96 The American Geologist. Feb. isqo 
its part in this destruction until under these denudation agen- 
cies the great mass of the island disappeared. 
The elevation of the island of which geologists think they 
find evidences could not make up for the losses from the 
remorseless sea combining with the rains in leveling the soft 
rock. I have no new observation to add to those advanced by 
others to prove the theory of an elevation of the Bermuda 
platform. There may have been an oscillation, elevation and 
subsidence, but the main cause of the present outlines of the 
coast is neither one nor the other, but enormous erosion. 
If there were no other forces at work an elevation of the 
platform of Bermuda fifty feet Avould profoundly affect 
the general contours of the islands. It seems equally 
possible that subsidence, if it happened likewise under 
the same conditions, would change the outline to a 
marked extent. But in studying the Bermuda of to-day we 
are studying the onenibra dejecta of a large island whose form 
Ave are obliged to surmise from its fragments. We know that 
those fragments lie on the periphery of an oval ring, but this 
is only a hint of the former shape of the island. It may have 
been a compact island covering the whole platform with its 
greatest elevation where the existing islands now are, yet it does 
not seem impossible that the original Bermuda was a ring- 
shaped island. With pronounced evidences, according to 
geologists, of elevation and of great erosion, the evidence of 
subsidence are more or less marked. Elevation and subsi- 
dence imply oscillation of the platform. Suppose for argu- 
ment the island was originally formed by slow subsidence as 
Darwin requires, and at the end of that period elevation occurs 
by which beach rock is raised above the level of the sea. This 
would seem evident from the submerged cedars of Ireland 
island must have been submerged before the elevation of the 
beach rock, for if not they would be lifted out of water. They 
were then, if submerged, sunken before the beach rock formed. 
If beach rock forms it would have been above them, for it 
seems not to have formed over the submerged cedars which 
"vessels bring up with their anchors from the Great Sound." 
We have then this rather astounding condition, an island 
with cedar trees growing upon it is slowly submerged until the 
trees are under water. On the same island [i.e. platform] 
