Ch. VI. DISTRIBUTION OF CORAL-REEFS. 
167 
from fringing-reefs, which show that the land is sta- 
tionary or rising ; and all this holds good to the full 
extent which might have been anticipated by our 
theory. 
As atolls have been formed during the sinking of 
the land by the upward growth of the reefs which 
primarily fringed the shores of ordinary islands ; so we 
might expect that these rings of coral, like so many 
rude outline charts, would still retain traces of the 
general form, or at least of the general range, of the 
islands round which they were first modelled. That this 
is the case with the atolls in the Southern Pacific, as 
far as their range is concerned, seems highly probable, 
when we observe that the principal groups are directed 
in nearly N.W. and S.E. lines, and that nearly all the 
mountainous islands and shores in the S. Pacific range 
in this same direction ; namely, N. -Eastern Australia, 
New Caledonia, the northern half of New Zealand, the 
New Hebrides, Saloman, Navigator, Society, Marquesas, 
and Austral Archipelagoes. In the Northern Pacific, 
the Caroline atolls almost abut against the N.W. line of 
the Marshall atolls, much in the same manner as the 
E. andW. line of islands extending from Ceram to New 
Britain abuts against New Ireland. In the Indian 
Ocean the Laccadive and Maldiva atolls extend nearly 
parallel to the western mountains of India. There is 
also a close resemblance between atolls and ordinary 
islands in the manner in which they are grouped, as 
well as in their shapes. Thus the outline of all the 
larger groups of atolls is elongated ; and the atolls 
