Geology of St. Ci'oix. 65 



and health permit, I may, perhaps, on a future occasion, extend 

 my remarks to one or two other islands, and touch on some other 

 topics. 



t am not aware that more than two or three of the West India 

 islands have attracted the attention of any geological observer. 

 Indeed, the tropical countries in both hemispheres must yet be re- 

 garded, so far as geology is concerned, as nearly a terra incognita. 

 Still, they will no doubt furnish highly important results in this 

 interesting science. Here some of its most specious theories will 

 be tested ,• and here, too, will be found entombed new races of or- 

 ganized beings, brought into existence and advanced to maturity, 

 and finally destroyed, in circumstances differing from any present 

 or past in other parts of the globe. If the axis of the earth has 

 been changed, as some philosophers -maintain, here we shall find 

 the evidence of it, in a change of organic remains, corresponding 

 with that in the northern regions, but in a reverse order. On the 

 other hand, if the extraordinary size and character of fossil relics, 

 in the high latitudes, are owing to a secular refrigeration of the 

 earth, it will be interesting to know what were the types of ani- 

 mal and vegetable life, during the same geological periods, in the 

 equatorial regions. If past periods in the tropics were as much 

 more favorable than the present to the gigantic development of 

 organic existences, as they certainly were in ours, the imagina- 

 tion can scarcely 'pamt the monsters, which careful research may 

 bring to light. I must confess, however, I saw nothing in the 

 West Indies to countenance such suppositions. No animals or 

 saurians, to my knowledge, contemporaneous with those im- 

 bedded in the secondary and tertiary formations of Europe and 

 America, have yet been detected ; nor, if we except the island of 

 Trinidad, do I know of any indications of the existence of ex- 

 tensive subterranean deposits of vegetable matter. The pitch- 

 lake of that island, and the petroleum which oozes from the 

 rocks on the coast, are probably due to a vegetable origin ; but if 

 similar indications of carbon in a fossil state exist in other islands, 

 they are yet to be discovered. 



Most of the islands in the West Indies, as is well known, ex- 

 hibit mai'ks of volcanic action. Though not lying within the 

 range of that great line of volcanoes which extends along the 

 western coast of South America, and reaches to Mexico, they 

 have often been subject to destructive earthquakes ; and two of 



Vol. XXXV.— No. 1. 9 



