96 FUNAFUTI 



were also imagined as engaged in piling a Pelion of mud 

 on every submarine Ossa (Fig. 24). 



The publication of Sir John Murray's views was 

 followed by a long controversy, in which Darwin's theory 

 was subjected to a most searching criticism. An im- 

 partial summary of the arguments arrayed on both sides 

 of the question is given by Professor Bonney, in the last 

 edition of Darwin's " Coral Reefs," and the general 

 subject is treated in the fullest manner by Langenbeck, 

 in a work entitled "Die Theorieen ueber die Entstehung 

 der Koralleninseln und Korallenriffe " (Leipzig, 1890). 



So far as the opposition to Darwin's views has come 

 to count among its adherents a number of distinguished 



JOHN MuPRAY 



FIG. 24 



thinkers, it can only be regarded as having achieved a 

 certain measure of success : a result not, to my thinking, 

 to be wholly accounted for by the nature of the argu- 

 ments employed ; possibly in this, as in similar cases, the 

 ostensible objections are mere weapons of combat, while 

 the real power has lain in the strong and subtle influence 

 exercised by some general current of thought. Such a 

 current is indicated in the tendency to a belief in what 

 is spoken of as the Permanence of Continental Areas and 

 Oceanic Basins. 



According to Darwin, every atoll marks the site of a 

 vanished island, but the atolls of the Pacific are so 

 numerous that if one imagines all the islands they 

 represent as summoned back from the " vasty deep " and 



