CORAL-REEFS. 123 



We have the clearest proof that a movement of this kind is 

 possible, in the upright trees buried under the strata many 

 thousand feet in thickness ; we have also every reason for 

 believing that there are now large areas gradually sinking, 

 in the same manner as others are rising. And when we 

 consider how many parts of the surface of the globe have 

 been elevated within recent geological periods, we must 

 admit that there have been subsidences on a corresponding 

 scale, for otherwise the whole globe would have swollen. 

 It is very remarkable that Mr. Lyell, 1 even in the first 

 edition of his Principles of Geology^ inferred that the 

 amount of subsidence in the Pacific must have exceeded 

 that of elevation, from the area of land being very small 

 relatively to the agents there tending to form it, namely, 

 the growth of coral and volcanic action. But it will be 

 asked, are there any direct proofs of a subsiding movement 

 in those areas, in which subsidence will explain a pheno- 

 menon otherwise inexplicable ? This, however, can hardly 

 be expected, for it must ever be most difficult, excepting in 

 countries long civilised, to detect a movement, the tendency 

 of which is to conceal the part affected. In barbarous and 

 semi-civilised nations how long might not a slow movement, 

 even of elevation such as that now affecting Scandinavia, 

 have escaped attention ! 



Mr. Williams 2 insists strongly that the traditions of the 

 natives, which he has taken much pains in collecting, do 

 not indicate the appearance of any new islands : but on the 

 theory of a gradual subsidence, all that would be apparent 

 would be, the water sometimes encroaching slowly on the 

 land, and the land again recovering by the accumulation 

 of detritus its former extent, and perhaps sometimes the 



1 Principles of Geology, sixth edition, vol. iii. p. 386. 



2 Williams's Narrative of Missionary Enterprise, p. 31. 



