OCEANIC CORAL ISLAND SUBSIDENCE. 317 



participated in it equally with the intermediate or adjoining 

 seas ; for the facts in the Pacific have shown that the sub- 

 siding oceanic area had its nearly parallel bands of greater 

 and less subsidence, that areas of greatest sinking alternated 

 with others of less, as explained on page 279; and that the 

 groups of high islands are along the bands of least sinking. 

 So in the Atlantic, the subsidence was probably much greater 

 between Florida and Cuba than in the peninsula of Florida 

 itself; and greater along the Caribbean Sea parallel with Cuba, 

 as well as along the Bahama reefs, than in Cuba. 



The position of the lonely Bermuda atoll confirms these 

 deductions. Its solitary state is reason for suspecting that 

 great changes have taken place about it ; for it is not natural 

 for islands to be alone. The tongue of warm water due to the 

 Gulf Stream, in which the Bermudas lie, is narrow, and an 

 island a hundred miles or more distant to the northeast-by- 

 east, or in the line of its trend (p. 183), if experiencing the 

 same subsidence that made the Bermuda land an atoll, would 

 have disappeared without a coral monument to bear record 

 to its former existence. Twenty miles to the southwest-by- 

 west from the Bermudas there are two submerged banks, 

 twenty to forty-seven fathoms under water, showing that the 

 Bermudas are not completely alone, and demonstrating that 

 they cover a summit in a range of heights ; and it may have 

 been a long range. This suggestion as to the former extent 

 of the Bermuda Group has been recently sustained by the 

 observations of Mr. J. Matthew Jones, cited on page 185. 



In the.Indian Ocean, again, there is evidence that the coral- 

 island subsidence was one that affected the oceanic area more 

 than the adjoining borders of the continent, and most, the 

 central parts of the ocean. For, in the first place, the archi- 

 pelago of the Maldives narrows and deepens to the south- 

 ward (p. 152). Further, the large Chagos Group, lying to the 

 south of the Maldives, contains but very little dry land in any 

 of its extensive reefs, while some of them, including the Great 

 Chagos Bank, are sunken atolls. Again, still other large reefs 

 nearly bare, lie to the south-west of the Chagos Group ; while 



