Outlines of the Bermudas. — Fewkes. 93 
While in the opinion of the author the evidence yet adduced 
is not sufficient to prove that general subsidence of the Ber- 
muda platform has taken place it is certainly not possible to 
prove the contrary. I feel that our fticts shed no light on either 
theory. There is reason to believe that the water once stood 
higher around the island than now, but the evidence of subsi- 
dence of the land, although accepted by most of those who 
have studied these islands, is not wholly conclusive. 
The Bermuda islands belong to that group of coral islands 
in which the most important agent at work is the erosion of 
the sea. Of great erosion there is evidence which no one can 
question, and the islands are in the process of destruction 
not construction. - 
The amount of erosion which is indicated there is stupend- 
ous and such as belittles all our ideas of the erosion of the sea 
on rock derived from a knowledge of the results of these 
forces on our own coast. The amount of red soil, which I 
regard as wholly the product of erosion, is in a measure an 
index of the amount of denudation which has taken place. 
The level floor of Harrington sound has been adduced as a 
proof that no falling in of the roof of caves has taken place, 
yet the argument is not wholly conclusive. It would seem as 
if the erosion and scouring of the fallen fragments by the water 
would level the floor except at the islands in the sound where 
vestiges of the former land still remain projecting above the 
water. 
It might be pertinent to ask whence came the islands in 
Harrington sound? Are they not remnants of elevations once 
much more lofty than they now are, and have they not an im- 
portant bearing on the problem we are considering? Their 
eroded sides tell of the inroads of the sea and their summits 
indicate considerable aerial denudation. Their very existence 
seems to show that the floor of the sound is not level, although 
in themselves they do not deny the theory of subsidence. 
They are believed to show that the caves which formed about 
them were limited to their periphery, no more, no less. I would 
not interpret them as the roof of a fallen cave, but as rem- 
nants of the originally solid land which before erosion has 
2 1 have already pointed out the difference between these two groups 
of islands. See Proc. Bost. Soc. Nat. Hist. vol. xxin, also Standard 
Natural History. 
