AGASSIZ: BERMUDAS. 217 



tween high and low water mark a very considerable amount of lime must 

 be removed, probably as much as the sea water will hold in a saturated 

 solution. Additional lime may also be taken in solution, while in- 

 numerable minute particles are held in suspension during rough weather. 

 At the time of our visit, the wind having blown for two days quite per- 

 sistently from the northwest, the whole bank was fairly milky white in 

 a belt extending from five hundred to seven hundred feet from the north 

 shore. The isolated patches on the edges of the greater ledge Hats were 

 also indicated l^y tl\e white waters surrounding them, while the deeper 

 parts of the outer sounds were indistinctly indicated by a more bluisli 

 tint of the water. 



The so called patches and reefs appear like diminutive vertical cliffs, 

 or parts of cliffs, which once were broken off from tlie larger shore line 

 cliffs then existing. Of course their faces and surface have been to a 

 certain extent modified by the growth <jf corals upon them, but tliat 

 only to a very limited degree. The coral patches are built up over a 

 substratum of seolian rocks. 



The islands as seen fi'om the north present in general the features of 

 the seolian hills of the Baliamas, although they have a more varied out- 

 line (Plate IV.). There are more conical hills, and there are not as 

 many of the distinctive lines of ranges of reolian hills trending in one 

 direction. Many of the islands in Hamilton Harbor are quite bare, their 

 surface indurated by the action of rain and more or less honeycombed, 

 as is the case in the majority of the Bahamas. The absence of vegeta- 

 tion is also marked over a great part of the western extremity of Spanish 

 Point. There is a very fine a^olian cliff on the bay at the foot of Admi- 

 ralty House (Plate XVI.). 



On the north shore the trees and shrubs of the main island do not run 

 close to the water's edge. From the somewhat scantier groves of ju- 

 niper crowning the summits of the successive ?eolian hills run broad 

 grassy undulating slopes, terminating in the comparatively low vertical 

 cliffs which characterize the north shore of the principal island. All the 

 way from Spanish Point to Harrington Sound there is an unbroken line 

 of these low vertical cliffs (Plate XXVITL), with the exception of a 

 few insignificant sandy beaches breaking in occasionally, the only promi- 

 nent exception being Shelly Beach. The islands of St. George and St. 

 David are comparatively bare (Plate V.), and the general aspect of the 

 country at the eastern extremity of Bermuda reminds one of the aspect 

 of the long lines of barren islands so common in the Bahamas. On the 

 southern and western slopes of St. David junipers grow more abun- 



