Outlines of the Bernnidas- — Fewkes. 99 
subsidence and formed as are the Pacific atolls that I find 
myself holding a different view. 
How much the Bermuda platform under the sea has been 
lifted up by elevation of a mechanical nature we can probably 
never know, but the amount of growth of the land above the 
ocean, formed by upheaval and by other forces we can dis- 
cover. The thickness of the jieolian limestones, due to wind 
action upon finely triturated sand, is much greater than the 
highest estimate of upheaval as indicated by elevated beach 
rock. Roughly speaking it may be said to be over three times 
as great, as far as has been at present observed. It is but 
natural to conclude that these wind-blown sands and the rocks 
formed from them have played their share, which is not small, 
in the formation of the island. They have done more than 
elevation to determine subordinate features of the configura- 
tion. yEolian rocks can not form under water, and yet there 
are high wind-blown rocks in perpendicular cliffs in at least 
one point on Harrington sound. When these rocks were first 
formed their sides were not as precipitant as at present, when 
they show evidences of tremendous erosion. 
This soft rock occupying now, after great denudation, three 
times the thickness of all the rock above water, has suffered 
most in denudation, since it is one of the softest known rocks. 
What must have been its proportion of loss since the erosion be- 
gan? Enough I fancy to impart the shape to the land above water 
on the oval platform, irrespective of any atoll shape which the 
up heaved rock may originally have had. It practically has 
modified the old form of the island. Then, when denudation 
combined with this under the form of a new mask, obscured 
the outlines derived from elevation and subsidence, this was 
the rock which suffered the most, arid which, even in the 
destruction of its character as rock has the greatest influence 
in determining the outlines of the coast. A capping of rock 
so soft as to feel every imprint of eroding forces, now in the 
form of sandstones, now as a moving glacier carried by the 
wind, transported by water, is the formation to which Bermu- 
da owes its outlines. Its inflaence in the modification of 
coast lines of Bermuda is greater than subsidence, which in a 
measure it neutralizes. 
Some of the conclusions arrived at in my study of the origin 
