SEYCHELLES BANK IN THE INDIAN OCEAN 531 



has so well said of Darwin, though with a somewhat altered application : 

 "No one would have welcomed fresh discoveries more heartily than he, 

 even should they lead to the setting aside of his own work." 



Various additional details regarding certain islands of neighboring 

 groups might be given in confirmation of the postulate of rapid subsi- 

 dence for the region of these submarine banks, but space can not be 

 granted them here. I propose, however, that this group of banks should 

 be called the "Darwin hermatopelago," hermato being from the Greek 

 word for "submerged reefs." 



THE SEYCHELLES BANK 



It is evidently conceivable that the various submarine banks men- 

 tioned in earlier paragraphs are neither drowned atolls, as they are 

 supposed to be under the theory of subsidence, nor stationary islands trun- 

 cated by abrasion, as they are supposed to be under the theory of Glacial- 

 control; but still-standing submarine mountains that have been built 

 up to a moderate depth by pelagic aggradation, as is supposed under 

 Murray's theory of atolls. The improbability of so stable an origin for 

 the banks of the China Sea and of the Pacific north of Fiji is very great. 

 Most of the great banks of the Indian Ocean stand so far from high 

 islands of a decipherable history that their origin is more in doubt; the 

 Seychelles bank, however, is surmounted by several high islands, and if 

 this bank may be taken as a fair sample of its neighbors, their stability 

 is improbable, to say the least. 



The vast bank of the Seychelles in the Southern Indian Ocean, the 

 largest bank in the coral seas, measures about 200 by 80 miles and has a 

 maximum depth of 40 fathoms near its center; its northeastern side is 

 partly reef -rimmed, and a few small coral islands there reach the sur- 

 face. Near the center of the bank several mountainous granitic islands 

 emerge; the largest of them, Mahe, rises to an altitude of 2,993 feet; its 

 shoreline has many bays divided by sloping, non-clift points, around 

 which unconformable fringing reefs are formed ; such features* testify 

 immediately for instability of their region. The present depth of the 

 great bank is not excessive, but there is an elevated fringing reef on Mahe 

 at a height of 80 feet; and when that was at scale vel the central depth 

 of the bank must have been over 50 fathoms. Thus uplift as well as 

 subsidence has occurred here. The abrasion of a bank so large as that 

 of the Seychelles during the Glacial period is in any case altogether 

 improbable, and all the more so as the granitic islands near its center 

 are not clift. However, if abrasion be assumed, the present depth of 40 

 fathoms might possibly be explained as a result of wave-work by the 



