OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF SUBSIDENCE. 305 
Cuba; and (2) the other through Trinidad to Anguilla, of 
the Windward Islands. He sustains the conclusion by a 
review of the soundings made by the steamer “ Blake” under 
the command of J. R. Bartlett, U. S. N., and a consideration 
of the facts connected with the distribution of marine and ter- 
restrial species. As the soundings show, the former of the 
two connections requires for completeness an elevation of the 
region amounting to 4,060 feet over the part south of Jamaica, 
4,830 feet between Jamaica and Hayti, and 5,240 feet between 
Hayti and Cuba. The other line of connection requires an 
elevation of 3,450 feet. An open channel, as he observes, 
would thus be left between Anguilla and the Virgin Islands, 
where there is now a depth of 6,400 feet. The close relations 
in the existing fauna of the Gulf to that of the Pacific waters 
prove that it continued to be a salt-water gulf through the 
era of elevation. 
Mr. Agassiz infers that the connection of the West India 
islands with South America existed before the Quaternary era. 
But there are other facts which seem to prove that it was con- 
tinued into, or at least was a fact, in the Quaternary. 
The opinion as to a connection of the Windward Islands 
with South America in the Quaternary was presented by 
Prof. E. D. Cope in 1868 (and earlier, as he states, by Pomel), 
on the ground of the discovery in the caves of Anguilla of a 
species of gigantic rodent related to the chinchilla, as large 
as the Virginia deer, and nearly equalling the Quaternary 
Castoroides of Ohio. Further, De Castro, as cited by Dr. J. 
1 Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 1868, 313, 
and of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. 1869, 183; also Smithsonian 
Contributions to Knowledge, 30 pp. 4to with 5 plates, Washington, 1883. The last 
paper (prepared in 1878) contains descriptions of the following species from the 
Anguilla bone-cave: Amblyrhiza inundata Cope (the large rodent announced in 
1869), A. quadrans Cope, A. latidens Cope, an Artiodactyl, apparently of the Bovi- 
de and a little smaller than Ovis aries. With them was obtained an implement 
(“a spoon-shaped scraper or chisel ”?) made of the lip of the large Strombus gigas. 
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