34 BULLETIN : MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 



once must have connected Little San Salvador with Eleuthera Island, 

 and gradually reducing it to the bank which now alone forms the con- 

 necting link, after having worn away the islands first formed, the rem- 

 nants of which still exist as a series of isolated islets and rocks extending 

 to the line of breakers to the east of Eleuthera Point, while here and 

 there a single rock may still be detected standing in the breakers. 



Little San Salvador and Cat Island. 



Plates I. and XXXIV. 



Little San Salvador, and the islets and islands between it and the 

 northern end of Cat Island, are the last vestiges of the former land 

 extension of Cat Island, when it must have covered nearly all the space 

 now limited by the 10 fathom line to the eastward of the island, from 

 Hawk's Nest Point to Little San Salvador. Little San Salvador will 

 eventually disappear. It is now low, not more than twenty feet high, 

 and a long beach broken by six or seven rocky bluffs forms its easterly 

 face. 



Cat Island, where we anchored off Orange Creek, is interesting as 

 having the highest land of any of the islands of the Bahamas. The 



HIGHEST HILLS OF CAT ISLAND. 



seolian hills to the north of Orange Creek are marked on the charts of 

 the islands as being nearly four hundred feet high. Dunes of this height 

 are not unknown ; there are at the present day in many parts of the 

 world high dunes covering extensive tracts, as along the Atlantic coast 

 of the United States, both inland and along the sea border. They often 

 rise to heights fully as great as those observed in the Bahamas, and 

 that from comparatively narrow beaches. On the coast of the Baltic 

 there are long stretches of unbroken dunes for many miles, the crest 

 of which averages from ninety to one hundred and fifty feet in height, 

 the summits rising to one hundred and eighty feet. On the west coast 

 of Africa, near Cape Bojador, sand dunes are said to reach a height of 

 over five hundred feet. 



The west face of Cat Island is a series of low bluffs and beaches. The 



