But now, I
think, we may freely admit this important deduction.
Taking a final view of the map, and bearing in mind the statements
made with respect to the upraised organic remains, we must feel
astonished at the vastness of the areas which have suffered changes
in level either downwards or upwards, within a period not
geologically remote. It would appear also that the elevatory and
subsiding movements follow nearly the same laws. Throughout the
spaces interspersed with atolls, where not a single peak of high
land has been left above the level of the sea, the sinking must
have been immense in amount. The sinking, moreover, whether
continuous, or recurrent with intervals sufficiently long for the
corals again to bring up their living edifices to the surface, must
necessarily have been extremely slow. This conclusion is probably
the most important one which can be deduced from the study of coral
formations;--and it is one which it is difficult to imagine how
otherwise could ever have been arrived at. Nor can I quite pass
over the probability of the former existence of large archipelagoes
of lofty islands, where now only rings of coral-rock scarcely break
the open expanse of the sea, throwing some light on the
distribution of the inhabitants of the other high islands, now left
standing so immensely remote from each other in the midst of the
great oceans.
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