early in the war, the British forces possessed several opportunities for destroying the Continental Army and ending the rebellion. Fortunately for us British commanders proved lethargic and complacent, believing the “colonial rabble” incapable of defeating them. Furthermore, as the Continental Army gained experience and training it grew more professional, standing toe-to-toe against the British. Since the US achieved superpower status it fell into the same trap, continuously underestimating less powerful enemies. The surrender of British forces at Yorktown, Virginia on October 19, 1781 changed British policy regarding its American colonies. British forces now controlled mainly three enclaves: New York City; Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia. Loyalist forces, discouraged by British reverses, either retreated into these enclaves, departed America or surrendered. Waging a global war against France and Spain further reduced the number of troops available for the American theater. This serves another modern lesson for maintaining adequate forces for meeting not only your superpower responsibilities, but executing unforeseen contingencies. Ironically, the victory at Yorktown almost defeated the Americans as well, since the civil authorities almost stopped military recruitment. Washington struggled at maintaining significant forces for confronting the remaining British forces in their enclaves. An aggressive British commander may still score a strategic advantage by striking at demobilizing American forces. Fortunately, the British government lost heart for retaining America and announced the beginning of peace negotiations in August, 1782. The Treaty of Paris, signed on September 3, 1783 officially ended the American Revolution; however it did not end America’s struggles. American negotiators proved somewhat naïve in these negotiations against their more experienced European counterparts. Of importance, the British believed American independence a short-lived situation, given the disunity among Americans. Congress began discharging the Continental Army before the formal signing of the treaty, leaving less than one hundred on duty. Instead of a united “allied” front, America, France and Spain virtually negotiated separate treaties with England, delighting the British. They believed that by creating dissension among the wartime allies they furthered their position with their former colonies. If confronted with a new war with more powerful France and Spain, America might rejoin the British Empire. When England formally established the western boundary of the US at the Mississippi River it did not consult its Indian allies. These tribes did not see themselves as “defeated nations,” since they often defeated the Americans. Spanish forces captured several British posts in this territory and therefore claimed a significant part of the southeastern US. France, who practically bankrupted itself in financing the American cause and waging its own war against England, expected an American ally. Unfortunately, the US proved a liability and incapable of repaying France for the money loaned during the war. France soon faced domestic problems that resulted in the French Revolution in 1789. For several reasons England believed itself the winner of these negotiations, and in a more favorable situation, globally. England controlled Canada, from where it closely monitored the unfolding events in the US, and sowed mischief. It illegally occupied several military forts on American territory and incited the Indian tribes against the American frontier. By default, England controlled all of the American territory north of the Ohio River and west of the Appalachian Mountains. Economically, England still believed that the US needed them as its primary trading partner, whether independent or not. A strong pro-British faction in America called for closer economic ties with the former “mother country.” As England observed the chaos that gripped the US at this time, they felt that its collapse, and reconquest by England, only a matter of time. Most Americans today, knowing only the economic, industrial and military power of America cannot fathom the turmoil of this time. The weak central government and all the states accumulated a huge war debt, leaving them financially unstable. While the US possessed rich natural resources it lacked the industrial capabilities for developing them, without foreign investment. With no military forces, the nation lacked the ability of defending its sovereignty and its citizens. From all appearances our infant nation seemed stillborn, or as the vulnerable prey for the more powerful Europeans. As stated previously the Articles of Confederation actually created thirteen independent nations, with no national executive for enforcing the law. Therefore each state ignored the resolutions from Congress and served its own self-interest. Each state established its own rules for interstate commerce, printed its own money and even established treaties with foreign nations. No system existed for governing the interactions between the states, who often treated each other like hostile powers. The new nation did possess one thing in abundance, land; the vast wilderness between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. Conceded by the British in the Treaty of Paris, the Americans looked at this as their economic solution. The nation owed the veterans of the Revolution a huge debt and paid them in the only currency available, land grants. Unfortunately, someone must inform the Indians living on this land and make treaties regarding land distribution. For the Americans this seemed simple, the Indians, as British allies, suffered defeat with the British and must pay the price. After all, under the rules of European “civilized” warfare, defeated nations surrendered territory and life went on. Unfortunately no one, neither American nor British, informed the Indians of these rules, because no one felt they deserved explanation. Besides, the British hoped that by inciting Indian troubles they might recoup their former colonies. With British arms and encouragement the tribes of the “Old Northwest” raided the western frontier with a vengeance. From western New York down through modern Kentucky these Indians kept up their war with the Americans. In Kentucky between 1783 and 1790 the various tribes killed an estimated 1,500 people, stole 20,000 horses and destroyed an unknown amount of property. Our former ally, Spain, controlled all of the territory west of the Mississippi River before the American Revolution. From here they launched expeditions that captured British posts at modern Vicksburg and Natchez, Mississippi, and the entire Gulf Coast. However, they claimed about two-thirds of the southeastern US based on this “conquest” including land far beyond the occupation of their troops. Like the British, they incited the Indians living in this region for keeping out American settlers. Spain also controlled the port of New Orleans and access into the Mississippi River. Americans living in Kentucky and other western settlements depended on the Mississippi River for their commerce. The national government seemed unable, or unwilling, at forcing concessions from Spain, and many westerners considered seceding from the Union. Known as the “Spanish Conspiracy” this plot included many influential Americans and only disappeared after the American victory at Fallen Timbers. While revisionist historians ignore the “Spanish Conspiracy” they illuminate land speculation by Americans in Spanish territory. Of course they conveniently ignore the duplicity of Spanish officials in these plots, and their acceptance of American money. In signing the Declaration of Independence the Founding Fathers pledged “their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.” Many Continental Army officers bankrupted themselves when Congress and their states proved recalcitrant at reimbursing them for incurred expenses. These officers often personally financed their troops and their expeditions because victory required timely action. Of importance for the western region, George Rogers Clark used his personal credit for financing his campaigns, which secured America’s claim. It takes no “lettered” historian for determining that without Clark’s campaign that America’s western boundary ends with the Appalachian Mountains, instead of the Mississippi River. With the bankrupt Congress and Virginia treasuries not reimbursing him he fell into the South Carolina Yazoo Company. Clark’s brother-in-law, Dr. James O’Fallon, negotiated this deal for 3,000,000 acres of land in modern Mississippi. This negotiation involved the Spanish governor of Louisiana, Don Estavan Miro, a somewhat corrupt official. When the Spanish king negated the treaty, Clark, O’Fallon and the other investors lost their money and grew hateful of Spain. Another, lesser known, negotiation involved former Continental Army Colonel George Morgan and the Spanish ambassador, Don Diego de Gardoqui. Morgan received title for 15,000,000 acres near modern New Madrid, Missouri for establishing a colony. Ironically, an unscrupulous American, James Wilkinson, discussed later in the document, working in conjunction with Miro, negated this deal. Both of these land deals involved the establishment of American colonies in Spanish territory, with Americans declaring themselves Spanish subjects. Few Spaniards lived in the area west of the Mississippi River and saw the growing number of American settlers as a threat. However, if these Americans, already disgusted with their government, became Spanish subjects, they now became assets. If they cleared and farmed the land, they provided revenue that Spanish Louisiana desperately needed. Since many of these men previously served in the Revolution, they provided a ready militia for defending their property. This included defending it against their former country, the United States, with little authority west of the Appalachian Mountains. Internationally, the weak US became a tragic pawn in the continuing superpower struggle between England and France. With no naval forces for protection, American merchant mariners became victims of both nations on the high seas. British and French warships stopped American ships bound for their enemy, confiscating cargo and conscripting sailors into their navies. In the Mediterranean Sea, our ships became the targets of the Barbary Pirates, the ancestors of our enemies today. Helpless, our government paid ransoms for prisoners and tribute for safe passage until the Barbary Wars of the early 19th Century. Despite all of these problems most influential Americans still “looked inward,” and feared a strong central government more than foreign domination. When the cries of outrage came from the western frontiers regarding Indian depredations, our leaders still more feared a “standing army.” In the world of the Founding Fathers the tyranny of King George III’s central government created their problem. The king further used his “standing army” for oppressing the colonists and infringing on their liberties. Congress also possessed more recent examples of the problems with a “standing army” during the American Revolution. First came the mutiny of the Pennsylvania Line in January, 1781 for addressing their grievances. Since the beginning of the war, in 1775, the Continental soldiers endured almost insurmountable hardships, as explained previously. The soldiers rarely received pay, and then received the almost worthless “Continental Currency,” which inflation further devalued. This forced severe hardships also on the soldiers’ families, and many lost their homes and farms. The soldiers marched on the then-capital, Philadelphia, for seeking redress for these grievances. Forced into action, Congress addressed their problems with pay and the soldiers rejoined the Army. A second, though less well known, mutiny occurred with the New Jersey Line shortly thereafter with different results. For “nipping” a growing problem “in the bud,” Washington ordered courts-martial and the execution of the ring leaders. The last such trouble occurred in the final months of the war in the Continental Army camp at Newburgh, New York. Dissatisfied with congressional inaction on their long-overdue pay, many officers urged a march on Philadelphia. Fortunately, Washington defused this perceived threat against civil authority, and squashed the strong possibility of a military dictatorship. However, Congress realized that it needed some military force for defending the veterans settling on their land grants. The delegates authorized the First United States Regiment, consisting of 700 men drawn from four state militias for a one year period. I read countless sources describing the inadequacy of this force, highlighting congressional incompetence and non-compliance by the states. The unit never achieved its authorized strength, the primitive conditions on the frontier hindered its effectiveness and corrupt officials mismanaged supplies. Scattered in small garrisons throughout the western territories, it never proved a deterrent against the Indians. No incentives existed for enlisting in this regiment, and it attracted a minority of what we call today “quality people.” Again, confirming state dominance over the central government, this “army” came from a militia levy from four states, a draft. A tradition at the time provided for the paying of substitutes for the men conscripted during these militia levies. Sources reflect that most of these substitutes came from the lowest levels of society, including those escaping the law. From whatever source these men came, at least they served and mostly did their best under difficult circumstances. Routinely, once the soldiers assembled they must learn the skills needed for performing their duties. For defending the western settlements the small garrisons must reach their destination via river travel. Once at their destination they must often construct their new installations using the primitive tools and resources available. The primitive transportation system often delayed the arrival of the soldiers’ pay and supplies, forcing hardships on the troops. Few amenities existed at these frontier installations and the few settlements provided little entertainment for the troops. Unfortunately, once the soldiers achieved a level of professionalism, they reached the end of their enlistment. With few incentives for reenlistment, the process must begin again, with recruiting and training a new force. Fortunately many prominent Americans saw that the country needed a different form of government for ensuring its survival. Despite the best intentions and established rules, few people followed these rules or respected our intentions. The Constitutional Convention convened in Philadelphia in May, 1787 with George Washington unanimously elected as its president. As the delegates began the process of forming a “more perfect Union,” the old, traditional “colonial” rivalries influenced the process. While most Americans possess at least ancillary knowledge of the heated debates among the delegates, few know the conditions. Meeting throughout the hot summer, the delegates kept the windows of their meeting hall closed, preventing the “leaking” of information. We must remember that this occurred before electric-powered ventilation systems or air conditioning. They kept out the “media,” and none of the delegates spoke with “journalists,” again for maintaining secrecy. Modern Americans, often obsessed with media access, do not understand why the delegates kept their deliberations secret. Most of the delegates felt they possessed one chance for creating this new government and achieving the best possible needed their focus. “Media access” jeopardized this focus and “leaked” information, with potential interruptions, jeopardized their chance for success. We find this incomprehensible today, with politicians running toward television cameras, “leaking” information and disclosing national secrets. Unfortunately a “journalistic elite” exists today, misusing the First Amendment, with many “media moguls” believing themselves the “kingmakers” of favorite politicians. The delegates sought the best document for satisfying the needs of the most people, making “special interest groups” secondary. Creating a united nation proved more important than prioritizing regional and state desires. These delegates debated, and compromised, on various issues; many of which remain important today. They worried over the threat of dominance by large, well-populated states over smaller, less-populated states. Other issues concerned taxation, the issue that sparked the American Revolution, and import duties, which pitted manufacturing states against agricultural states. Disposition of the mostly unsettled western land, claimed by many states, proved a substantial problem for the delegates. The issue of slavery almost ended the convention and the delegates compromised, achieving the best agreement possible at the time. On September 17, 1787 the delegates adopted the US Constitution and submitted it for approval by the individual states. Again, merely passing laws and adopting resolutions does not immediately solve the problems, or change people’s attitudes. Ratification of the Constitution required the approval of nine states, (three-fourths) which occurred on June 21, 1788. However, two important large states, New York and Virginia, still debated ratification. Several signers of the Declaration of Independence, and delegates at the Constitutional Convention, urged the defeat of the Constitution. Fiery orator, Patrick Henry, of “Give me liberty, or give me death,” fame worked hard for defeating it in Virginia. Even the most optimistic supporters gave the Constitution, and the nation, only a marginal chance at survival.

