12 



Nils Royéii 



been much higher, perhaps high enough to be connected with Cuba or even with 

 Florida. During tlie time for such land connections land animals could have 

 invaded, during the following extensive subsidence getting embeded in the œolian 

 hills perpetually formed, if not drowned in the sea, or perhaps driven to the in- 

 terior of the islands and surviving to later times. Whether this has really been the 

 case cannot, I think, be quite decided at present. No fossils from such a time have 

 yet been found, and there are no other geological proofs yet observed for the pre- 

 sumption of such a secondary connection with land. Even a study of the land 

 fauna shows that we need not assume this hypothesis in order to explain its com- 

 position. There is another point however which must be taken into consideration 



in answering this question. Have the 

 islands subsided from that previous 

 higher level only to that of the present 

 time, or has the subsidence been more 

 extensive, followed by an elevation 

 which afterwards gave the archipelago 

 its present configuration? As has been 

 mentioned above, remains of corals and 

 marine shells are found at many places 

 far from the beach. Agassiz conside- 

 red them all to the brought there by 

 hurricanes. 'I'he islands according to 

 him do not show any signs of an 

 elevation. An evident proof of a recent 

 elevation was on the contrary observed 

 by the Exped. Geogr. Soc. Shattuck 

 and Miller found on Green Cay a 

 rather large coral reef elevated about 

 15 to 20 feet above sea level. An 

 observation made during my stay at 

 Mastic Point on Andros makes me 

 believe that this recent elevation was 

 more extensive than is proved by the elevated reef on Green Cay. At the place 

 named on Andros, about 60 feet above sea-level, I found the remains of an old 

 beach. Everywhere in the Bahamas, where the limestone rocks dip into the sea, 

 these are eroded by the sea in a characteristic mode, forming small caverns. Such 

 an ancient sea-cliff with caverns, clearly showing that the sea once reached this 

 level, was found : it is now completely overgrown by shrubs. Close to this former 

 beach plenty of corals, of the same kind as are now found near the shore, were 

 observed in the rocks. I think the most natural mode of explaining their occur- 

 rence is to believe that they were living there at the time when that sea-cliff was 

 formed. It may seem to be of comparatively little importance to show that the 



Fig. B. Section through the rock (Queen's Stair 

 case, Nassau). 



