Excerpt from Islands and Their Mysteries Or is the island what the geologists call con structional, a gain rather than a relic, something on the plus Side And if so, is it part of a sub marine mountain chain that has been raised above the surface of the water, or is it the top of a submarine volcano, or is it a coral growth on the shoulders of either of these, or is it a deposit at a river mouth The destructional islands are mostly isolated parts of continents; the constructional islands are mostly children of the sea. Hence the old classification into continental and oceanic islands. Then, having settled the question of origin, we face that of history. For the island may become smaller and smaller as the weathering outruns any increase, or larger and larger as growth outruns erosion. Islands wax and wane; they appear and disappear. They have a life history. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.