<urn:uuid:fcd8384e-97df-45dc-baf6-0742150406b6>

The effect of UVR on biological systems is wavelength dependent. Action spectrum for DNA damage is an essential component of understanding the effects of increased UVB on a range of Antarctic invertebrate larvae. The wavelength dependency is quantified using spectral weighting functions which provide information such as the target organelles/molecules of the UVR, the degree that organisms are ... influenced by wavelengths that are enhanced by the process of ozone depletion and the activity of sunscreening and anti-oxidant compounds. Biological weighting functions (BWFs) were made for 3 embryonic stages of Sterechinus (eggs, blastula, 4 armed larvae) and embryos of Acodantaster, Perknaster and Parbolarsis. The embryos and larvae were exposed to artificial lights for 3 days. Three filter treatments with 50% nominal cut-off at 280, 305, 320, 375 and 400nm wavelengths were used. DNA was analysed for cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers (CPDs). Using the species specific BWF and spectral irradiance data, biological effective irradiances were calculated for a given ambient light environment. Modelling of the species specific and stage specific effects of ozone depletion on larval stage were made using the BWFs and the change in ambient light field during ozone depletion.

<urn:uuid:8aa7e8f1-43dd-4954-ad12-56a69e48c91b>

Active RNA polymerase (RNAP) somehow remains both stable and mobile. In the 28 July Science Korzheva et al. combine the X-ray crystal structure of Thermus aquaticus (Taq) core RNAP with their own crosslinking data to derive a model of a functioning bacterial core RNAP (Science 2000, 289:619-625). At the front, a 20° hinged movement closes the RNAP "jaws" around the downstream DNA. At the back of the RNAP, the rudder region is positioned to separate the exiting RNA from the DNA template strand. Termination probably comes when an RNA hairpin disrupts interactions with the rudder, triggering collapse of the transcription bubble.

<urn:uuid:ffba1cfb-3e1a-45eb-a491-fe3036ab3deb>

Glaucoma is a disease that can cause vision to be permanently lost very slowly over time. The disease starts by enlarging an individual’s “blind spot,” then may progress leading to complete blindness. Glaucoma is sometimes referred to as “the silent thief of sight” because a typical person would have absolutely no symptoms in the early stages of the disease, and would only notice after it was too late and the damage was done. The disease essentially attacks the optic nerve in the back of the eye. Typically high pressure inside of the eye - the Intra Ocular Pressure, or IOP - causes this damage. The number one risk factor for glaucoma is a family history of the disease, but glaucoma may affect anyone. As with most diseases of the body, the earlier the findings are caught, the more we are able to do. With modern medicine, it is rare that any new case of early glaucoma caught progresses past the “early” stage. How Do I Know if I am at Risk or Have Glaucoma? Annual eye exams. Many eye doctors today are equipped with advanced instruments that allow us to catch the earliest signs of elevated eye pressures and damage to the optic nerve. Carillon Vision Care has multiple instruments to check the pressure, and has the most advanced optic nerve imaging instrument available: the Optical Coherence Tomographer, or OCT. The OCT technology measures every attribute of an optic nerve in micrometers (one-thousandth of a millimeter!). This allows us to know ABSOLUTELY if any damage is present. I Am Told I am a “Glaucoma Suspect.” What is That? A Glaucoma Suspect is a medical diagnosis. This typically means that there is either high eye pressures with no optic nerve damage, or the optic nerve looks suspicious for possible damage. A Glaucoma Suspect may never actually go on to develop the disease, but we watch these patients very carefully. Treatment is initiated only when we are certain that there is early damage. Okay, I Have Glaucoma. How is it Treated? A number of ways. The first line of treatment is typically to lower the eye pressure by using prescription eye drops. Usually 1 drop once per day is enough. Our doctors carefully review all of the new research to make sure we use only the best type of medication for each particular patient. The very first generic glaucoma medication came out a year ago, Latanoprost. All other brand name glaucoma medications are very expensive. All of the 1 year published studies on Latanoprost confirm the medicine is just as effective as the name brand, and our doctors have a number of glaucoma patients responding very well to this new formulation. When these drops are not enough to lower the pressure, there are a group of simple laser surgeries that are effective for most patients. These lasers essentially increase the drainage channels inside the eye helping lower the pressure. The take home message here is preventative care. If you or a loved one does not require corrective lenses and has not been in for an eye exam for a while, the time is now. If you would like more information on Glaucoma, or any other common eye disease, check out www.allaboutvision.com. Dr. Andrew Neukirch is the CEO of Carillon Vision Care located in Glenview, IL Sources: Merk Manual “Glaucoma,” Jack Kanski’s “Clinical Ohpthalmology,” and allaboutvision.com

<urn:uuid:54839111-8fa4-47b2-8a13-7a2c05827d41>

50 years ago this week, the world stood on the brink of nuclear war as the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolded. The United States finally decided to first blockade rather than immediately attack Cuba to prevent the Soviet Union from finishing installation of missiles that could reach the continental United States. This article introduces the little-known story of the battles between the “hawks” and the “doves” in the Kennedy Administration as related in a new publication, The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, Vol. 8, 1961-1964. When President John F. Kennedy finally announced the naval blockade of Cuba and the reasons for it on national television, Americans huddled together, practiced nuclear drills, and prayed for some peaceful solution to prevent all-out nuclear war. Only decades later did the full story of brinkmanship, bravado and brilliance come out about what really happened behind the scenes during those two weeks. Image Credit: The Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records A little known side of the story comes from the top military commanders who were serving the Kennedy administration during the crisis, found in the surprisingly fascinating book titled The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, Vol. 8, 1961-1964, from the Office of Joint History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Kennedy Administration This accounting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during this tumultuous period in the history of American foreign affairs goes beyond the normal third party historian’s post mortem, since the author was actually able to meet with several members of the joint chiefs in the 1970’s to add more of their personal insights, including Admiral Arleigh Burke, Admiral George Anderson, General Lyman Lemnitzer, Chairman during 1960-1962, and the Chairman who succeeded him, General Maxwell D. Taylor. Image: President John F. Kennedy meets with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Photograph includes: (L-R) United States Marine Corps General David Shoup; United States Army General Earle Wheeler; United States Air Force General Curtis LeMay, President Kennedy; Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Maxwell Taylor; United States Navy Admiral George Anderson. West Wing Lawn. White House. Washington, D.C. Credit: Robert Knudsen. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston What results is an interesting amalgam of history and a peek into the tensions between military joint chiefs and the civilians to whom they reported. Describing the relationship of the Kennedy administration and the military establishment, author Walter S. Poole says: “During 1961-1962, relations between the JCS and their civilian superiors were often awkward and even confrontational” particularly between Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and Lemnitzer. The old-school Joint Chiefs were concerned about the new approach to foreign policy being espoused by the Kennedy administration, and tensions grew. According to the author: “What most concerned the JCS was an apparent erosion of US credibility that emboldened communist leaders to pursue more adventurous policies. President John F. Kennedy and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara pursued what they conceived as more flexible approaches to strategy and crisis management.” Quick Background on the Cuban Missile Crisis In 1962, the Soviet Union was losing the arms race with the United States. In late April 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev conceived the idea of placing intermediate-range missiles in Cuba to double the Soviet strategic arsenal and provide a real deterrent to a potential U.S. attack against the Soviet Union from the Jupiter missiles the U.S. had just placed in Turkey. Ever since the failed Bay of Pigs invasion the previous year, Fidel Castro felt a second attack by the U.S. on Cuba was inevitable, so he agreed to host the missiles as protection. Image: Initial U.S. intelligence estimates of possible U.S. targets within range of the nuclear-capable Soviet SS-4 medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) and SS-5 intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) found by the U-2 spy plane surveillance photographs if they were launched from Cuba. Credit: Bettmann/CORBIS On October 15, 1962, the National Photographic Intelligence Center confirmed that secret reconnaissance photographs from an American U-2 spy plane flight the day before were finally able to definitively prove the suspicion that Soviet medium-range and intermediate-range ballistic missiles capable of hitting Atlanta, the Midwest, Washington, DC, and even Los Angeles and Seattle were indeed in place and in the process of being installed and ready in Cuba within days. In response, President Kennedy and Secretary McNamara assembled the Executive Committee of the National Security Council call “ExComm” as a task force that, together with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and experts from the State Department and other intelligence agencies, would debate the United States’ options to deter the Soviets from nuclear escalation. To Blockade, Strike or Invade? Earlier in September 1962, after cloud-obscured U-2 photos had hinted at Soviet build-up in Cuba, the Joint Strategic Survey Council had submitted a recommendation for blockading rather than invading Cuba, on grounds that a blockade would be less dramatic, require smaller resources, cause fewer casualties, and be more plausibly related to upholding the Monroe Doctrine. In his 1823 annual message to Congress, President James Monroe had established this doctrine followed by the U.S. ever since that warned European countries not to interfere in the Western Hemisphere, stating “that the American continents… are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” However, as the crisis unfolded, the primary debate among the military commanders of the Joint Chiefs was over whether to carry out an all-inclusive attack against Soviet and Cuban forces on the island or a surgical strike confined to just attacking the missiles themselves, the nuclear storage sites, and Soviet MiG planes. Both President Kennedy and McNamara thought that an all-inclusive attack would inevitably lead to invasion of Cuba, and then possible counter-attacks elsewhere by the Soviets or escalation to all-out war. But General Taylor reported that the Joint Chiefs and the combatant commanders felt “so strongly about the dangers inherent in [only] the limited strike that they would prefer taking no military action. They feel it’s opening up the United States to attacks which they can’t prevent, if we don’t take advantage of surprise.” Taylor added that his personal inclination was “all against invasion, but nonetheless trying to eliminate as effectively as possible every weapon [present in Cuba] that can strike the United States”. According to the reports by the author, the Joint Chiefs were opposed to only attacking the medium-range ballistic missiles themselves, saying it would incur “an unacceptable risk” and that not attacking the enemy’s planes would expose the continental United States and Puerto Rico to air attack and could cause unnecessary casualties among the garrison at Guantanamo and the forces assembling for invasion. Instead, the JCS initially recommended “also hitting tactical missiles, aircraft, ships, tanks, and other appropriate targets, as well as imposing a ‘complete’ blockade.” Image: A meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council in the Cabinet Room during the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 29, 1962, 10:10-10:58am. Clockwise from left: Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (standing); Assistant Sec. Defense Paul Nitze; Dep. USIA Dir. Donald Wilson; Special Counsel Theodore Sorensen; Exec. Sec. NSC Bromley Smith; Special Assistant McGeorge Bundy; Sec. Treasury Douglas Dillon; Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson; Ambassador Llewellyn Thompson; William C. Foster; CIA Dir. John McCone (hidden); Under Secretary of State George Ball (hidden); President John F. Kennedy; Sec. State Dean Rusk; Sec. Defense Robert McNamara; Dep. Sec. Defense Roswell Gilpatric; Chairman JCS Gen. Maxwell Taylor. Credit: Photo by Cecil Stoughton, JFK Library ST-A26-18-62 The Blues vs. the Reds Even more fascinating was the story of the war gaming techniques used. To quickly develop two alternative scenarios for the President to consider, the ExComm task force split into two groups that constantly exchanged position papers and critiqued each other’s work. The “Blues,” who were to prepare the scenario for a surprise air strike, included General Maxwell Taylor, Robert Kennedy, Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon, Director McCone, Dean Acheson, and McGeorge Bundy. The “Reds,” drafting the blockade option, included Chief of U.S. Naval Operations Adm. George Anderson, Marine Corps Commandant David Shoup, Secretary Rusk, Deputy Secretary Gilpatric, and Theodore Sorensen. Image: On October 11 last week, certain documents from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy’s personal papers about the Cuban Missile Crisis were declassified. In it was the above personal list of who RFK thought among the ExComm were the “Hawks” who favored an air strike (shown in the right column labeled “Strike”) vs. the “Doves” who favored a blockade of Cuba (in the left column). Note that the “Chiefs” meaning the Joint Chiefs of Staff along with General Taylor are shown on the “Hawks” Strike side of his list on the right. Source: The National Security Archive In less than two days, two complete scenarios were prepared and presented to President Kennedy on October 20, with competing input coming from the Pentagon and the State Department. From this insider accounting of events, we learn that the Chairman thought that the probable sequence of events to be green-lighted would be: a political approach; a warning; air attack on the missile sites; blockade; and, if necessary, invasion, with the earliest air strike date set for October 21 (optimally the 23rd), and an invasion to begin on October 28. However, to find out exactly what happened and how the drama played out behind the scenes, pick up a copy of this fascinating book. HOW DO I OBTAIN “The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy, Vol. 8, 1961-1964”? - Buy it online 24/7 at GPO’s Online Bookstore. - Buy it at GPO’s retail bookstore at 710 North Capitol Street NW, Washington, DC 20401, open Monday-Friday, 9am to 4pm, except Federal holidays, (202) 512-0132. - Find it in a library. Find this and other Government publications about Cuba in our Cuba collection. About the Author: Michele Bartram is Promotions Manager for GPO’s Publication and Information Sales Division and is responsible for online and offline marketing of the US Government Online Bookstore (http://bookstore.gpo.gov) and promoting Federal government content to the public.

