The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs [Paperback]

Charles Darwin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1962

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: distance, there was none with 210 fathoms. Small steep-sided banks or knolls, covered with luxuriantly- growing coral, rise from the interior expanse to the same level with the external rim, which, as we have seen, is formed only of dead rock. It is impossible to look at the plan (fig. 1, Plate II.), although reduced to so small a scale, without at once perceiving that the Great Chagos Bank is, in the words of Captain Moresby,1 'nothing more than a half-drowned atoll.' But of what great dimensions, and of how extraordinary an internal structure ! We shall hereafter have to consider both the cause of its submerged condition, a state common to other banks in the group, and the origin of the singular submarine terraces which bound the central expanse; these, I think it can be shown, have resulted from a.cause analogous to that which has produced the bifurcating channel across Mahlos Mahdoo. 1 This officer has had the kindness to lend me an excellent MS. account of the Chagos Islands; from this paper, from the published charts, and from verbal information communicated to me by Captain Moresby, the above account of the Great Chagos Bank is taken. chapter{Section 456 CHAPTER II. BAERIER-REEFS. Closely resemble in general form and structure atoll-reefs—Width and depth of the lagoon-channels—Breaches through the reef in front of calleys, and generally on the leeward side—Checks to the filling up of the lagoon-channels—Size and constitution of the encircled islands—Number of islands within the same reef— Barrier-reefs of New Caledonia and Australia—Position of the reef relatice to the slope of the adjoining land— Probable great thickness of barrier-reefs. The term ' barrier' has been generally applied to that vast reef which fronts the N.E. shore of Australia, and by most...

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1st Edition(PB) edition (December 1962)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520002911
• ISBN-13: 978-0520002913
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,184,176 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Darwin's first great achievement, August 31, 2006

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Thomas F. Glick "historian of science" (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs (Paperback)

On the voyage of the Beagle--before he had ever seen a coral reef--Darwin had deduced an explanation of the geological processes that created them by applying Charles Lyell's explanation of uplift and subsidence. Accordingly, he posited that the Chilean coast had been rising while the ocean floor was subsiding. When he finally explored some barrier reefs, he knew that since the polyps could not live deeper than 120 feet, and all the coral below that was dead, the confirmation of the reefs' great depth was evidence of subsidence--a theory that has stood the test of time. This is an attractive and affordable edition of Darwin's treatise.