A MARINE WONDER.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 183, 2 August 1923, Page 3

A MARINE WONDER.

THE INDUSTRIOUS CORAX. HOW REEFS ARE BUILT. A foremost authority on corals, Dr. T. \X. Vaughan, of the United States geological survey, who arrived in Sydney J recently for the purpose of attending J the pan-Pacific Science Congress, in an C interview described some curious results ° of his researches. *j Dr. Vaughan said that he had worked " for many years on the corals on the J reefs of the Florida coast. One of hie fc particular "stunts," he said, had been the establishment of coral plantation on the Florida coast, and in the Bahamas. On these plantations Dr. Vaughan experimented -with the idea of finding out how fast the corals grow and work out the rate at which each species of coral common in those general regions, builds a reef. In order to do this he planted corals on cement discs attached' by iron stakes to the bottom of the sea. The growth of the coral was measured every year, and the f measurements checked with those of c others growing naturally in the 1 I vicinity. By these means Dr. Vaughan s discovered that, according to their dif- t ferent species, corals would build a reef i 150 ft thick in between 1700 and 6000 J years. ' Corals, he said, lived on nothing but ' i animal foods. To prove this he had J given them sea weed soaked in meat ' juice, and found that after they lad swallowed it and extracted the juice ' they would then eject the sea weed. The size of the corals ranged from less than ; one-eighth of an inch in diameter to seven inches in diameter.