<urn:uuid:02e0d89c-52b9-4606-89a0-a0b682b32285>

Author Contact: email@example.com Biocatalysis and biotransformations are important alternatives to consider when one is looking to substitute a conventional method with a greener one. One of the many advantages of using biotransformation as a synthetic method is that they are usually done in water and at ambient conditions. In addition, the reagents themselves are readily available, safe, and inexpensive to both buy and dispose of. This experiment uses shredded carrots to enantioselectively reduce benzofuran-2-yl methyl ketone, yielding the optically pure alcohol. This lab illustrates the topics of green chemistry, biocatalysis, biotransformations, reductions, carbonyl chemistry, stereochemistry, stereoselectivity, optical activity, thin-layer chromatography, liquid-liquid extractions, and column chromatography. The authors also suggest that students perform the sodium borohydride reduction of the ketone to compare and contrast the ease, safety, "greenness" and stereoselectivity of the two reactions. The supplemental materials include lab procedures, lab report outline, lab questions, instructor notes, a list of necessary lab equipment, and CAS numbers. Summary prepared October 2008 by Douglas M. Young at the University of Oregon. Ravía, S.; Gamenara, D.; Schapiro, V.; Bellomo, A.; Adum, J.; Seoane, G.; Gonzalez, D. J. Chem. Educ., Print 2006, 83, pp 1049-1051.

<urn:uuid:0623dac4-742f-4aad-ba41-e19e30324d0a>

Aging is something that we all have to go through, and thinking about this makes all of us sad and a little scared. Aging is linked to many complex and various biological mechanisms in human body, which are irreversible and destructive. Despite numerous scientific breakthroughs and discoveries to help people look, feel and live their lives as the young, till now, unfortunately, it is completely impossible to stop aging. At the same time, a lot has been found out about the opportunities to slow aging and help people remain in their excellent physical and mental health. A great deal of people around the world are wondering how to prevent aging and how to effectively slow down aging processes in the body. Below, check out 5 most important tips and rules on how to slow down aging and maintain our good health and vitality. 1. Protect your cells from free radical damage and oxidative stress. The process known as oxidative stress occurs when free radicals are in plenty in our cells, so they can not be neutralized by the existing amounts of antioxidants. As a result of this, free radicals go on multiplying and creating more and more of volatile free radicals which very soon start damaging cell membranes, fats, proteins, vessel walls, and sometimes even DNA molecules in cells. It was found out that oxidative stress causes over 70 chronic generative diseases, including cancer, diabetes, heart attack, a stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, macular degeneration, and so on. In order to slow aging processes in the body, one should use plenty of natural antioxidant sources, like green tea, broccoli, tomatoes, spinach, carrots, and so on. Remember that vitamins A, E and C have clear antioxidant properties, so using natural sources of this vitamins like vegetable oils or oily fish can assist your cells in preventing cardiovascular diseases, colon cancer, cataract and Alzheimer’s disease. 2. Always monitor your heart health. Staying active is considered one of the best ways to support the function of cardiovascular system and slow aging. In addition to the known benefits of a healthy lifestyle, it was recently found out that active body produces increased amounts of co-enzyme Q10. This substance plays a key role in preventing cardiovascular diseases and free radical damage. Make sure that your daily diet is high in healthy fats (add oily fish, seeds, whole grains, olive oil, as well as plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables) that can assist you in reducing cholesterol levels and maintaining a healthy body weight. Monitor your blood pressure, cholesterol level and blood sugar level at least once per every 6 months. 3. Maintain high energy levels. To slow aging, it is very important to remain energetic and keep positive attitude all the time. Learn to reduce stresses and learn effective stress management techniques. Try to achieve balance in your life, avoid multitasking, worrying or scaring situations. Get plenty of sleep and make a habit of going to sleep early. Take good time to rest, have a number of hobbies to relax your mind, and many good friends to talk to about life. Focuse on positive and take a good care about yourself. For the diet, you can use a combination of carnitine and alpha-lipoic acid as a very effective energy boosting mixture working on cellular level and supporting the function of cells to produce proper amounts of energy. 4. Support your vision and take a good care about your eye health. If you are wondering how to prevent aging and stay healthy for many years, you should keep in mind the importance of vision problem prevention as a part of your program to slow aging. Usually, following a healthy diet and healthy lifestyle is quite eonugh to reduce your risks to suffer from serious eye problems. It is necessary to have periodic eye exams and observe the rules of daily eye care. To support you vision, you can use such herbal remedies as common chickweed (Stellaria media), fennel flower (Nigella sativa), as well as enrich your diet with carotene high foods like carrots, bell peppers, spinach, sweet potatoes, and so on. 5. Do everything you can to support your memory. It is very important to stay focused, organized, and mentally active. Solve puzzles, memorize new things, develop your problem-solving skills. Using special foods to improve memory or herbal remedies for memory support can be one of the smartest ideas to slow aging. Many herbalists recommend using ginkgo biloba as a great support for memory function. This natural remedy can stimulate blood circulation and boosts blood flow to the brain, prevents blood clots formation, and has excellent antioxidant effects. Ginkgo biloba is the greatest natural remedy to prevent Alzheimer’s disease or other dementia-like diseases.Author Info: Hi! My name is Carla and I am a 5th year medical student at HYMS. I am interested in alternative medicine and I have done months researching the topic of herbal medicine. Besides, I like interviewing people and learning more about their experiences with one or another type of herbal treatments. I am willing to contribute to this site with my knowledge, and I would be happy to help you out to the best of my ability with any specific questions or problems related to alternative medicine.

<urn:uuid:adf13bad-2b76-4bbd-9e6e-796de7d3cb50>

[Viacheslav] built a keypad that uses human capacitance to detect key presses. Unlike normal keys which close a physical connection, his project detects touch through the PCB substrate. He uses the analog comparator of an AVR ATmega8 to detect the moment of zero crossing and then measures the time it takes to discharge in order to detect key presses. I use analog comparator to detect the moment of zero crossing and the charge is evaluated by measuring time. Builtin AVR ADC probably wouldn’t be very useful here because the charge that can be built up is very small. Update: [Viacheslav] left a comment to let us know we had it wrong. Instead of using the ADC, the analog comparitor is used. This change has been made above.

<urn:uuid:a186f81b-c77a-4688-ba0a-4e943149931d>

As the Crossroads of the Pacific, Hawaii played a vital role in the development of both commercial and military air travel. The first flight in Hawaii occurred on December 31, 1910. It captured the imagination and hearts of residents who dreamed of traveling by air between islands and the Mainland, Asia and Australia.On this site you'll find the incredible story of the first trans-Pacific flight by Navy Commander John Rodgers in 1925. Inter-Island Airways made its first commercial interisland flight in 1929, and Pan American Airways entered the trans-Pacific market in 1935. You'll find hundreds of historical documents and publications, and the complete book Above the Pacific written by the late William J. Horvat and originally published in 1966. This website features more than 4,000 photos.

