Alexander Agassiz : his life and scientific work / by Sir John Murray.

  • John Murray
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Alexander Agassiz : his life and scientific work / by Sir John Murray. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/28 page 152
    Later, in 1907, he writes:— “I have started on my coral-reef book, but it is a job, a good deal more than I expected. If I stay at home I ought to make good progress.” Later in the same year he says:— “I fancy I shall have all the time I want to write out my popular account of coral reefs. I have made a fair beginning, and hope to keep the material within reasonable bounds and not allow it to run away with me.” Four months before his death he wrote:— “I have worked hard at my coral-reef book,” and only a few days before his death he told me in London that he had really sketched out this book three times, but found it very difficult indeed to deal satisfactorily with the mass of information that had been collected. It was his intention, he stated, to write this book during the present year prac¬ tically for the fourth and last time, leaving out all criticism of the work of others and stating exactly what he had himself observed and his own views. When in 1903 he addressed the Royal Society of London on coral reefs, he simply described what he had seen in the various coral-reef regions, and did not enter into any controversial matters. The real point of his address came out in the subsequent discussion, viz., that in all his investigations and voyages he had not seen one single atoll or barrier-reef which could be said to be an illustration of the Darwinian theory of coral reefs. It was evident to a large number of naturalists who had themselves observed in the field that the subsi¬ dence theory was no more necessary to account for the characteristic features of atolls and barrier reefs than the elevation theory of Darwin — published about the same time — was necessary to account for the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy in Scotland 1 It is difficult to account for the heated controversies which have raged around the coral-reef question. Possibly these would never have taken place had the subsidence theory not been associated with the name of Darwin. Very many of the public did not seem to realize that this theory of coral reefs was the work of Darwin when young and inexperienced, and had nothing whatever to do with the theory of natural selection. When the late Duke of Argyll published his famous article entitled “A Conspiracy of Silence,” in the Nineteenth Century” (September, 1887), he gave Bathybius and coral-reef theories as illustrations, and many people regarded the article as a sugges¬ tion that Darwinists and evolutionists were disposed to burke free 1 See “Observations on the Parallel Roads of Glen Roy, and of other parts of Locha- ber in Scotland, with an attempt to prove that they are of marine origin,” Phil. Trans., 1839, p. 39; Edin. New Phil. Journ., vol. XXVII, p. 395, 1839.
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