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St. Bartholomew, St. Martin, and Anguilla These three islands, each including both volcanic and calcareous rocks, surmount the western part of an extensive bank measuring 55 by 24 miles and having a smooth surface of moderate depth and a well defined border at 30 or 40 fathoms. The islands lay outside my route and are only briefly described by earlier observers. St. Barts, as the first-named island is often called for short, is the southernmost of the three; it is five by two miles across and 992 feet high, of irregular outline, with some of its headlands moderately cliffed; a few islets stand near by. Ten miles to the north is St. Martin, seven by four miles, 1360 feet high; its shore line is embayed and beached; a satellite on the west is tied to the larger island by two beaches, enclosing a small lagoon. Discontinuous fringing reefs are charted near the shore. Four miles farther north is Anguilla, twelve by three miles, 213 feet high, with a comparatively simple shore line: some smaller islands stand not far away. According to Cleve, as already cited, and Spencer, the volcanic rocks of the group are followed by a considerable body of tuffs and limestones; but the descriptions by these observers do not suffice to determine whether the upper limestones originally extended over the highest part of the volcanic rocks, as is clearly the case on Antigua. An old account of Anguilla by Sawkins, describes a rock series 950 feet thick, and as that measure is more than four times the height of the island, it may be inferred that the strata are gently inclined; furthermore, as the underlying volcanic rocks are said to occur on the west coast, the inclination of the strata is presumably eastward, and this suggests an uptilting on the west. According to this older record, the basal volcanics are 420 feet thick; then come 360 feet of clays, shales, sandstones, and volcanic conglomerate with some lignite; over these come 160 feet of coral breccia, followed by a small measure of marls and white limestones, the latter lying unconformably on the other beds. Duncan described St. Barts as composed of volcanic beds and intercalated limestones, the latter being indicative of deposition in deep water. According to Vaughan, as cited above, a coral limestone on St. Barts rests unconformably on a volcanic base; it is inferred to be "a shoal water deposit . . . laid down on a submerged flat;" and on Anguilla a fossil coral reef was "formed during submergence after the subaerial erosion of its [volcanic?] basement;" the overlying limestone is said to represent "a submarine flat." The evidence for the former connection of these islands with South America, as furnished by mammalian fossils in the upraised limestones, will be cited later. It may therefore be provisionally concluded that these islands and their bank, like the AntiguaBarbuda islands and bank, represent a former atoll which has been gently tilted eastward, so that its western part was uplifted and its larger eastern part was depressed; that the uplifted western part has been much reduced by erosion, while the depressed eastern part has been built up in continuation of its former aggradation, as a bank of second generation. An isolated bank, twelve by seven miles in extent and about 35 fathoms deep, lies three miles southeast of the larger one: this was presumably depressed and built up again like the eastern part of the larger bank. As around other islands, the absence of reefs around these bank borders today is ascribed, first, to the destruction of former reefs by low-level abrasion in the Glacial epochs, and second, to the failure of renewed reef growth in Postglacial time. Home