AUSTRALIAN CABLE.

Timaru Herald, Volume LX, Issue 2357, 31 March 1897, Page 2

AUSTRALIAN CABLE.

1 ' ■ . . - —^ •■ ' Pbr Electric Telegraph— Copyright, - Pbb Press Association. THE BUTESHIRE. ' Melbourne, March 30. £ Arrived— Buteshire, from London. i OLD AGE PENSION SCHEMES. The Old Age Pensions Commission at r their first aittiog decided to obtain all * available information of old age schemes, ? including those of New Zealand and I New South Wales. J CORAL REEFS. 3 ' Sydney, March 30. c In May last the British Royal Society's 3 expedition under Professor SoUas visited fc the Ellice Islands, chiefly with the object « of testing the Darwinian theory of for--8 mation of coral reefs. The expedition failed owing to defective boring appar- £ atus. Mr Gardiner, one of the members, 3 remained to study the coral formation. He has now returned to Sydney, und the result of his researches were on the whole unfavourable to Darwin's theory „ that coral reefs are founded on sunken land. He sees no necessity to ' assume a sinking of the land. It seems 4 more feasible that the reefs are grouped round the ocean mountains, probably of volcanic origin, the tops of which were '» never above the sea.