230 CORALS AND CORAL ISLANDS. 



tliese views. These points or capes correspond to points in 

 the original land, and often to the line of the prominent ridge ; 

 and it is well known that such ridge lines often extend a long 

 distance to sea, with slight inclination compared with the slopes 

 or declivities bounding the ridge on either side. 



Goral islands or reefs often lie in chains like the peaks of 

 a single mountain range : — for example, the sickle-shaped line 

 of islets north of Nanuku. Tari-tari and Makin (Gilbert 

 Group, see map, page 133) lie together, as if belonging to 

 parts of one island. Menchicoff atoll, in the Caroline Archi- 

 pelago, consists of three long loops or lagoon islands, united 



MENCHICOFF ATOLL {^^TU »F AN INCH TO A MILE). 



by their extremities, and further subsidence might reduce it to 

 three islands, 



Darwin, in his account of the Maldives (op. cit., p. 37), 

 points out indications of a breaking-up of a large, atoll into 

 several smaller. The land with many summits or ranges of 

 heights may at first have had its single inclosing reef; but as 

 it subsided, this reef, contracting upon itself, may have encircled 

 separately the several ranges of which the island consisted, 

 and thus several atoll reefs may have resulted in place of the 

 large one ; and, further, each peak may have finally become 

 the basis of a separate lagoon island, under a certain rate of 

 subsidence or variations in it, provided the outer reef were so 



