288 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1947 



the other approaching Wide Passage at the south end of the atoll from 

 the south, which shows the giiyot apparently disappearing beneath the 

 atoll slope. 



The absence of a 700-f athom bench locally around part of Eniwetok 

 Atoll strongly suggests that the atoll and its volcanic core are younger 

 than the benches which project from its southern and northwestern 

 sides. The whole structure of the atoll, in other words, seems to have 

 been superimposed upon the older and already existing surface of the 

 guyots. Since it can, without too much license, be assumed that the 

 other nearby atolls of the Marshall group developed simultaneously 

 with Eniwetok, their slopes might be examined for ± 700-f athom 



Figure 8. — Tracing from fathometer recorder of traverse extending southward 

 from Eniwetok showing the atoll presumably superimposed upon a guyot (A-A 

 of figure!). 



benches for further substantiation of the age relations postulated 

 above. Only two of these have been adequately charted, Majuro and 

 Kwajalein, and neither of them shows 700-f athom benches. When 

 it is considered that a relatively small atoll such as Majuro shows no 

 bench at 700 fathoms while not very far away a guyot has a truncated 

 upper surface 35 miles across, it is evident that Majuro could never 

 have been subjected to the conditions which planed off the 35-mile- 

 wide surface of the guyot. 



PART II. THEORY 



The writer has given a great deal of thought to the problem of 

 origin of guyots since first encountering them in 1944. In part I of 

 this paper the physical features of guyots, so far as they are known, 

 are described. It now remains to account for them. During the past 

 2 years, many hypotheses were tried and discarded. Finally the writer 



