On the Geological and Physical Development of Antigua

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Abstract
I. Introduction and Early Observations The island of Antigua may be taken as a starting-point for the study of the Windward Islands, as within its area of 100 square miles almost all of the geological and geographical features of the region, except the later volcanic phenomena, are developed in such a way as to be easily understood. The only other island comparable for a base of study is Guadeloupe, which furthermore includes all the recent volcanic features on a grand scale, but some other features less easily distinguishable than in Antigua. On November 5th, 1819, Dr. Nicholas Nugent, a physician of Antigua, communicated to the Geological Society of London ‘A Sketch of the Geology of the Island of Antigua’; but a ‘Memorandum’ of this had been sent to Benjamin Silliman on April 10th, 1818, and was published two years earlier in America than the fuller London paper. Nugent also sent to the Geological Society large collections of the rocks and fossils, carefully labelled as to their horizons. These remained almost unstudied for over forty years, when P. Martin Duncan made an elaborate study of the corals contained in them, which appeared in 1863–64. Nugent had a companion in his studies of the island in the person of Dr. Thomas Nicholson, who wrote a short account of the geology of the island in the ‘Antigua Almanac & Register,’ a work forgotten or lost. Prof. S. Hovey visited the island, with Nugent as his guide, and published a sketch of the ‘Geology

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