98 Tlie American Geologist. Feb. isoo. 
sounding. The water in submarine grottoes in the face of 
cliffs is often very deep, even when they, the grottoes, are 
undoubtedly due to erosion. 
The narrow entrance to Harrington sound at "the Flatts" 
is said to be slowly becoming shallower which fact would 
seem to indicate that either the bottom was rising or that silt 
was being deposited. I think the latter explanation is the 
true one and that here we have something akin to the clogging 
of the mouths of rivers by the detritus which they bring down 
from their valleys. Whence came that detritus at "the 
Flatts"? Manifestly it is the result of erosion. But while a 
portion of the products of erosion is thus dropped in the 
course to the ocean, a still larger amount manifestly is washed 
into the ocean. The amount of ground up coral sand that 
can be transplanted by ocean currents can only be justly 
appreciated by one who remembers the miles and miles of 
white water which are often seen in the vicinity of coral 
islands. 
The problem which we are considering deals with the pres- 
ent configuration of the islands of the Bermudas and this out- 
line may or may not correspond with that which they had in 
former times. Roughly speaking it may be said that in a gen- 
eral way the contour of the old Bermuda before the sea had 
eaten out the lagoons, was that of an oval island. This island 
may have been in the process of elevation or of subsidence, 
and if the latter, depressions in it may have been a beginning 
from which the sound begins to form. Even granting the 
possibilty of submergence, bringing this depression beneath 
the ocean level does not mean either that we accept the theory 
.that the contour of the present sounds are due to submerg- 
ence, except in a very general way.'' The immediate cause of 
the circular lagoons is what we are after, and that cause is 
thought to be erosion, even if subsidence, local or general, has 
taken place. With those who hold that subsidence has taken 
place in the Bermudas I have no important difference of opin- 
ion. It is only with those who adduce from that the propo- 
sition that the present contour of tlie islands is the result of 
■Tt woultl seem to the author that if we accept the proposition that 
the sea has by erosion made the great inroads into the land that some 
advocates of the subsidence theory admit, that they liave practically 
abandoned a comparison between the Bermudas and the low ring- 
shaped atolls of the Pacific and Indian oceans. 
