1S64.] J. M. JONES ON OCEAN DRIFTS. 41 



resting-place for animal life. The surface of the land would 

 gradually change as increased masses of sand became drifted in 

 various positions, the underlying body of loose particles would 

 harden by natural process, and in time form solid rock, while the 

 accumulations of vegetable matter buried beneath such hardened 

 rock would decompose, and form red earth ; and where these de- 

 posits become liable to the action of the tides from below, the 

 earthy composition would be cleared away, and caverns form in 

 the place, all of which conditions occur in the Bermudas at the 

 present day. 



The Bermudas, although not placed within the full force of the 

 Gulf Stream, are nevertheless close enough to be affected by its 

 current, which, after a continuance of southwest winds, affords, by 

 the occurrence of drift seeds and other matter from the Carribean 

 Sea, ample evidence of its contact with, or very near approach to 

 the group ; and if facts of this import should not be considered 

 sufficient to establish a clear case, the whole marine fauna, which 

 is true West Indian, may be brought forward in support of the 

 assertion. 



But to give the process of formation of a group of islands of 

 current origin more in detail, let us consider the remarkable pro- 

 cess carried on in the building of reefs by the coral zoophyte. It 

 is to this organism, low in the scale of nature, that the Bermudas 

 are indebted for the position they hold in the midst of an ocean 

 at all times and seasons liable to great commotion. A mass of 

 simple sand-banks would assuredly be swept away, or at all 

 events would never afford sufficient protection to tropical and bo- 

 real plants as they do at present. No cedar groves could exist so 

 near the shore as they do, unless a barrier was made to the for- 

 ward progress of those huge rolling seas, which, in severe weather, 

 may be seen dashing on the outer reefs of the south shore, and 

 spending their fury in casting high in mid air their columns of 

 whitened foam. 



The coral zoophyte, which has done so much for the islands of 

 the Pacific, has conferred an equal, if not greater, benefit upon the 

 Bermudas, building up around the whole coast huge walls of cal- 

 careous matter formed by the decease of countless generations of 

 madrepores with their ever-accompanying mollusca and serpulae, 

 welded together, from which basis springs another generation of 

 the same forms, to die in their order, and present a further 

 ground work for the labors of future families. 



