152 bulletin: museum of comparative zoology. 



Later, in 1907, he writes: — "I have started on my coral-reef book, 

 but it is a job, a good deal more than I expected. If I stay at home 

 I ought to make good progress." Later in the same year he says: — 

 "I fancy I shall have all the time I want to write out my popular 

 account of coral reefs. I have made a fair beginning, and hope to 

 keep the material within reasonable bounds and not allow it to run 

 away with me." Four months before his death he wrote: — "I have 

 worked hard at my coral-reef book," and only a few days before his 

 death he told me in London that he had really sketched out this book 

 three times, but found it very difficult indeed to deal satisfactorily 

 with the mass of information that had been collected. It was his 

 intention, he stated, to write this book during the present year prac- 

 tically for the fourth and last time, leaving out all criticism of the 

 work of others and stating exactly what he had himself observed and 

 his own views. 



When in 1903 he addressed the Royal Society of London on coral 

 reefs, he simply described what he had seen in the various coral-reef 

 regions, and did not enter into any controversial matters. The real 

 point of his address came out in the subsequent discussion, viz., 

 that in all his investigations and voyages he had not seen one single 

 atoll or barrier-reef which could be said to be an illustration of the 

 Darwinian theory of coral reefs. It was evident to a large number of 

 naturalists who had themselves observed in the field that the subsi- 

 dence theory was no more necessary to account for the characteristic 

 features of atolls and barrier reefs than the elevation theory of Darwin 

 — published about the same time — was necessary to account for the 

 Parallel Roads of Glen Roy in Scotland x 



It is difficult to account for the heated controversies which have 

 raged around the coral-reef question. Possibly these would never 

 have taken place had the subsidence theory not been associated with 

 the name of Darwin. Very many of the public did not seem to realize 

 that this theory of coral reefs was the work of Darwin when young 

 and inexperienced, and had nothing whatever to do with the theory 

 of natural selection. When the late Duke of Argyll published his 

 famous article entitled "A Conspiracy of Silence," in the Nineteenth 

 Century" (September, 1887), he gave Bathybius and coral-reef theories 

 as illustrations, and many people regarded the article as a sugges- 

 tion that Darwinists and evolutionists were disposed to burke free 



i See "Observations on the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy, and of other parts of Locha- 

 ber in Scotland, with an attempt to prove that they are of marine origin," Phil. 

 Trans., 1839, p. 39; Edin. New Phil. J own., vol. XXVII, p. 395, 1839. 



