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., Figure 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 (Captain Moresby informs me that Millepora complanata is one of the
commonest kinds on the outer margin, as it is at Keeling atoll.) within
which there is a flat surface of coral rock; of 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),