Mr. Murray's new explanation of the structure of coral-reefs
and islands was communicated to the Royal Society of
Edinburgh in 1880, and supported with such a weight of facts
and such a close texture of reasoning, that no serious reply
has ever been attempted (p. 305).
"No serious reply has ever been attempted"! I suppose that the Duke of
Argyll may have heard of Professor Dana, whose years of labour devoted
to corals and coral-reefs when he was naturalist of the American
expedition under Commodore Wilkes, more than forty years ago, have
ever since caused him to be recognised as an authority of the first
rank on such subjects. Now does his Grace know, or does he not know,
that, in the year 1885, Professor Dana published an elaborate paper
"On the Origin of Coral-Reefs and Islands," in which, after referring
to a Presidential Address by the Director of the Geological Survey of
Great Britain and Ireland delivered in 1883, in which special
attention is directed to Mr. Murray's views Professor Dana says:--
The existing state of doubt on the question has led the
writer to reconsider the earlier and later facts, and in the
following pages he gives his results.
Professor Dana then devotes many pages of his very "serious reply" to
a most admirable and weighty criticism of the objections which have at
various times been raised to Mr. Darwin's doctrine, by Professor
Semper, by Dr. Rein, and finally by Mr. Murray, and he states his
final judgment as follows:--
With the theory of abrasion and solution incompetent, all
the hypotheses of objectors to Darwin's theory are alike
weak; for all have made these processes their chief
reliance, whether appealing to a calcareous, or a volcanic,
or a mountain-peak basement for the structure. The
subsidence which the Darwinian theory requires has not been
opposed by the mention of any fact at variance with it, nor
by setting aside Darwin's arguments in its favour; and it
has found new support in the facts from the "Challenger's"
soundings off Tahiti, that had been put in array against it,
and strong corroboration in the facts from the West Indies.
Darwin's theory, therefore, remains as the theory that
accounts for the origin of reefs and islands.[30]
Be it understood that I express no opinion on the controverted points.
I doubt if there are ten living men who, having a practical knowledge
of what a coral-reef is, have endeavoured to master the very difficult
biological and geological problems involved in their study. I happen
to have spent the best part of three years among coral-reefs and to
have made that attempt; and, when Mr. Murray's work appeared, I said
to myself that until I had two or three months to give to the renewed
study of the subject in all its bearings, I must be content to remain
in a condition of suspended judgment. In the meanwhile, the man who
would be voted by common acclamation as the most competent person now
living to act as umpire, has delivered the verdict I have quoted; and,
to go no further, has fully justified the hesitation I and others may
have felt about expressing an opinion. Under these circumstances, it
seems to me to require a good deal of courage to say "no serious reply
has ever been attempted"; and to chide the men of science, in lofty
tones, for their "reluctance to admit an error" which is not admitted;
and for their "slow and sulky acquiescence" in a conclusion which they
have the gravest warranty for suspecting.