XX 
MALDIVA ARCHIPELAGO 
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surprise at the reefs both of atolls and barriers becoming in 
parts imperfect. The great barrier of 
New Caledonia is thus imperfect and 
broken in many parts ; hence, 
after long subsidence, this great 
reef would not produce one 
great atoll 400 miles in length, 
but a chain or archipelago of 
atolls, of very nearly the same 
dimensions with those in the Maldiva 
Archipelago. Moreover, in an atoll once 
breached on opposite sides, from the likeli¬ 
hood of the oceanic and tidal currents 
passing straight through the breaches, it 
is extremely improbable that the corals, 
especially during continued subsidence, 
would ever be able again to unite the rim ; 
if they did not, as the whole sank down¬ 
wards, one atoll would be divided into two 
or more. In the Maldiva Archipelago there 
are distinct atolls so related to each other 
in position, and separated by channels 
either unfathomable or very deep (the 
channel between Ross and Ari atolls is 
150 fathoms, and that between the north 
and south Nillandoo atolls is 200 fathoms 
in depth), that it is impossible to look at 
a map of them without believing that they 
were once more intimately related. And 
in this same archipelago, Mahlos-Mahdoo 
atoll is divided by a bifurcating channel 
from 100 to 132 fathoms in depth, 
in such a manner, that it is 
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CORALS. 
scarcely possible to say whether it ought strictly to be 
