CHAP. XII 



BERMUDA 



265 



which blows up the fine calcareous sand, the product of the 

 disintegration of coral, shells, serpulse, and other organisms, 

 forming sand-hills forty and fifty feet high, which move 

 gradually along, overwhelming the lower tracts of land be- 

 hind them. These are consolidated by the percolation of 

 rain-water, which dissolves some of the lime from the more 

 porous tracts and deposits it lower down, filling every 

 fissure with stalagmite. 



The Bed Clay of Bermuda. — Besides the calcareous 

 rocks there is found in many parts of the islands a layer of 

 red earth or clay, containing about thirty per cent, of 

 oxide of iron. This very closely resembles, both in colour 

 and chemical composition, the red clay of the ocean floor, 

 found widely spread in the Atlantic at depths of from 2,800 

 to 3,150 fathoms, and occurring abundantly all round 

 Bermuda. It appears, therefore, at first sight, as if the 

 ocean bed itself has been here raised to the surface, and a 

 portion of its covering of red clay preserved ; and this is 

 the view adopted by Mr. Jones in his paper on the " Botany 

 of Bermuda." He says, after giving the analysis : This 

 analysis tends to convince us that the deep chocolate- 

 coloured red clay of the islands found in the lower levels, 

 and from high-water mark some distance into the sea, 

 originally came from the ocean floor, and that when by 

 volcanic agency the Bermuda column was raised from the 

 depths of the sea, its summit, most probably broken in 

 outline, appeared above the surface covered with this red 

 mud, which in the course of ages has but slightly changed 

 its composition, and yet possesses sufficient evidence to 

 prove its identity with that now lying contiguous to the 

 base of the Bermuda column." But in his Gtiide to 

 Bermuda Mr. Jones tells us that this same red earth has 

 been found, two feet thick, under coral rock at a depth of 

 forty-two feet below low-water mark, and that it " rested 

 on a bed of compact calcareous sandstone." Now it is 

 quite certain that this " calcareous sandstone " was never 

 formed at the bottom of the deep ocean 700 miles from 

 land ; and the occurrence of the red earth at different 

 levels upon coralline sand rock is therefore more probably 

 due to some process of decomposition of the rock itself, 



