320 Physical Geography^ etc. 



with the intermediate and adjoining seas ; for the facts in tlie Pacific have 

 shown that the subsiding 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 326; and that the groups of 

 high islands are along the bauds 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 par- 

 allel 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. 219), if experiencing the same sub- 

 sidence 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 sub- 

 merged 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." 



The facts regarding the diminution in size of the islands 

 of the West Indies to the eastward, are of peculiar interest, 

 not only as affording conclusive evidence of the greater sub- 

 sidence in that direction, but in connection with geographical 

 distribution. 



The banks and islands forming the long Bahama chain 

 diminish in size to the southeast, where are situated at its 

 termination the submerged Mouchoir Carre, Silver and Navi- 

 dad Banks. In a similar manner the submerged Virgin Is- 

 land Bank (with Anegada on its northeastern extremity, 

 geologically, in the opinion of Dr. Cleve, resembling the 

 Bahamas), Sombrero and the Anguilla Bank, terminate the 

 chain of the West Indies (parallel with the Bahamas) east- 

 ward from Cuba. 



In the caves of Anguilla the remains of large extinct 

 mammalia are found, which must have inhabited a far more 

 extensive area, subsequently broken up by subsidence. 



Packard (Amer. Nat., 1872) remarks, "there is every 

 probability that the separation of these islands (of the east- 



