25G 



ISLAND LIFE. 



[part ]I. 



been known that these rocks are all due to the wind, which 

 blows np the fine calcareous sand, the product of the disinte- 

 gration 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 behind 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 Red 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 2,300 to 3,150 fathoms, and occurring abund- 

 antly 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 com- 

 position, and yet possesses sufiicient evidence to prove its identity 

 with that now lying contiguous to the base of the Bermuda 

 column." But in his G-uide 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 abed 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, or of the minute organisms 

 which abound in the blown sand. The forthcoming volumes on 



