Moreover, In An Atoll Once
Breached On Opposite Sides, From The Likelihood 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 downwards, 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 scarcely possible to say whether it ought strictly to
be called three separate atolls, or one great atoll not yet
finally divided.
I will not enter on many more details; but I must remark
that the curious structure of the northern Maldiva atolls
receives (taking into consideration the free entrance of the
sea through their broken margins) a simple explanation in
the upward and outward growth of the corals, originally
based both on small detached reefs in their lagoons, such as
occur in common atolls, and on broken portions of the linear
marginal reef, such as bounds every atoll of the ordinary
form.
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