April, 1836. 



CORAL FORMATIONS. 



567 



offers of the peculiar configuration of eacli class) to deny 

 a great probability to this theory. Its importance, if true, is 

 evident; because we get at one glance an insight into the 

 system by which the surface of the land has been broken up, 

 in a manner somewhat similar, but certainly far less perfect, 

 to what a geologist would have done who had lived his ten 

 thousand years, and kept a record of the passing changes. 

 We see the law almost established, that linear areas of great 

 extent undergo movements of an astonishing uniformity, and 

 that the bands of elevation and subsidence alternate. Such 

 phenomena at once impress the mind with the idea of a fluid 

 most gradually propelled onwards, from beneath one part of 

 the solid crust to another. 



I cannot at present do more than allude to some of the 

 results which may be deduced from these views. If we 

 examine the points of eruption over the Pacific and In- 

 dian oceans, we shall find that all the active volcanoes occur 

 within the areas of elevation, (The Asiatic band must be 

 excepted ; inasmuch as we are entirely in want of information 

 of all kinds respecting it.) On the other hand, in the great 

 spaces supposed to be now subsiding, between the Radack 

 and Dangerous Archipelagoes, in the Corallian sea, and among 

 the atolls which front the west coast of India, not one occurs. 

 If we look at the changes of level as a consequence of the 

 propulsion of fluid matter beneath the crust, as before sug- 

 gested, then the area to which the force is directed might be 

 expected to yield more readily than that whence it was gra- 

 dually retiring. I am the more convinced that the above law 

 is true, because, if we look to other parts of the world, proofs 

 of recent elevation almost invariably occur, where there ar,e 

 active vents : I may instance the West Indies, the Cape de 

 Verds, Canary Islands, southern Italy, Sicily, and other 

 places. But in answer to this, those geologists, who, judging 

 from the history of the isolated volcanic mounds of Europe, 

 were inclined to believe that the level of the ground was con- 

 stantly oscillating up and down, might maintain that on these 

 same areas, the amount of subsidence had been equal to that 



