218 THE BERMUDA ISLANDS. 



Mr. Guppy ingeniously argues from the character of the 

 rock which in many of the islands immediately underlies the 

 coral-limestone, and which in certain organic and mineral feat- 

 ures recalls the deeper deposits of the ocean, that the amount 

 of elevation in the region has been very great, and that the 

 coral formations are planted directly upon deep-sea or even 

 abysmal deposits. Thus, it is claimed in the history of Santa 

 Anna Island that "a submerged volcanic peak, lying at a 

 depth of probably 2000 fathoms below the surface, was covered 

 by a deep-sea mud, and then elevated until it became the base 

 of a coral atoll, which has been subsequently upheaved to- 

 gether with its foundations to a height of nearly 500 feet above 

 the sea" ("Solomon Islands," p. 113). I fail, however, to see 

 the force of the argument. In the first place, it is well known 

 that the pelagiri" organisms which contribute their remains to 

 the deep-sea deposits are largely — if not, indeed almost wholly — 

 animal forms which inhabit the superficial zone of the sea; 

 likewise, the inorganic substances which accumulate at the 

 bottom — cosmic dust, disintegrated pumice, etc. — are derived 

 from the upper regions. Hence, manfestly, a shallow open-sea 

 deposit will have much the characters of the deep-sea deposits, 

 except in so far as we should expect to find it retain the special 

 features, faunal and lithological, of shallow-water formations. 

 These are said to be absent in the organic deposits immediately 

 underlying the coraWimestone of the Solomon Islands, and it 

 is accordingly concluded that they represent deep-sea forma- 

 tions. But the difficulty is not removed through this interpre- 

 tation, since even if thej' are deep-sea deposits their elevation 

 into the upper zone would have brought them within the 

 reach of surface conditions. And yet the accompaniments of 

 these conditions seem to be wanting until we reach the corals 

 themselves. The negative character, therefore, gives no evi- 

 dence as to the depth at which the sub-coralline deposits were 

 laid down. But the fact that no coral rock is found at any 

 really great elevation above the sea is sufficient evidence, it 

 seems to me, that there has been no such marked elevation as 



