Abstract
As I have had no personal experience of coral-reefs, I do not wish to touch more than the literary side of the controversy, but, in regard to this, Mr. Guppy's letter in the last number of NATURE (p. 53) obliges me to call attention to the fact that the “90-fathom reef” which he mentions is not at Socotra, but at Rodriguez. Also that, apart from Mr. Guppy, I found little evidence of “ignorance of the depths in witch coral-reefs may form.” On the contrary, there appeared to be a remarkable concurrence of testimony on the part of observers that, though occasionally a reef-building species may be found alive at depths greater than about 25 fathoms, this bathymetric limit for the growth of reefs, assigned by the earlier observers, is sufficiently accurate for all practical purposes.
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BONNEY, T. The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs.. Nature 40, 77 (1889). https://doi.org/10.1038/040077b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/040077b0
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