After the subsidence came another period of uplift, possibly still in progress.
Borings and soundings taken at Funafuti in 1897 indicate almost beyond doubt that the whole of this Polynesian region is an area of comparatively recent subsidence.
With the gradual subsidence of these areas their culture would necessarily degenerate, although echoes of sublime theogonies and philosophies are still heard in the oral traditions and folklore of many Polynesian groups.
The conditions favourable to the production of coal seem therefore to have been-forest growth in swampy ground about the mouths of rivers, and rapid oscillation of level, the coal produced during subsidence being covered up by the sediment brought down by the river forming beds of sand or clay, which, on re-elevation, formed the soil for fresh growths, the alternation being occasionally broken by the deposit of purely marine beds.
There resulted a widespread and violent though ephemeral controversy, after the subsidence of which he published a Lecture on Tradition, which passed through several editions, and a volume on The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England.
