146 AN EPISCOPAL TRILOGY IV 



attention is directed to Mr. Murray's views Pro- 

 fessor Dana says : 



The existing state of doubt on the question has led the writer 

 to reconsider the earlier and later facts, and in the following 

 pages he gives his results. 



Professor Dana then devotes many pages of his 

 very " serious reply " to a most admirable and 

 weighty criticism of the objections which have at 

 various times been raised to Mr. Darwin's doctrine, 

 by Professor Semper, by Dr. Rein, and finally by 

 Mr. Murray, and he states his final judgment as 

 follows : 



With the theory of abrasion and solution incompetent, all the 

 hypotheses of objectors to Darwin's theory are alike weak ; for 

 all have made these processes their chief reliance, whether ap- 

 pealing to a calcareous, or a volcanic, or a mountain-peak base- 

 ment for the structure. The subsidence which the Darwinian 

 theory requires has not been opposed by the mention of any fact 

 at variance with it, nor by setting aside Darwin's arguments in 

 its favour ; and it has found new support in the facts from the 

 " Challenger's" soundings off Tahiti, that had been put in array 

 against it, and strong corroboration in the % facts from the West 

 Indies. 



Darwin's theory, therefore, remains as the theory that accounts 

 for the origin of reefs and islands. 1 



Be it understood that I express no opinion on 

 the controverted points. I doubt if there are ten 

 living men who, having a practical knowledge of 

 what a coral-reef is, have endeavoured to master 

 the very difficult biological and geological prob- 

 lems involved in their study. I happen to have 



1 American Journal of Science, 1885, p. 190. 



