FUNAFUTI: THE STORY OF A CORAL ATOLL. 



395 



in the fullest manner by Langenbeck in a work entitled Die Theorieen 

 ueber die Entstehung der Koralleninseln und Korallenriffe (Leipzig, 

 1890). 



So far as the opposition to Darwin's views has come to count among 

 its adherents a number of distinguished thinkers, it can only be 

 regarded as having achieved a certain measure of success; a result 

 not, to my thinking, to be wholly accounted for by the nature of the 

 arguments employed. Possibly in this, as in similar cases, the ostensible 

 objections are mere weapons of combat, while the real power has lain 

 in the strong and subtle influence exercised by some general current 

 of thought. Such a current is indicated in the tendency to a belief in 

 what is spoken of as the permanence of continental areas and oceanic 

 Basins. 



According to Darwin, every atoll marks the site of a vanished island, 

 but the atolls of the Pacific are so numerous that if one imagines all the 

 islands they represent as summoned back from the "vasty deep" and 

 restored to their original position above the sea, they will constitute a 

 very considerable tract of land, and this situated in the very middle of 

 the Pacific Ocean. Such 



a prospect could not fail 5 " J0HfJ MuPPAV 



to be unpleasing to those 

 who believe in the immu- 

 tability of the ocean. 



Of late years, however, 

 this doctrine of "perma- 

 nence" has begun to look 

 a little threadbare. In a 

 theoretical restoration of the distribution of land and sea during the 

 Jurassic times, Keumayr has treated it with scant consideration, since 

 he represents the North and South Atlantic, as well as the Indian Ocean, 

 as then to a great extent occupied by land, and it is now very generally 

 supposed that this land did not disappear to make way for existing seas 

 till a comparatively late period in the history of the earth. Bold as 

 Ken m ay r showed himself in the treatment of these oceans, he had not 

 the temerity to take liberties with the Pacific. This he and geologists 

 in general are disposed to regard as having maintained its existing 

 features from a very early period. Of this ocean, and of this alone, would 

 they exclaim, "Such as Creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now." 



Darwin's theory, as we have seen, does not hesitate to recall to 

 existence land in the middle of even this ocean; this is its unforgiv- 

 able offense — it lays sacrilegious hands on the Pacific, and thus attacks 

 the doctrine of "permanence" in its stronghold. 



While the recent controvesy on Darwin's theory was at its fiercest, 

 and both sides seemed equally persuaded that the truth was theirs and 

 mustprevail, it occurred to me that a simple solution might be obtained 

 by sinking a borehole through some well-characterized atoll, and thus 



Pig. 4. 