<urn:uuid:0671627c-7b89-41ad-8a60-92918436acd4>

Tomorrow is World AIDS Day. This is an important day to recognize, not just for those of us that love to talk about sex and sexual health, but for everyone. But does having one day a year set aside for such an important issue really address the significance of AIDS? Claire Keeton, the senior HIV reporter at the Sunday Times newspaper, recently had a blog post about World AIDS Day and what this day means: “ Some people with HIV/AIDS and activists object to World AIDS Day – essentially saying it allows people to ignore the epidemic the rest of the year, as long as they remember it for a single day. Paying lip service. Window dressing… From my side, World AIDS Day does have advantages. It’s the one time of the year that all media make space for HIV/AIDS stories.” Many people still don’t know the facts about HIV/AIDS- like how it’s transmitted, how to get tested and how protect yourself, or that it’s not curable, though it is treatable. The goal of having a day about AIDS that is advertised and supported all over the world is so that more people will learn important information for their own sexual health. World AIDS Day is important and necessary. As Keeton says, having a day set aside ensures that AIDS is not forgotten and not ignored. But having one day a year is not enough. Hopefully tomorrow will encourage people to get tested and get information. But more importantly, it will hopefully encourage people to take action and educate themselves and others all year long. If this day exists to make sure people don’t forget about AIDS, then we can’t stop there. What happens on December 2 and for the next 364 days until World AIDS Day 2010? Let’s make every day a day to talk about HIV/AIDS and sexual health, to support those living with HIV/AIDS, and to make sure that in the future, we won’t need one day a year to tackle this enormous issue because we are always thinking about it. Don’t forget that Head & Hands is hosting a free anonymous HIV screening clinic for youth 12-25 on Tuesday, December 1 between 5-9:30 pm. Check out http://www.senseproject.org/2009/11/know-your-status-savoir-cest-pouvoir/ for more info.

<urn:uuid:e09173b9-80c3-4597-8081-1547d60a103b>

You may have heard that there are several kinds of fats. But how do we know which to avoid, and which are okay to eat? We need some fat in our diets. Fats provide energy. They help build hormones and cells. While all fats are high in calories, some fats are better choices than others. Choose unsaturated fats. They can actually help lower your cholesterol. These healthier fats usually stay liquid at room temperature, and are found in most vegetable oils. Good fats are also found in avocados, some fish, and nuts. Saturated fats and trans fats are not good choices. They can clog up the arteries that carry blood to your heart. Most of these fats stay solid at room temperature. They’re found in fried foods, fatty meats, and baked goods. Just like there are several sources of fats, there are also several sources of carbohydrate. Carbohydrate is found in many foods. It provides fuel for our heart, brain and muscles. But, as with fats, some carbs are better than others. And if you have diabetes or pre-diabetes, controlling carbohydrate is important because when you eat too much carbohydrate, your blood sugar may rise too high. The best carbs provide fiber. Fiber can help lower cholesterol. We can get fiber from fruits, vegetables and beans, as well as whole grain products -- whole wheat pastas and breads, and brown rice. It’s best to eat at least three ounces of whole grains per day. Check the food’s packaging to make sure that’s what you’re getting. The not-so-good carbohydrate, like white flour and white sugar, is usually higher in calories and has little nutritional value. For too many of us, these make up too large a part of what we eat and drink everyday. Choosing less white bread and fewer soft drinks and sweets is a move in the right direction. Fats and carbohydrate. Choose the ones that are better for you, and you’re on your way to healthier eating for life.

<urn:uuid:e74934da-be9c-4851-87cb-c8451616dd97>

Through the Hebrew Catholic Year, by Judy Bratten The most well-known and elaborate of the Jewish feasts, Pesach commemorates the miraculous exodus of the Jewish people from the land of Egypt under the leadership of Moses. It is also a springtime celebration, provoking a flurry of cleaning in the traditional Jewish home as the mother removes all trace of leaven and prepares for the Seder, the ritual Passover meal. Passover includes the weeklong Feast of Unleavened Bread when particular foods are prohibited while other symbolic foods are eaten. The Hagaddah, a collection of scripture readings, prayers, rabbinical commentaries, songs and poetry is the guide for the Seder and sets the tone for the entire eight days. The Feast of First Fruits, which occurs during Passover, was a feast of thanksgiving in biblical times for the first grain of the season. With its direct association with Easter, Passover is a very special holiday in our family. It is also a time of spring cleaning, a culmination of our Lenten purifications. We always invite guests to our seders so they can see for themselves the origins of the Mass. Our family prefers to use a traditional Jewish Hagaddah for the Seder, commenting frequently on the significance of many of the prayers and Messianic symbols and prophecies. We enjoy preparing the special foods: charoseth, bitter herbs, roasted eggs, etc. We made our own Matzoh Tash with three compartments for the three matzohs used during the Seder, a clear symbol of the Trinity. And we have plenty of matzoh, matzoh brei (fried matzoh), knoedlech (matzoh balls) and sponge cake (with matzoh flour). Recipes are available in any Jewish cookbook. (Ed. For the first two nights of Passover, we recommend the Hagaddahs available here or a traditional Jewish Hagaddah, available from regular book stores. The AHC has not yet produced a Hagaddah for Passover.) This abbreviated service may be used on the other nights of Passover. Mother lights candles and says: Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, Creator of the radiance of fire. Father: Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has sanctified these days and has sanctified thy people. All: Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who has preserved us alive, sustained us and brought us to enjoy this season. Amen. Child: We praise thee, O Lord, for as we eat this matzoh, the bread of affliction, we remember the Seder meal when Yeshua transformed the bread into His body. Father: Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who gives us the fruits of the earth. All: Amen. (All eat some matzoh) Child: We praise thee, O Lord, for as we drink the cup of Passover deliverance, we remember that Seder meal when Yeshua transformed the cup of redemption into His blood. Father: (raising a cup of wine) Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who createst the fruit of the vine. All: Amen (everyone sip from the cup) Father: The name of the Eternal be blessed from now unto eternity. All: Blessed be He of whose gifts we partake and by whose goodness we exist. Father: May He who is most merciful make us worthy to behold the day of the Messiah and eternal life. He gives great salvation through His Son, Yeshua His anointed. May He who maketh peace in high heavens grant peace to us and all Israel. We ask this in the name of Yeshua, Thy Son, who lives and reigns with Thee and Ruach haKodesh, one God, for ever and ever. ŠAssociation of Hebrew Catholics. All Rights Reserved. • 4120 W Pine Blvd • St Louis MO 63108

<urn:uuid:a529b20e-c570-456b-99dd-6d2179afebdd>

1. Tolkien's Usage of "Thou" and "Thee" I. Thou, Thee I grew up in a religiously conservative environment, of the Protestant sort. As this was some decades ago, the preferred Bible version was, of course, the King James. By reading and studying the Bible, and memorizing parts of it, I acquired an intuitive familiarity with the archaic language in use 500 years ago, before I ever read The Lord of the Rings, or heard of Tolkien. I say "intuitive", because I absorbed the proper grammatical usage without understanding. As "Thou" and "Thee" were used mostly for God, and often capitalized, to boot, I associated them with formal usage, and "you, you" with ordinary usage. When I first read LOTR, and dived into the appendices, at about age thirteen, I was quite puzzled by Tolkien's reference to "thou, thee" as familiar as opposed to the formal "you, you". It was only when I took high school German, and later Spanish and French, that I realized "thou, thee" were cognates for "du, dich", "tu, ti", "tu, te", all of which are familiar. "You, you" in English were at one time plural or formal, but have gradually displaced "thou, thee". Why am I putting these pronouns in quoted pairs? Not only that, I have "you, you" as a pair, when they're the same word, right? Not really. At one time, English, like many other languages, had a case system for all its nouns—they would change form depending on usage in the sentence, whether nominative (subject) or accusative (object). The pronouns are the only ones left that retain cases—"I, me", "she, her", "they, them". "You" however, is used for both nominative and accusative. Here is where I believe some writers, in an effort to give a sense of intimate, familiar, or even derogatory speech, have misinterpreted Tolkien's commentary on usage. In LOTR, Appendix F, II On Translation, Tolkien wrote in a footnote: In one or two places an attempt has been made to hint at these distinctions by an inconsistent use of thou. Since this pronoun is now unusual and archaic it is employed mainly to represent the use of ceremonious language; but a change from you to thou, thee is sometimes meant to show, there being no other means of doing this, a significant change from the deferential, or between men and women normal, forms to the familiar. When I first read it, I was already familiar with the correct grammatical usage of "thou, thee", so I read the pertinent sentence thus: ...a change from you to [thou, thee] is sometimes meant to show ... a significant change from the deferential ... forms to the familiar. It seems some authors read the sentence like this: ...a change from [you to thou], [thee is sometimes meant to show ... a significant change from the deferential ... forms to the familiar]. apparently interpreting this sentence to mean "thou" is deferential or formal, and "thee" is familiar. From my understanding of archaic English, this is not what Tolkien intended. He surely, as a linguist, and expert on the various stages through which our language passed, was intimately familiar with the accurate, historical usage of pronouns in the English of the times when "thou" and "thee" were in use. I have pulled out a few quotes from LOTR using "thou" and / or "thee". TT, Book III - Chapter 5 The White Rider Lock-bearer, wherever thou goest my thought goes with thee. But have a care to lay thine axe to the right tree! TT, Book III - Chapter 6 The King of the Golden Hall The king now rose, and at once Éowyn came forward bearing wine. 'Ferthu Théoden hál!' she said. 'Receive now this cup and drink in happy hour. Health be with thee at thy going and coming!' ROTK, Book V - Chapter 2 The Passing of the Grey Company The days are short. If thou art in haste, remember the Paths of the Dead.' The days now are short. Either our hope cometh, or all hope's end. Therefore I send thee what I have made for thee. Fare well, Elfstone!' Then Isildur said to their king: "Thou shalt be the last king. And if the West prove mightier than thy Black Master, this curse I lay upon thee and thy folk: to rest never until your oath is fulfilled. For this war will last through years uncounted, and you shall be summoned once again ere the end." 'Nor would I,' he said. 'Therefore I say to you, lady: Stay! For you have no errand to the South.' 'Neither have those others who go with thee. They go only because they would not be parted from thee - because they love thee.' Then she turned and vanished into the night. But she said: 'Aragorn, wilt thou go?' 'I will,' he said. 'Then wilt thou not let me ride with this company, as I have asked?' 'I will not, lady,' he said. 'For that I could not grant without leave of the king and of your brother; and they will not return until tomorrow. But I count now every hour, indeed every minute. Farewell!' Then she fell on her knees, saying: 'I beg thee!' ROTK, Book V - Chapter 4 The Siege of Gondor 'What is this, my lord?' said the wizard. 'The houses of the dead are no places for the living. And why do men fight here in the Hallows when there is war enough before the Gate? Or has our Enemy come even to Rath Dínen?' 'Since when has the Lord of Gondor been answerable to thee?' said Denethor. 'Or may I not command my own servants?' 'You may,' said Gandalf. 'But others may contest your will, when it is turned to madness and evil. Where is your son, Faramir?' 'Pride and despair!' he cried. 'Didst thou think that the eyes of the White Tower were blind? Nay, I have seen more than thou knowest, Grey Fool. For thy hope is but ignorance. Go then and labour in healing! Go forth and fight! Vanity. For a little space you may triumph on the field, for a day. But against the Power that now arises there is no victory. To this City only the first finger of its hand has yet been stretched. All the East is moving. And even now the wind of thy hope cheats thee and wafts up Anduin a fleet with black sails. The West has failed. It is time for all to depart who would not be slaves.' 'Such counsels will make the Enemy's victory certain indeed,' said Gandalf. ROTK, Book V - Chapter 6 The Battle of the Pelennor Fields A cold voice answered: 'Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.' A sword rang as it was drawn. 'Do what you will; but I will hinder it, if I may.' 'Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!' Then Merry heard of all sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. 'But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund's daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.' ROTK, Book V - Chapter 10 The Black Gate Opens 'So!' said the Messenger. 'Then thou art the spokesman, old greybeard? Have we not heard of thee at whiles, and of thy wanderings, ever hatching plots and mischief at a safe distance? But this time thou hast stuck out thy nose too far, Master Gandalf; and thou shalt see what comes to him who sets his foolish webs before the feet of Sauron the Great. I have tokens that I was bidden to show to thee - to thee in especial, if thou shouldst dare to come.' ROTK, Book VI - Chapter 6 Many Partings Then Éowyn looked in the eyes of Aragorn, and she said: 'Wish me joy, my liege-lord and healer!' And he answered: 'I have wished thee joy ever since first I saw thee. It heals my heart to see thee now in bliss.' In the above quotes, some use only one or the other. The shortest that uses both "thou" and "thee" is Galadriel's message to Gimli— Lock-bearer, wherever thou goest my thought goes with thee. But have a care to lay thine axe to the right tree! Note that "thou" is in the position of subject and "thee" in that of object (object of the preposition, rather than of the verb, but it would be the same). If you read through all the quotes, you'll find that this is absolutely consistent—"thou" is subject and "thee" is object. If you have difficulties figuring out which is which, recast the sentence using "he, him" or "she, her", which are "subject, object" as well. For example: wherever he goes my thought goes with him. Note also, in the conversations between Aragorn and Éowyn in The Passing of the Grey Company, he uses "you" or "your" in addressing her, that is, polite usage, while she uses the intimate "thou" and "thee". Aragorn keeps her linguistically at arm's length, and she's trying to get closer to him. Contrast this to Aragorn's usage at Éowyn and Faramir's trothplighting, in Many Partings, where he addresses her familiarly with "thee". Again, in the Gandalf / Denethor conversations, Gandalf consistently uses the polite, deferential "you" (both subject and object), while Denethor talks down to him, using "thou, thee" in a derogatory fashion, as to an inferior or servant. Ditto with Sauron's Messenger. Interestingly, in the bit about Isildur: Then Isildur said to their king: "Thou shalt be the last king. And if the West prove mightier than thy Black Master, this curse I lay upon thee and thy folk: to rest never until your oath is fulfilled. For this war will last through years uncounted, and you shall be summoned once again ere the end." Isildur switches from "thee" and "thou" when addressing the king, his vassal and inferior, to "you", not as a polite form, but as a plural form, including the king's folk in the curse. I also went and dug up some Shakespeare, who switches back and forth between "thou, thee" and "you, you", as well. From Shakespeare, here's Sonnet 18, which uses "thou, thee": Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimmed, And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed: But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st, Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st, So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. In his plays, the different usage for familiar / derogatory and polite / plural is also quite evident. And, from the King James Version: 16 And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: 17 Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me. Of course, throughout the Bible, you can find many instances of "thou, thee". A curious phenomenon is the "Quaker thee", in which "thee" is used as subject, as well as object, sometimes even as possessive! This was an artificial construct, promoted by a leader of the Quakers, to preserve "plain speaking", or humility and equality in language. They used third-person verb inflections, however—"Thee is" or "Thee has". II. Thy, Thine The possessives "thy" and "thine" are similar, and rather easier, once you have a grip on "thou, thee". They work almost like "my" and "mine". "Is this thy book?" "No, it is thine. The other book is mine." There is an exception, which shows up in the Galadriel quote—Lock-bearer, wherever thou goest my thought goes with thee. But have a care to lay thine axe to the right tree! Notice that instead of "thy axe", she uses "thine axe". This is because "axe" begins with a vowel; that is, it follows the same rule as "a, an"—"a book", "an apple". In archaic English, "my, mine" would have behaved the same way. If you are familiar with The Battle Hymn of the Republic, recall that it starts with "Mine eyes have seen...". III. Doth, Dost Here's just a bit on verb inflections, as the web resources are many. In general, "thou" requires the verb to take the "-st" or "est" ending (with a couple of exceptions), while "she", "he", "it" and all other third person singular nouns might lead to "-th" or "-eth". Notice that Tolkien doesn't typically go that far—he limits his archaicisms to the "thou", etc.: Lock-bearer, wherever thou goest my thought goes with thee. But have a care to lay thine axe to the right tree! Here, he uses the archaic "thou goest" alongside the more modern "my thought goes", instead of the archaic "my thought goeth". The LOTR quotes above use a number of verbs with "thou", most in the "-st" form: thou art (this is an exception the the "-st" rule) Thou shalt (also an exception) wilt thou go? (ditto) Didst thou think Verbs from the Shakespeare sonnet, all but one in the "-st" form: thou ow'st (owest) and one in the "-th" form: summer's lease hath all too short a date That last would be rendered "thou hast" in second person singular. Once again, of course, both Shakespeare and the King James Bible make great examples of archaic English in actual usage. I hope you've found this interesting and useful. If you need more information, here are some links. "A Note on Shakespeare's Grammar" Includes chart with some typical verb inflections. More background, grammar, discussion of Quaker usage: "Plain Speech FAQ" This is a work of fan fiction, written because the author has an abiding love for the works of J R R Tolkien. The characters, settings, places, and languages used in this work are the property of the Tolkien Estate, Tolkien Enterprises, and possibly New Line Cinema, except for certain original characters who belong to the author of the said work. The author will not receive any money or other remuneration for presenting the work on this archive site. The work is the intellectual property of the author, is available solely for the enjoyment of Henneth Annûn Story Archive readers, and may not be copied or redistributed by any means without the explicit written consent of the author.

