172 Notices and Extracts from the Minutes of the Geological Society/. 



ment apparently of bone, which brings still closer the resemblance : — and, 

 as at Gibraltar, the limestone rock is sometimes covered with extensive but 

 irregular beds of stalagmite. 



The hills of the Piraeus and Munychia are composed of a soft calcareous 

 stone, containing magnesia, and including organic remains. A conglomerate 

 still more recent appears to be at present in the progress of formation in some 

 places on the shore. 



11. Notice accompanying Specimens from the Bermuda Islands. By Captain 

 Vetch, M.G.s. [Read Feb. 15, 1822.] 



In presenting to the Geological Society some specimens from Bermuda, I 

 am induced to accompany them with a short notice, on account of some ob- 

 vious and interesting inferences to be deduced from them. 



The specimens, six in number, were sent me as affording all the varieties 

 of rock to be found in these islands ; and as it will appear that they are all 

 composed of fragments of corals and shells of different magnitudes, more or 

 less consolidated by a calcareous cement, it seems probable the Bermudas 

 owe their existence to the accumulation of such materials on a coral reef. 



From the extreme narrowness of the channels that separate these islands, 

 they may be regarded as forming but one ; and in that case the length will be 

 about thirteen miles, while the greatest breadth hardly exceeds one mile : and 

 no spot is distant so much as five furlongs from the sea. This lengthened 

 narrow shape, with some other peculiarities of form, give the whole so much 

 the character of a coral reef as almost to confirm that conjecture. When it 

 is moreover considered that the Bermudas rise from a shoal twenty-three miles 

 long and thirteen broad, all round which is the deep water of the ocean, — 

 while Carolina, the nearest land, is 700 miles distant, it seems difficult to 

 ascribe the existence of such a platform^ thus rising up in the middle of the 

 ocean, to any other origin. 



Specimen No. 1. This is composed of the largest fragments, and sometimes 

 presents entire shells more than an inch long, and fragments of coral still 

 larger : the general dimensions of the fragments vary a little on each side of 

 the fourth of an inch. This rock occurs along the shore, and is but loosely 

 aggregated ; it seems to pass into — 



No. 2 ; which is in the same loose state of aggregation, but composed of 

 fi-agments little larger than mustard seed, with larger ones dispersed very 

 sparingly among them. 



No. 3. This in the size of the grains is similar to the last ; but the grains 



