SCIENCE AND THE BISHOPS. 361 



In the course of his doubtless well-meant admonitions, the Duke 

 of Argyll commits himself to a greater number of statements which 

 are demonstrably incorrect, and which any one who ventured to write 

 upon the subject ought to have known to be incorrect, than I have 

 ever seen gathered together in so small a space. 



I submit a gathering from the rich store for the appreciation of the 

 public. 



First : 



Mr, Murray's new explanation of the structure of coral reefs and islands was 

 communicated to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1880, and supported with 

 such a weight of facts and such a close texture of reasoning, that no serious 

 reply has ever been attempted (see " The Popular Science Monthly," p, 252). 



" No serious reply has ever been attempted ! " I suppose that the 

 Duke of Argyll may have heard of Professor Dana, whose years of 

 labor devoted to corals and coral-reefs when he was naturalist of the 

 American expedition under Commodore Wilkes, more than forty years 

 ago, have ever since caused him to be recognized as an authority of 

 the first rank on such subjects. Now does his Grace know, or does 

 he not know, that, in the year 1885, Professor Dana published an 

 elaboi'ate paper " On the Origin of Coral Reefs and Islands," in which, 

 after referring to a presidential address by the Director of the Geolog- 

 ical Survey of Great Britain and Ireland delivered in 1883, in which 

 special attention is directed to Mr. Murray's views, Professor Dana 

 says : 



The existing state of doubt on the question has led the writer to reconsider 

 the earlier and later facts, and in the following pages he gives his results. 



Professor Dana then devotes many pages of his very " serious reply " 

 to a most admirable and weighty criticism of the objections which 

 have at various times been raised to Mr. Darwin's doctrine, by Pro- 

 fessor Semper, by Dr. Rein, and finally by Mr. Murray, and he states 

 his final judgment as follows : 



With the theory of abrasion and solution incompetent, all the hypotheses of 

 objectors to Darwin's theory are alike weak ; for all have made these processes 

 their chief reliance, whether appealing to a calcareous or a volcanic or a 

 mountain-peak basement for the structure. The subsidence which the Dar- 

 winian theory requires has not been opposed by the mention of any fact at 

 variance with it, nor by setting aside Darwin's arguments in its favor; and it 

 has found new support in the facts from the Challenger's soundings off 

 Tahiti, that had been put in array against it, and strong corroboration in the 

 facts from the West Indies. 



Darwin's theory, therefore, remains as the theory that accounts for the origin 

 of reefs and islands.* 



Be it understood that I express no opinion on the controverted 

 points. I doubt if there are ten living men who, having a practical 



*" American Journal of Science," 1885, p. 190. 