<urn:uuid:333fc969-b799-4b22-9b34-cf445a0663ba>

Aims and Objectives The Centre was established to cover development oriented research, training and teaching on survival, adaptation and productivity of mountain plants. Thus the major objectives of the Centre are: - To undertake fundamental and applied studies on mountain plants. - To undertake studies on conservation of endangered plant species. - To set up demonstration units. - Teaching and information diffusion. - Framework of functioning The activities of the Centre are organized under following groups: - Seed biology and physiology of reproduction in threatened/endangered species and wild edibles. - Biomass production potential in mountain plant species. - Physiology and biochemistry of adaptation in high altitude plants. Training and Teaching - Ph.D. programme in the proposed fields of research. - Environmental Plant Biology course at M.Phil. level. - Post Graduate Diploma in Biotechniques of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants. - Certificate Course on Biotechniques of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants. - Short term orientation course in nursery practices, plant form and functions, conservation of medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) and environmental management. - To develop package of practices for the cultivation of endangered MAPs and mountain - Establishment of nursery and demonstration units. - Demonstration unit on revegetation of wasteland in mountains. - Publication and consultation in relevant fields. The Centre has its Main Building and Laboratory at Srinagar Garhwal and Field Station at Tungnath. The main building at Srinagar has an analytical laboratory (800 sq.m), four glass houses and a net house. In addition, a Medicinal Plant Biotechnology Laboratory has also been set up at Srinagar hosing tissue culture labs, green houses and analytical laboratories. The Alpine Research Station of the Centre in 10 acres land is situated at Tungnath (3600 m a.s.l.). This Station has residential facilities and Weather Monitoring System. At present the Garden at this station has about 50 rare species of alpine herbs and more will be added to this collection in coming years. In addition to this, a sub-station for medicinal plants has been established at Pothibasa (2200 m). Alpine field station Tungnath (3600m) Main Laboratory at Srinagar, Garhwal (550m) Alpine Field Station, Tungnath (3600 m) Demonstration site at Pothibasa (2200m) A small library is housed in the Centre which contains important reference books. So far, nearly 1000 accessions of books have been procured and more are being added regularly. The Centre has been subscribing to 14 Indian and 4 foreign journals. This facility is frequently used by the researchers from other departments and institutions.

<urn:uuid:efdb0765-aee9-47ad-9129-60157af0d209>

The Thai Alphabet Flash Cards can be used to help learn how to write the Thai Alphabet. In the videos below we have an expert teacher provide instruction in correcting simple errors that a beginner Thai language speaker encounters in first starting to write. These videos are available in High Definition, and it is best to size the video to the full screen of your computer or mobile device. Contact us at firstname.lastname@example.org if you have any questions, comments or suggestions. 7 Thai Mid-Consonants part 1 of 3 7 Thai Mid-Consonants part 2 of 3 7 Thai Mid-Consonants part 3 of 3 - Purchase the Thai Alphabet Flash Cards

<urn:uuid:8a7c968f-24c0-41fe-a41b-300a637c3f8f>

What it is: White blood cells play a role in reducing inflammation in the body. A high white blood cell count could mean that there is inflammation somewhere in the body, such as can occur in the gastrointestinal tract of people who have inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The white blood cell (WBC) count is also sometimes known as a leukocyte count or white count. A WBC count is typically done along with another common blood test, the complete blood cell count (CBC). A WBC count is the number of white blood cells per volume of blood, and is reported in either thousands in a microliter or millions in a liter of blood. What it's used for: A high WBC count can be an indicator of an infection, inflammation, or allergy. Some conditions may cause a decrease in the WBC count. Leukocytosis is the presence of an elevated WBC count; leukopenia is a decreased WBC count. Leukocytosis may be caused by several conditions including bacterial infection, inflammation, leukemia, trauma, or stress. Leukopenia may occur as a result of chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or immune system disorders. How it's done: A blood sample will be taken, normally from the arm. If several tests are ordered, more than one vial of blood will be taken. The normal range for WBC count is 4,300 to 10,800 cells per cubic millimeter (cmm) or 4.3 to 10.8 x 109 cells per liter. A range of 11 to 17 x 109/L may be considered mild to moderate leukocytosis, and a range of 3.0 to 5.0x109/L may be considered mild leukopenia.

