("Cosmos," vol. v., p. 331.)
The following singular passage we quote entire from Lyell's Principles
of Geology," p. 436:
"In the Nautical Magazine for 1835, p. 642, and for 1838, p. 361, and in
the Comptes Rendus, April, 1838, accounts are given of a series of
volcanic phenomena, earthquakes, troubled water, floating scoria, and
columns of smoke, which have been observed at intervals since the middle
of the last century, in a space of open sea between longitudes 20 deg.
and 22' W., about half a degree south of the equator. These facts, says
Mr. Darwin, seem to show that an island or archipelago is in process of
formation in the middle of the Atlantic. A line joining St. Helena and
Ascension would, if prolonged, intersect this slowly nascent focus of
volcanic action. Should land be eventually formed here, it will not be
the first that has been produced by igneous action in this ocean since
it was inhabited by the existing species of testacea. At Porto Praya, in
St. Jago, one of the Azores, a horizontal, calcareous stratum occurs,
containing shells of recent marine species, covered by a great sheet of
basalt eighty feet thick.
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