Sect. III. 
MALDIVA ATOLLS. 
49 
bottom upwards. When treating of the growth of coral 
I shall again refer to this subject. 
Although in the neighbourhood of the Maldiva 
Archipelago the winds, during the monsoons, blow 
during nearly an equal time from opposite quarters, 
and although, as I am informed by Captain Moresby, 
the westerly winds are the strongest, yet the islets are 
almost all placed on the eastern side of the northern 
atolls, and on the south-eastern side of the southern 
atolls. That the formation of the islets is due to 
detritus thrown up from the outside, as in the ordinary 
manner, and not from the interior of the lagoons, may, 
I think, be safely inferred from several considerations 
which it is hardly worth while to detail. As the easterly 
winds are not the strongest, their action probably is 
aided by some prevailing swell or current. 
In groups of atolls exposed to the trade wind, the 
ship-channels into the lagoons are almost always 
situated on the leeward or less exposed side of the reef, 
and the reef itself is sometimes either wanting there, or 
is submerged. A strictly analogous, but different, fact 
may be observed at the Maldiva atolls— namely, that 
where two atolls stand near together, the breaches in 
the reef are most numerous on the sides which face each 
other, and are therefore less exposed to the waves. Thus 
on the sides of Ari and the two Nillandoo atolls which 
face S. Male, Phaleedoo, and Moloque atolls, there are 
seventy- three deep-w T ater channels, and only twenty-five 
on the outer sides ; on the three latter-named atolls there 
are fifty-six openings on the near side, and only thirty- 
