SCIENCE IN ARCADY. 



MY ISLANDS. 



ABOUT the middle of the Miocene period, as well as I 

 can now remember (for I made no note of the precise 

 date at the moment), my islands first appeared above 

 the stormy sheet of the North-West Atlantic as a little 

 rising group of mountain tops, capping a broad boss of 

 submarine volcanoes. My attention was originally 

 called to the new archipelago by a brother investigator 

 of my own aerial race, who pointed out to me on the 

 wing that at a spot some 900 miles to the west of the 

 Portuguese coast, just opposite the place where your 

 mushroom city of Lisbon now stands, the water of the 

 ocean, as seen in a bird's-eye view from some three 

 thousand feet above, formed a distinct greenish patch 

 such as always betokens shoals or rising ground at the 

 bottom. Flying out at once to the point he indicated, 

 and poising myself above it on my broad pinions at a 

 giddy altitude, I saw at a glance that my friend was 

 quite right. Land ma.king was in progress. A volcanic 

 upheaval was taking place on the bed of the sea. A new 

 island group was being forced right up by lateral pressure 



