which the sea on the leeward side occasionally breaks. North Keeling atoll
appears to be in a rather less forward stage of conversion into land; it
consists of a horse-shoe shaped strip of land surrounding a muddy flat, one
mile in its longest axis, which is covered by the sea only at high water.
When describing South Keeling atoll, I endeavoured to show how slow the
final process of filling up a lagoon must be; nevertheless, as all causes
do tend to produce this effect, it is very remarkable that not one
instance, as I believe, is known of a moderately sized lagoon being filled
up even to the low water-line at spring-tides, much less of such a one
being converted into land. It is, likewise, in some degree remarkable, how
few atolls, except small ones, are surrounded by a single linear strip of
land, formed by the union of separate islets. We cannot suppose that the
many atolls in the Pacific and Indian Oceans all have had a late origin,
and yet should they remain at their present level, subjected only to the
action of the sea and to the growing powers of the coral, during as many
centuries as must have elapsed since any of the earlier tertiary epochs, it
cannot, I think, be doubted that their lagoons and the islets on their
reef, would present a totally different appearance from what they now do.
This consideration leads to the suspicion that some renovating agency
(namely subsidence) comes into play at intervals, and perpetuates their
original structure.

(DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATES.

PLATE II.--GREAT CHAGOS BANK, NEW CALEDONIA,MENCHIKOFF ATOLL, ETC.

FIGURE 1.--GREAT CHAGOS BANK, in the Indian Ocean; taken from the survey by
Captain Moresby and Lieutenant Powell; the parts which are shaded, with the
exception of two or three islets on the western and northern sides, do not
rise to the surface, but are submerged from four to ten fathoms; the banks