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As you go in a boat over these shallow pools, you see these beautiful things, coloured red, blue, green, and all colours, building their houses; but these are mere tenements, and not to be compared in magnitude and importance to the masses which are built by the reef-builders themselves. Now such a structure as this is what is termed a "fringing reef."
Disturbance of Natural Balances. It is highly probable that the reef-builders and other yet unstudied minute forms of vital existence have other functions in the economy of nature besides aiding in the architecture of the globe, and stand in important relations not only to man but to the plants and the larger sentient creatures over which he has dominion.
As you go in a boat over these shallow pools, you see these beautiful things, coloured red, blue, green, and all colours, building their houses; but these are mere tenements, and not to be compared in magnitude and importance to the masses which are built by the reef-builders themselves. Now such a structure as this is what is termed a "fringing reef."
On the contrary, over a certain area, which has already been surveyed with some accuracy by Professor Dana, during the United States Exploring Expedition, it is subsiding; and if an island upon which the Reef-Builders have established themselves be situated in that area of subsidence, it will, of course, sink with the floor on which it rests, carrying down also the Coral wall to a greater depth in the sea.
These walls have a variety of outlines: they may be straight, circular, semicircular, oblong, according to the form of the coast along which the little Reef-Builders establish themselves; and their height is, of course, determined by the depth of the bottom on which they rest.
The position of the Corals on a Reef accords with these series of structural gradation and geological succession. It is true that we do not find the Actiniae in the Reef any more than in the crust of the earth, for the absence of hard parts in their bodies makes them quite unfit to serve as Reef-Builders.
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