Sect. III. 
MALDIVA ATOLLS. 
51 
now being washed away ; and in this latter atoll Lieut. 
Prentice found a reef, about six hundred yards in 
diameter, which the natives positively affirmed was 
lately an island covered with cocoa-nut trees. It is now 
only partially dry at low-water spring tides, and is (in 
Lieut. Prentice’s words) ‘ entirely covered with live 
coral and madrepore.’ In the northern part, also, of 
the Maldiva Archipelago and in the Chagos group, it 
is known that some of the islets are disappearing. 
The natives attribute these effects to variations in the 
currents of the sea. For my own part I cannot avoid 
suspecting, that there must be some further cause, 
which gives rise to such a cycle of change in the action 
of the currents of the great and open ocean. 
Several of the atolls in this Archipelago are so 
related to each other in form and position, that at the 
first glance one is led to suspect that they have 
originated in the disseverment of a single one. Male 
consists of three perfectly characterised atolls, of which 
the shape and relative position are such, that a line 
drawn closely round all three gives a symmetrical 
figure ; but to see this, a larger chart is required than 
that of the Archipelago in Plate II. The channel 
separating the two northern Male atolls is only little 
more than a mile wide, and no bottom was found in it 
with 100 fathoms. Powell’s Island is situated at the 
distance of two miles and a-half off the northern end 
of another atoll, namely Mahlos Mahdoo (fig. 4), at 
the exact point where the two sides of the latter, 
if prolonged, would meet : no bottom, however, 
