essor 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