Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1894 — A Marine Wonder. [ARTICLE]

A Marine Wonder.

One of the marine wonders of the world is the great barrier reef of Australia. The stupendous rampart of coral, stretching in an almost unbroken line for twelve hundred and fifty miles along the northeastern coast of Australia, presents features of interest which are not to be equalled in any other quarter of the globe. Nowhere is the action of 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 rearpd in the course of countless centuries an adamantine wall against which 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 inland sea eighty thousand square miles in extent, dotted with a multitude of coral islands, and presenting at every turn objects of interest alike to the unlearned traveler and the man of science. Here may be witnessed the singular process by which the wavy, gelatinous living mass hardens into stone, then serves as 1 a collecting ground for the fiotsam arid jetsam of tne ocean, and ultimately develops into an Island covered With a luxurious mass of tropical growth. Here again may be seen in the, serene depths of placid pools extraordinary Cirrus of marine life, aglow with brilliant colors.