Now, It
Is Remarkable How Generally It Can Be Shown, By The Presence
Of Upraised Organic Remains, That The Fringed Islands Have
Been Elevated:
And so far, this is indirect evidence in favour
of our theory.
I was particularly struck with this fact, when
I found, to my surprise, that the descriptions given by MM.
Quoy and Gaimard were applicable, not to reefs in general
as implied by them, but only to those of the fringing class;
my surprise, however, ceased when I afterwards found that,
by a strange chance, all the several islands visited by these
eminent naturalists, could be shown by their own statements
to have been elevated within a recent geological era.
Not only the grand features in the structure of barrier-reefs
and of atolls, and to their likeness to each other in form,
size, and other characters, are explained on the theory of
subsidence - which theory we are independently forced to
admit in the very areas in question, from the necessity of
finding bases for the corals within the requisite depth - but
many details in structure and exceptional cases can thus also
be simply explained. I will give only a few instances. In
barrier-reefs it has long been remarked with surprise, that
the passages through the reef exactly face valleys in the
included land, even in cases where the reef is separated
from the land by a lagoon-channel so wide and so much
deeper than the actual passage itself, that it seems hardly
possible that the very small quantity of water or sediment
brought down could injure the corals on the reef.
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