<urn:uuid:86297bb0-a54b-49ba-b245-18b6611a71a5>

Note: This message is displayed if (1) your browser is not standards-compliant or (2) you have you disabled CSS. Read our Policies for more information. The Natural Resources Commission adopts rules that govern the administrative and regulatory functions of the Department of Natural Resources. These rules are important to citizens and businesses in Indiana because they cover an array of activities, including construction in or near rivers and streams, historic preservation, fish and wildlife management, and timber sales from private and public lands. Following is the current status of the agency's permanent rules: General Definitions (312 IAC 1) This article contains a number of definitions that have general application throughout the commission's rules. Examples include terms such as DNR "director" and "department." Procedures and Delegations (312 IAC 2) This article contains procedures for the Natural Resources Commission and the various boards of the Department of Natural Resources, as well as delegations of authority by the commission. Also included are procedures for informal factfinding hearings held by divisions of the DNR before making decisions concerning permits and other issues. Appeals of DNR Decisions (312 IAC 3) This article provides procedural rules for court-type proceedings held before the commission and its administrative law judges. These rules provide a "cookbook" for how to file and pursue an appeal (technically called "administrative review") of a determination by the DNR or another determination over which the commission has jurisdiction. The homepage version of these rules includes unofficial annotations to help understand how these rules were interpreted in particular cases. Law Enforcement Procedures and Personnel (312 IAC 4) These rules govern standards of conduct and discipline, and appellate procedures, for conservation officers. Watercraft Standards (312 IAC 5) Effective January 1, 2002, these rules supplement statutory standards for the operation and equipping of boats on public waters. A new emphasis is placed on enforcement directed to the disposal of wastewater from boats. New procedural standards are also included to help implement 2000 legislation to authorize the establishment of ecological zones and the licensing of fishing tournaments and other organized activities on public waters. For the remainder of 2001, 310 IAC 2.1 applies. Navigable Waterways (312 IAC 6) One of the most asked-about areas of NRC responsibility is navigable waters. The Division of Hearings has recently developed a research aid to better understanding of the history and application of this important legal area. The aid annotates Commission rules for navigable waters but also goes beyond those rules to outline important precedents from Indiana and federal courts. Navigable Waters Ways Roster. Great Lakes Basin (312 IAC 6.2) This article would address diversions from the Indiana portion of the Great Lakes Basin. Rules adopted in 2005 provided the genesis for state procedures. Water Withdrawal Contracts from State Reservoirs (312 IAC 6.3) This article governs the procedures for, and the substance of, consideration of any contract proposal made to the state and submitted to the Division of Water after February 28, 2009, for the withdrawal or release of water from the water supply storage of a reservoir. Off-Road Vehicles and Snowmobiles (312 IAC 6.5) This article addresses the registration of off-road vehicles and snowmobiles. The article is administered primarily through the Division of Accounting. Trails and Scenic Rivers (312 IAC 7) This very brief article sets general standards for the maintenance of snowmobile trails. Also identified are the state's three scenic waterways. The DNR division of outdoor recreation administers the article. Public Use of DNR Properties (312 IAC 8) The article guides public use of state parks, forests, nature preserves, historic sites, state reservoirs, and similar properties. . Several amendments became effective January 1, 2000, including those for activities on shooting ranges. The article does not include hunting or fishing regulations; these are in 312 IAC 9. Neither does the article apply to DNR administration of floodways, navigable waterways, or public freshwater lakes. Fish and Wildlife (312 IAC 9) This extensive article includes a wide variety of provisions designed to help manage fish and wildlife in Indiana. Hunting and fishing seasons and bag limits are set. Endangered and threatened wild animals are given legal protection. Permitting processes are set for scientific investigations, the possession of certain wild animals, falconry, and similar activities. Recent amendments were directed to reptiles and amphibians native to Indiana and to potentially dangerous reptiles. Flood Plain Management (312 IAC 10) Effective January 1, 2002, these rules govern construction activities within floodways (regulated by the DNR) and construction activities for the portions of flood plains outside floodways (regulated by local government). A new "general license" is approved that allows for the placement of qualified outfall structures in floodways. Additional licensing coordination is provided with respect to the floodways of navigable waters. Regulation of Dams (312 IAC 10.5) This article governs an activity that is controlled by IC 14-27-7.5; and establishes definitions and creates procedures related to hazard classifications of dams. Lake Construction Activities (312 IAC 11) This article addresses construction activities on and along lakes. Rules recodified in 1999 were concerned with shoreline changes and with the placement of such structures as seawalls and piers along public freshwater lakes. . The rules governing surface water rights and the emergency regulation of freshwater lakes were recodified effective February 4, 2000. Water Well Construction Standards (312 IAC 12) This article sets minimum standards for water well construction in order for a well to qualify its owner for relief under IC 14-25-4 (sometimes called the "Groundwater Protection Act"). Water Well Drillers (312 IAC 13) The rules governing the conduct of water well drilling contractors were recodified effective in December 1999. Amendments were made to coordinate with standards approved by the water pollution control board at 327 IAC 8-3.4 for the design and construction of public water supply wells. Also addressed is the proper abandonment of water wells by landowners. Timber Buyers, Their Agents, and Timber Growers (312 IAC 14) This article helps to administer the statute that governs the licensing of timber buyers. Also included are provisions relating to complaints by landowners who believe they have not been paid for timber cut from their property. In most cases brought under this article, the DNR is not a party. Classified Forests (312 IAC 15) A few provisions help assure private forests lands, classified by request of the owners as forest plantations or as native forests, apply a management plan to help maintain a healthy forest environment. Oil and Gas (312 IAC 16) This extensive article provides the primary structure for regulation of the oil and gas production industry in Indiana. Included are technical standards designed to protect water quality and other environmental concerns, as well as to support public safety and minimize the "waste" of petroleum and other mineral resources. Incorporated within the rules are standards governing Class II injection wells, a program for which the division of oil and gas has primacy through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Other Petroleum Regulation (312 IAC 17) As with article 16, this article is administered by the division of oil and gas. Included are standards for the exploration of oil or gas on state-owned real estate; test hole drilling; and geophysical surveying for petroleum resources through seismic or other methodologies. Entomology and Plant Pathology (312 IAC 18) This article includes rules for the DNR division of entomology and plant pathology. Included are provisions regulating nursery dealers and beekeepers. There are also standards designed to control pests or pathogens, such as africanized bees or purple loosestrife. Ginseng Management (312 IAC 19) This article governs the collection and sale of ginseng from public and private properties. New standards require that wild ginseng be harvested only after a plant reaches maturity. The article is administered through DNR division of nature preserves, with support from the division of law enforcement. Historic Preservation Review Board (312 IAC 20) These rules outline procedures of the Historic Preservation Review Board, as well as appeals from decisions of the board. The rules also reference the status of the State Historic Preservation Officer (who, in Indiana, is also the DNR Director). Archaeological Review and Recovery (312 IAC 21) These rules set minimum qualifications among the levels of professionals and amateurs in order to conduct archaeological excavations and analyses. The Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology is authorized to maintain a roster of persons who may conduct the activities, as well as to initiate a complaint with the Natural Resources Commission to remove a person from the roster where the Division believes the person has not performed according to those standards. Human Remains, Burial Objects, and Artifacts (312 IAC 22) These rules set standards for the excavation of archaeological sites by both professionals and amateurs, including the development of formal "plans" to conduct those excavations. Cemeteries and Burial Grounds; Registration and Management (312 IAC 22.5) These rules set standards for the submission, review, and implementation of a development plan within 100 feet of a cemetery. State Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit (312 IAC 23) This article governs the administration of the state historic rehabilitation tax credit established by IC 6-3.1-16, and is administered by the Department of Natural Resources, Division of Historic Preservation and Archaeology. State Museums and Historic Sites (312 IAC 24) This article helps administer some of the activities of the DNR division of state museums and historic sites. Included are standards for the receipt and disposal of museum artifacts, a process call "accession and deaccession." Ethical standards are set for DNR employees relative to the state museum's collection; these are in addition to the general state employee ethics requirements. Surface Coal Mining and Reclamation (312 IAC 25) These rules govern environmental standards for suface coal mining (including surface impacts resulting from underground coal mines) and the reclamation of those sites. Through what is commonly called "primacy," this Indiana program administers Federal SMCRA. Rule recodification has completed the process established by state law, but 312 IAC 25 becomes effective only upon approval by the Federal Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation, and notice of the approval being published in the Indiana Register. Until publication of the notice, the program will be addressed at 310 IAC 12. DNR Grant Programs (312 IAC 26) This article provides standards for administration of the Hometown Indiana Grant Program. Various elements of the program are managed within the DNR by the division of outdoor recreation, the division of historic preservation and archeology, and the division of forestry. The program also gives recognition to the SCORP and to some other grant programs administered by the division of outdoor recreation. Flood Control Revolving Fund (312 IAC 27) This article assists with the implementation of the Flood Control Revolving Fund.

<urn:uuid:0c794a3c-1835-4ff7-bd59-aed8e8022352>

Project Learning Tree’s “Web of Life” lets students investigate relationships between producers, consumers, and decomposers by acting as organisms connected by string in a food web. Want to make this lively activity have more energy? A fun musical variation to this activity is to assign a different sound to each plant. The consumers must say the respective sound when they feel the tug. Each organism must repeat the sounds that the previous organism said. (For example, hazelnut trees say “da,” oak trees say “dee,” raspberries say “mo,” grass says “tie.” The deer eats acorns and hazelnut trees so it will say “da, dee.” Rabbits eat raspberries and grass, so it will say “mo, tie.” Coyotes eat deer and rabbits, they will say “da, dee, mo, tie”) The top consumers will likely have so many sounds to say that they will have a difficult time remembering them. Want to expand this activity? Try incorporating the following Project Learning Tree activities: - Are Vacant Lots Vacant? - Dynamic Duos - Field, Forest and Stream - Planet Diveristy - School Yard Safari Hickman, P. 1997. Hungry Animals: My First Look at a Foodchain. Kids Can Press Ltd. Johansson, P. 2004. Wide Open Grasslands: A Web of Life. Enslow Publishers, Incorporated. Kitchen, B. 1994. When Hunger Calls. Candlewick Press. Lauber, P. 1995. Who Eats What?: Food Chains and Food Webs. HarperCollins Publishers. Mckinney, B.S. 2000. Pass the Energy, Please! Dawn Publications. Relf, P. 1996. Magic School Bus Gets Eaten: A Book about Food Chains. Scholastic, Inc. Cole, J. 1996. The Magic School Bus Gets Eaten. A Book About Food Chains. Scholastic Inc. Crenson, V. and R. Gurevich. 2003. Horseshoe Crabs and Shorebirds: The Story of a Food Web. Marshall Cavendish Inc. Ellis, B. 2006. The Web at Dragonfly Pond. Dawn Publications. Greenaway, T. 2001. Cycles in Nature Food Chain. Raintree Steck-Vaughn Publishers. Heinz, B.J. 2006. Butternut Hollow Pond. Lerner Publishing Group. Kalman, B. and J. Langille. 1998. What Are Food Chains and Webs? Crabtree. Mason, C. 2003. Everybody's Somebody's Lunch: The Role of Predator and Prey in Nature. Tilbury House Publishers. Nadeau, I. 2002. Food Chains in a Backyard Habitat. Rosen Publishing Group, Incorporated. Nadeau, I. 2001. Food Chains in a Forest Habitat. Rosen Publishing Group, Incorporated. Nadeau, I. 2002. Food Chains in a Meadow Habitat. Rosen Publishing Group, Incorporated. Nadeau, I. 2001. Food Chains in a Pond Habitat. Rosen Publishing Group, Incorporated. Norsgaard, E.J. 1990. Nature's Great Balancing Act: In Our Own Backyard. Penguin Young Readers Group. Penny, M. 1998. The Foodchain. The Bookwright Press. Pringle, L.P. 1975. Chains, Webs and Pyramids: The Flow of Energy in Nature. HarperCollins Publishers. Rice, D.L. 1997. Lifetimes. Dawn Publications. Riley, P. 2002. Food Chains. Franklin Watts. Spilsbury, L., Spilsbury R. 2004. Food Chains and Food Webs: From Producers to Decomposers. Heinemann Library. Staub, F. 2004. World of Wonder; The Food Chain. Creative Education. Capeci, A. 2003. Food Chain Frenzy (The Magic School Bus Chapter Book). Scholastic Inc. Hemsley, W. 1992. Feeding to Digestion: Projects with Biology. Scholastic Library Publishing. Silverstein, A. 1998. Food Chains. Lerner Publishing Group.

<urn:uuid:7a2ef59e-ada6-4f4e-8cab-28ef6277e502>

Posted by: Roger King 3D animation, 3D graphics, Autodesk Maya, materials and textures in Maya, NURBS modeling, polygon modeling, Web development I teach 3D animation at the University of Colorado in Boulder (in the computer science department). I got a good response from the previous posting where I listed the first five Vimeo videos I have created on how to use Autodesk Maya to create animated projects, so I have added 7 more. They are short, meant for beginners, and each is focused on a specific topic. They are meant to more or less be watched in order. They are on: All of the videos are on my Vimeo account.

