ISLAND MAGIC.*
FOR most people, perhaps for everybody, an island has a profound emotional significance, the meaning of which is
unfathomable. If the thought of visiting strange lands is entrancing, the thought of visiting strange islands is more entrancing still. For these reasons such a book as Mr. Verrill's can hardly fail to delight anyone, young or old,
who has the good fortune to come across it. In the first half of the book he tells of the various kinds of islands and of
how they were formed, and in the second half he describes,
with a great deal of delightful visual detail, visits to eight different varieties.
An island, as Mr. Verrill truly remarks, "gives the effect of resting on the water rather than in.it," and there must be many people to whom the thought has never occurred that an island may be merely the summit of a submerged mountain, or an archipelago the scattered peaks of a vast submarine mountain-range. Yet, if the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea could be drained dry,
"we would see a vast area of plains bordered on the cast by a stupendous mountain range whose tips are now the Lesser Antilles ; with an aggregation of lower mountain peaks above a tremendous plateau where are now the Bahamas ; with vast bulky mountain masses which would dwarf Mount Everest and which we now know as Cuba, Haiti, Porto Rico and Jamaica, and with isolated, slender pinnacles marking the innumerable tiny islands which dot the Caribbean Sea."
There are many strange kinds of islands—islands which suddenly rise from the sea or sink into it. The town oi Charlestown on the island of Nevis, once a favourite watering.
place, sank suddenly into the sea, "and to-day, in clear weather, one may row above the submerged town and, looking
through the crystal-like water, may trace the outlines of the streets and buildings of the once gay and populous town." A few years ago something very like a practical joke was played upon the British Empire. A large island suddenly put in an appearance off the coast of Trinidad in the West Indies. "The authorities visited it, took possession of it as a dependency of Trinidad, and set up the British flag ; but a few days later this new acquisition to the British Empire disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared and ships now sail over the spot." Truly an impertinent disregard of authority. Then there is the extraordinary case of Dauntless Island, near the mouth of the Essequibo River in British Guiana, which originated in the wreck of the good ship Dauntless.'
Sand and sticks and floating seeds accumulated about the wreck, the seeds—mangroves and larger trees—sprouted rapidly in the tropical waters and the place is now a forest-clad island ten miles in length.
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