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The Dominica Bank The bank adjoining Dominica is chiefly limited to the east coast, where it has a width of three or four miles. As that coast did not come under my observation, it is impossible for me to correlate the bank with the adjoining coastal features; but, from analogy with other islands, it may be inferred that offshore reefs have there had better opportunity of formation in the past than appears to have been the case on the west coast. The absence of a bank along the west coast seems, as above implied, to be due to the fact that eruptions of mud flows have there been intermittently continued to comparatively recent times, thus preventing reef growth. Dominica is therefore not far advanced in the scheme of development here outlined. The above-described features of Morne au Diable are of some interest as illustrating the results of erosion and abrasion in a simple and manifest manner. The explanations given for the features of the west coast, including the marginal range of buttressed summits as well as the mud-flow benches in the larger valleys, should be taken as only tentative until confirmed by more detailed observation. The interpretation of the faceted spur ends of the southwest coast is also provisional; for, as already stated, it is based only on inspection from offshore. But if it is supported by further investigation, especially around the end of the island to the southeast coast, it may well be regarded as the most significant lesson of the island. Dominica would then be classed as the only example thus far discovered among the larger islands of the Lesser Antilles still showing high cliffs that were cut during the earlier, reefless stages of its development, before subsidence had set in effectively and while its shore was subjected to severe abrasion because the outwash of detritus from its deepening valleys prevented the establishment of reefs around it. Home