<urn:uuid:185ef953-557e-4595-850d-d5b57baa3fb2>

Mobile pastoralists the world over are the subject of an unusually large number of myths and misconceptions. These misconceptions have led to inadequate, often hostile, development policies and interventions which have erected major barriers to sustainable land management and have entrenched pastoral poverty. In order to achieve the twin goals of WISP, rangeland environmental sustainability and pastoral poverty reduction, it is therefore necessary to overcome anti-pastoral prejudice and bring an end to damaging policy and practice. In recent years there has been a growing consensus that pastoral poverty is rooted in the social, economic and political marginalisation of pastoralists. It is widely accepted that in rangelande environments, mobility is a pre-requisite for effective natural resource use, and it is understood that failure to support mobility of pastoralists has resulted in service delivery failure. Yet the underlying, and usually under recognized, reality is that pastoralism is also a conservation strategy that can make best use of rangelands both in space (in terms of accessing extensive ranges) and time (making best use of seasonal grazing). Questions remain unanswered over the role that pastoralists could play in conservation, given a more supportive policy and legal environment. WISP will contribute to closing this knowledge gap through a series of studies by national partners and sharing of best practice from the development and environment sectors. It is important to note however that the project neither supports “turning the clock back” nor “freezing” pastoralists in their current state. Tremendous losses of rangelands have occurred in the past, which simply negates such a strategy. Whatever the future of pastoralism, it has been shaped by many distinctive twentieth century influences, which confound a return to some prior or imagined condition. Such influences include, for example, losses of prime grazing land to cultivation, gazetting of pastoral lands for conservation and political, economic and social marginalization. It is possible nonetheless to ensure that appropriate policies, legal mechanisms, and support systems are in place to enable pastoralists to enhance the economic, social and ecological sustainability of their livelihoods. WISP’s role is to facilitate this process by gathering and managing knowledge, developing advocacy tools, building capacity to influence policy, supporting advocacy processes and networking to enhance learning and strengthen policy debate.

<urn:uuid:be16d578-2aea-4bcb-af04-344b5edaa58f>

Mario Schenberg, Brazil’s most important theoretical physicist, who researched the formation of supernova stars, was born in Recife on this date in 1914. In the 1940s, together with Indian physicist and Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chanrasekhar, he discovered the Schenberg-Chandrasekhar limit, which is the maximum mass of the core of a star prior to its gravitational collapse. Schenberg also made significant contributions to mathematics vis-a-vis quantum physics, and was widely respected as a writer and art critic. He was twice elected to be Sao Paolo state legislator on the Communist ticket; following Brazil’s 1964 military coup d’etat, he was forced into retirement by presidential decree and was jailed for several months (his second jailing for communist activism). He also received death threats from Brazilian neo-Nazis for his opposition to a joint Brazil-Germany plan to build nuclear power stations in Brazil in 1975. Schenberg died in 1990. To view a video about the “Mario Schenberg Space Ship,” an interactive educational program for kids at the University of Sao Paolo, click here. “The energy disappears in the nucleus of the supernova as quickly as . . . money disappeared at that roulette table.”—Mario Schenberg

<urn:uuid:bfddf4ad-3eec-48fc-951c-80a9c0d0b740>

A young person named K. asks Yahoo, How do I go about writing a research paper on the JFK assassination? What would President John F. Kennedy have thought about the enigmatic circumstances of his murder? Fifty years later, I think we don’t ask this question often enough. Instead we argue about what Rachel Maddow and Bill O’Reilly think. Media criticism is important, but it is no substitute for historical analysis. There are certainly other ways to think about the story. Counterfactually, for example. Imagine JFK had survived the gunfire in Dealey Plaza. What would he have said about its causes? Kennedy, of course, did not have time to comment on the gunfire that claimed his life, other than to say, after a bullet struck him in the back, “My God, I’m hit.” But that exclamation illuminated his instantaneous awareness of a lethal situation. JFK had been a soldier/sailor in World War II. Twenty years before he had faced gunfire. He had seen men die from it. He knew that he had been shot. Before he could say anything more another bullet struck him in the head, fatally wounding him. That was not inevitable. Earlier this month Rachel Maddow told the little-known story of how Senator John F. Kennedy introduced legislation to ban the importation of weapons produced for foreign armies, only to be thwarted by pro-gun legislators. Then, on November 22, 1963, Maddow said, Lee Oswald used an Italian-made military rifle to shoot and kill President Kennedy. For the popular MSNBC anchor, this story illuminates the enduring and pernicious effects of the gun lobby from Dallas to Newtown. As a contemporary polemic, this novel interpretation of JFK’s assassination — the Gun Lobby Did It — is strong. As history it is weak. It’s hard not to agree with Maddow’s broad point: the gun manufacturers and gun violence have had a pernicious effect on American life for a long time. She is correct that an Italian-made rifle, cheap and easily obtained under permissive U.S. gun laws, played a central role in the JFK assassination story. But her implication that the gun lobby, as a power sector in American politics, was an important causal factor in enabling JFK’s assassination is not founded in historical fact. Read more A lot of people at the scene of the crime thought so. But don’t take my word for it. In the latest installment of Len Osanic’s “50 Reasons for 50 Years” video series, JFK photo expert Robert Groden compiles photographic imagery from the first few minutes after the assassination of President Kennedy. View the pictures and decide for yourself. The Pittsburgh Tribune Review recently asked Dr. Cyril Wecht of Duquesne University a question: The ONI, according to researacher Bill Kelly, is withholding records of its own internal investigations of Oswald after he defected to the Soviet Union in 1959 and after JFK was killed in 1963. The latter reports would be explosive if they showed that U.S. Marine Corps investigators doubted that Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy. ONI representatives assert that America’s oldest intelligence service doesn’t have any such records. That claim is dubious, for a number of reasons. No. Read this unpersuasive (some would say nutty) article and you will find proof that even the piously Paulite advocates of this theory have no actual evidence for it. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s comments that his father did not believe that a “lone-gunman” killed his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, have now been covered by all four television networks (CBS, NBC, Fox, and ABC), and gone viral on the internet. The remarks marked the first time a Kennedy family member has publicly questioned the official theory that JFK was killed by a lone gunman. Were RFK Jr.’s remarks factually accurate? Read more Yes. The tape was probably destroyed in January 1986. This question, prompted by a comment from reader JSA, is a natural follow up to yesterday’s question, “Did the CIA track Oswald before JFK was killed?” And there is a lot of evidence to support our answer. Read more Yes, closely and constantly. This is one of the biggest JFK revelations of the past 20 years, and one that we need talk up in social and news media the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination. While the CIA assured Congress in the 1970s that its interest in Lee Harvey Oswald before JFK was killed was “routine,” the newest documents tell a very different story: Oswald was monitored closely and constantly by an supersecret office within the CIA’s Counterintelligence Staff from 1959 to 1963, known as the Special Investigations Group. Somebody did talk. His name was John Martino. In 1963 he was an anti-Castro militant who mixed with organized crime figures and CIA officers. His story is one of the clearest indicators that opponents of JFK’s Cuba policy had foreknowledge that President Kennedy might be assassinated in Dallas. To put it another way, those who doubt there was a conspiracy, need to address John Martino’s story. It is corroborated in multiple ways. Martino, a native of New Jersey, was a petty racketeer as a young man with arrests for gambling and loan sharking. In the 1950s, he developed an expertise in electronic equipment related to gambling. He gravitated to south Florida and then to Havana where his skills won him a security job at the casino in the new Deauville Hotel in the Cuban capital. Havana was then dominated by organized crime syndicates who reaped big profits from gambling and related tourist attractions. In this balanced, if breathless, 1998 History Channel video entitled “Missing Files,” we learn what the government sought to hide from public view. The approach is skeptical without crazy conspiracy mongering. Operation Northwoods was a Pentagon plan to provoke a U.S. invasion of Cuba in 1963 through the use of deception operations. First disclosed by the Assassination Records Review Board in 1997, the Northwoods plans are among the most significant new JFK documents to emerge since Oliver Stone’s “JFK” movie. Operation Northwoods envisioned U.S. intelligence operatives staging violent attacks on U.S. targets and arranging for the blame for the mayhem to fall on Fidel Castro and his communist government. The idea, wrote one planner, was to creates a “justification for U.S. intervention in Cuba,” by orchestrating a crime that placed the U.S. government “in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government” in Cuba. These plans included the use of violence on American soil against American citizens. The question is still “hotly debated” says the JFK Library and Museum, not the least because the question has become part of the debate over the causes of JFK’s assassination. What does the record show about Kennedy’s thinking and actions on Vietnam? Read more

<urn:uuid:693fda2f-cdb9-4135-897d-1ab9f7457ca9>

What Is Tetanus? Tetanus is a bacterial infection that attacks the nervous system. Tetanus may result in severe muscle spasms, and this can lead to a condition known as lockjaw, which prevents the mouth from opening and closing. Tetanus can be fatal. Tetanus is caused when the bacterium, Clostridium tetani , enters the body through a break in the skin. The bacterium can come from soil, dust, or manure. It produces a toxin that causes the illness. In the United States and other countries with tetanus vaccination programs, the condition is rare. What Is the Tetanus Vaccine? The tetanus vaccine is an inactivated toxoid (a substance that can create an antitoxin). There are different types of the vaccines to prevent tetanus, including: Who Should Get Vaccinated and When? The DTaP vaccine is generally required before starting school. The regular immunization schedule is to give the vaccine at: - 2 months - 4 months - 6 months - 15-18 months - 4-6 years Tdap is routinely recommended for children aged 11-12 years who have completed the DTaP series. Tdap can also be given to: - Children aged 7-10 years who have not been fully vaccinated - Children and teens aged 13-18 years who did not get the Tdap when they were 11-12 years old - Adults under 65 years who have never received Tdap - Pregnant women after 20 weeks gestation who have not previously received Tdap - Adults who have not been previously vaccinated and who have contact with babies aged 12 months or younger - Healthcare providers who have not previously received Tdap Td is given as a booster shot every 10 years. The vaccine may also be given if you have a severe cut or burn. If you or your child has not been fully vaccinated against tetanus, talk to the doctor. What Are the Risks Associated With the Tetanus Vaccine? Most people tolerate the tetanus-containing vaccines without any trouble. The most common side effects are pain, redness, or swelling at the injection site, mild fever, headache, tiredness, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea , or stomachache. Rarely, a fever of more than 102ºF, severe gastrointestinal problems, or severe headache may occur. Nervous system problems and severe allergic reactions are extremely rare. Localized allergic reactions (redness and swelling) at the injection site may occur, while anaphylaxis (life-threatening, widespread allergic reaction) is extremely rare. Acetaminophen (eg, Tylenol) is sometimes given to reduce pain and fever that may occur after getting a vaccine. In infants, the medicine may weaken the vaccine's effectiveness. However, in children at risk for siezures, a fever lowering medicine may be important to take. Discuss the risks and benefits of taking acetaminophen with the doctor. Who Should Not Get Vaccinated? The vast majority of people should receive their tetanus-containing vaccinations on schedule. However, individuals in whom the risks of vaccination outweigh the benefits include those who: - Have had a life-threatening allergic reaction to DTP, DTap, DT, Tdap, or Td vaccine - Have had a severe allergy to any component of the vaccine to be given - Have gone into a coma or long seizure within seven days after a dose of DTP or DTaP Talk with your doctor before getting the vaccine if you have: - Allergy to latex - Epilepsy or other nervous system problem - Severe swelling or severe pain after a previous dose of any component of the vaccination to be given - Guillain-Barre syndrome Wait until you recover to get the vaccine if you have moderate or severe illness on the day your shot is scheduled. What Other Ways Can Tetanus Be Prevented Besides Vaccination? Caring properly for wounds, including promptly cleaning them and seeing a doctor for medical care, can prevent a tetanus infection. - Reviewer: Lawrence Frisch, MD, MPH - Review Date: 06/2012 - - Update Date: 00/61/2012 -

