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A Marine Wonder

A Marine Wonder image
Parent Issue
Day
2
Month
May
Year
1894
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

One of the marine wonders oi the world is the great barrier reef of Australia. This stupendous rampart of coral, in an almostunbroken line for twelve hundred and fifty miles along the northeastern coast of Australia, presents features of interest which are not to be equaled in an.y other quarter of the globe. Nowhere is the action öf the little marine insect, which builds up with untiring industry those mighty mountains with which the tropical seas are studded, more impressive; nowhere are the wonderful constructive forces of nature more apparent. By a simple process of accretion there has been reared in the course of countless centuries an adamantine wall against wbich the billows of the Pacific, sweeping along in an uninterrupted course of several thousand miles, dash themselves in ineffectual fury. Inclosed within the range of its protecting arms is a calm island sea, eighty tliousand square miles in extent, dotted with a multitude of coral islets and presenting at every turn objects of interest alike to the unlearned traveler and the man of seience. llere may be witnessed the singular process by which the wavy, gelatinous, living mass hardens into stone, then serves as a collecting ground for the flotsam and jetsam of the ocean, and ultimately develops into an island covered with a luxurious mass of tropical grovvth. llere, again, may be seen in the serene depths of placid pools extraordinary formsof marine Ufe, aglow with the most brilliant colors and producing in their infinite variety a bewildering- sense of the vastness of the life of the ocean. '

Article

Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Courier