<urn:uuid:13959b93-c035-4ff4-abfa-6088611bbe5c>

Web and Book design, Copyright, Kellscraft Studio (Return to Web Text-ures) Chapter 15. OBSERVATIONS OF THE GUDGEON, THE RUFFE, AND THE BLEAK, AND HOW TO FISH FOR THEM PISCATOR. The Gudgeon is reputed a fish of excellent taste, and to be very wholesome: he is of a fine shape, of a silver color, and beautified with black spots both on his body and tail. He breeds two or three times in the year, and always in summer. He is com mended for a fish of excellent nourishment: the Germans call him Groundling, by reason of his feeding on the ground; and he there feasts himself in sharp streams, and on the gravel. He and the Barbel both feed so, and do not hunt for flies at any time, as most other fishes do: he is an excellent fish to enter a young Angler, being easy to be taken with a small red-worm, on or very near to the ground. He is one of those leather-mouthed fish that has his teeth in his throat, and will hardly be lost from off the hook if he be once strucken. They be usually scattered up and down every river in the shallows, in the heat of summer; but in autumn, when the weeds begin to grow sour or rot, and the weather colder, then they gather together, and get into the deeper parts of the water. and are to be fished for there, with your hook always touching the ground, if you fish for him with a float, or with a cork. But many will fish for the Gudgeon by hand, with a running-line upon the ground, without a cork, as a Trout is fished for, and it is an excel lent way, if you have a gentle rod and as gentle a hand. There is also another fish called a Pope, and by some a Ruffe; a fish that is not known to be in some rivers: he is much like the Pearch for his shape, and taken to be better than the Pearch, but will not grow to be bigger than a Gudgeon: he is an excellent fish, no fish that swims is of a pleasanter taste, and he is also excellent to enter a young Angler, for he is a greedy biter, and they will usually lie, abundance of them together, in one reserved place, where the water is deep, and runs quietly; and an easy Angler, if he has found where they lie, may catch forty or fifty, or sometimes twice so many, at a standing. You must fish for him with a small red worm, and if you bait the ground with earth, it is excellent. There is also a Bleak, or Fresh-water Sprat, a fish that is ever in Motion, and therefore called by some the River-Swallow; for just as you shall observe the Swallow to be, most evenings in summer, ever in motion, making short and quick turns when he flies to catch flies in the air, by which he lives, so does the Bleak at the top of the water. Ausonius would have him called Bleak, from his whit ish color: his back is of a pleasant sad or sea-water-green, his belly white and shining as the mountain snow. And, doubtless, though he have the fortune, which virtue has in poor people, to be neglected, yet the Bleak ought to be much valued, though we want Allamot-salt, and the skill that the Italians have to turn them into Anchovies. This fish may be caught with a Pater-noster line; that is, six or eight very small hooks tied along the line, one half a foot above the other: I have seen five caught thus at one time, and the bait has been gentles, than which none is better. Or this fish may be caught with a fine small artificial fly, which is to be of a very sad brown color, and very small, and the hook answerable. There is no better sport than whipping for Bleaks in a boat, or on a bank in the swift water in a summer's evening, with a hazel top about five or six foot long, and a line twice the length of the rod. I have heard Sir Henry Wotton say, that there be many that in Italy will catch swallows so, or especially martins, this bird-angler standing on the top of a steeple to do it, and with a line twice so long as I have spoken of: and let me tell you, Scholar, that both Martins and Bleaks be most excellent meat. And let me tell you, that I have known a Hern that did constantly frequent one place caught with a hook baited with a big minnow or a small gudgeon. The line and hook must be strong, and tied to some loose staff, so big as she cannot fly away with it, — a line not exceeding two yards.

<urn:uuid:74177536-5c45-4fe4-87f3-4c5bee6c22ec>

According to the National Program for Playground Safety (NPPS), a nonprofit organization that funds efforts to reduce playground injuries, more than 200,000 preschool and elementary aged children are injured on playgrounds every year to the extent that they require hospital care. What’s more, while many of us assume that such dangers lurk only on public playgrounds, the reality is that private playgrounds – the ones in our own backyards – also pose a hazard and, consequently, potential legal liability. In fact, at least 19% of playground injuries occur on home playground equipment. However, with just a bit more awareness and increased diligence, we can ensure that our children get the most out of their playtime and that we aren’t unwittingly placing ourselves in legal jeopardy. NPPS recommends using the acronym S.A.F.E. to guide us in our playground safety mission. Supervise: Children should never be left alone while playing on playground equipment. Parents who supervise are able to better assess situations that children can’t and are consequently able to prevent injuries. Age-Appropriate: Consider the level of difficulty in maneuvering the playground your child is using. Are the tasks and movements those that your child is capable of mastering? Taking kids to age-appropriate play sets drastically reduce the likelihood of injury. Fall Surface: A vast majority of playground injuries result directly from falls. As a result, playground owners should always use a fall surface material that takes into account equipment height, durability, surface depth, and American Society for Testing & Materials standards. Recommended materials include shredded rubber, sand, pea gravel, and hardwood fiber. Equipment Maintenance: Playgrounds that are kept free of splinters, rust, cracks, structural weaknesses, and openings in which children could become stuck are much safer for children to play on. Maintenance should be a routine endeavor. If a play set is visibly deteriorated, don’t go near it! By following these basic guidelines, we can reduce the number of annual injuries our children sustain from playgrounds. After all, many of such unfortunate incidents are completely preventable. What’s more, by applying such recommendations to the play sets in our own backyards, we can minimize our liability and keep our personal assets out of jeopardy. Author: Paul B. Harding; Martin, Harding & Mazzotti LLP ®

<urn:uuid:e7c95eb6-6775-4dac-9da5-50c367af769f>

If you've ever been sick to your stomach while riding in a car, train, airplane, or boat, you know exactly what motion sickness feels like. It's no fun. To understand motion sickness, it helps to understand a few parts of your body and how they affect the way you feel movement: Inner ears: Liquid in the semicircular canals of the inner ear allows you to sense if you're moving, and, if you are, which way you're moving — up, down, side to side, round and round, forward, or backward. Eyes: What you see also lets your body know whether you're moving and in which direction. Skin receptors: These receptors tell your brain which parts of your body are touching the ground. Muscles and joint sensory receptors: These sensing receptors tell your brain if you're moving your muscles and which position your body is in. The brain gets an instant report from these different parts of your body and tries to put together a total picture about what you are doing just at that moment. But if any of the pieces of this picture don't match, you can get motion sickness. For example, if you're riding in a car and reading a book, your inner ears and skin receptors will detect that you are moving forward. However, your eyes are looking at a book that isn't moving, and your muscle receptors are telling your brain that you're sitting still. So the brain gets a little confused. Things may begin to feel a little scrambled inside your head at that point. When this happens, you might feel really tired, dizzy, or sick to your stomach. Sometimes you might even throw up. And if you're feeling scared or anxious, your motion sickness might get even worse. Put your best face forward. Always sit facing forward. Don't face backward in your seat or sit in a seat that faces backward. Sitting forward helps keep the motion sensed by your eyes and ears the same. Examine the great outdoors. Look outside. From inside a car, look at stuff far away, like the barn up ahead or a mountain. If you're seasick on a boat, go to the top deck (in the middle of the boat) and look far out into the horizon — where the sea and sky meet. On an airplane, try looking out the window. This way, your eyes won't be fooled into thinking you're not moving when you actually are. Get to the middle of things. Whatever you're riding in, find the place with the least amount of movement. This means sitting closer to the center of a plane (in the aisle seats over the wings) or in the middle of a boat — rather than at the sides or the front, where you're more likely to feel seasick. If you feel this way easily during any kind of movement, it's a good idea to go to the doctor. He or she will want to make sure there's nothing wrong with your inner ears or any of the other body parts that sense movement. But for typical motion sickness, your parent may be able to give you medicine before you travel. For some kids, it may help to wear pressure bracelets that can be bought at the drugstore. If you feel yourself getting sick while you're traveling in a car, it might help if the driver finds a safe spot where you can get out and walk around a little bit. If you can't pull over, make sure you have a plastic bag in the car — just in case!

<urn:uuid:43805d99-212b-423b-91da-f884ebac44ff>

Kawasaki disease is an illness that involves the skin, mouth, and lymph nodes, and most often affects kids under age 5. The cause is unknown, but if the symptoms are recognized early, kids with Kawasaki disease can fully recover within a few days. Untreated, it can lead to serious complications that can affect the heart. Kawasaki disease occurs in 19 out of every 100,000 kids in the United States. It is most common among children of Japanese and Korean descent, but can affect all ethnic groups. Signs and Symptoms Kawasaki disease can't be prevented, but usually has telltale symptoms and signs that appear in phases. The first phase, which can last for up to 2 weeks, usually involves a persistent fever higher than 104°F (39°C) and lasts for at least 5 days. Other symptoms that typically develop include: severe redness in the eyes a rash on the stomach, chest, and genitals red, dry, cracked lips swollen tongue with a white coating and big red bumps sore, irritated throat swollen palms of the hands and soles of the feet with a purple-red color swollen lymph nodes During the second phase, which usually begins within 2 weeks of when the fever started, the skin on the hands and feet may begin to peel in large pieces. The child also may experience joint pain, diarrhea, vomiting, or abdominal pain. If your child shows any of these symptoms, call your doctor. Doctors can manage the symptoms of Kawasaki disease if they catch it early. Symptoms often disappear within just 2 days of the start of treatment. If Kawasaki disease is treated within 10 days of the onset of symptoms, heart problems usually do not develop. Cases that go untreated can lead to more serious complications, such as vasculitis, an inflammation of the blood vessels. This can be particularly dangerous because it can affect the coronary arteries, which supply blood to the heart. In addition to the coronary arteries, the heart muscle, lining, valves, and the outer membrane that surrounds the heart can become inflamed. Arrhythmias (changes in the normal pattern of the heartbeat) or abnormal functioning of some heart valves also can occur. No single test can detect Kawasaki disease, so doctors usually diagnose it by evaluating the symptoms and ruling out other conditions. Most kids diagnosed with Kawasaki disease will have a fever lasting 5 or more days and at least four of these symptoms: redness in both eyes changes around the lips, tongue, or mouth changes in the fingers and toes, such as swelling, discoloration, or peeling Treatment should begin as soon as possible, ideally within 10 days of when the fever begins. Usually, a child is treated with intravenous doses of gamma globulin (purified antibodies), an ingredient of blood that helps the body fight infection. The child also might be given a high dose of aspirin to reduce the risk of heart problems.

<urn:uuid:75809dd8-de11-4a38-a503-938979a6c1b8>