842 
that the corals are secreting and depositing 
any more calcium carbonate in the West 
Indian region than are the calcareous alge. 
The massive beds of Halimeda opuntia off 
the Florida Keys (the same species, by the 
way, that is filling the lagoons of some of 
the South Sea atolls) are striking, as are 
the banks of Goniolithon strictum in the 
Bahamas and reefs of Lithophyllum Antil- 
larum and Lithophyllum daedaleum along 
the shores of Porto Rico, yet probably none 
of these are sO conspicuous and massive as 
are certain local aggregations of living 
corals in the same general regions. How- 
ever, the lime-secreting plants appear to be 
much more generally and widely distri- 
buted, both horizontally and vertically, 
than are the corals, and the rate of growth 
is, of course, a factor of importance in any 
attempt to estimate the relative lime- 
depositing activity of corals and calcareous 
alge. The notable studies and measure- 
ments of living corals by Dr. Vaughan at 
the Tortugas station of the Department of 
Marine Biology of the Carnegie Institution 
of Washington are beginning to throw a 
most welcome light on the rate of growth 
of the corals. No similar records of the 
rate of growth of the calcareous red alge 
have as yet been published, so far as we are 
aware, but from the fact that these plants 
often cover and smother living corals one 
is perhaps justified in assuming that the 
growth of certain kinds of coralline alg is 
superficially, at least, more rapid than that 
of certain kinds of corals. For the rate of 
growth of the calcareous green alge we 
have scarcely any definite records except 
one by Finckh,?° who observed in Funafuti 
a radio-vertical growth of three inches in 
six weeks in a tangle of Halimeda opuntia 
that had found its way through a hole in a 
board. This growth-rate, which is possibly 
more than a fair general average for the 
2»<«<The Atoll of Funafuti,’’ p. 146. 
SCIENCE 
[N.S. Vou. XXXV. No. 909 
species, seems much more rapid than any 
thus far attributed to the corals. 
With the dominance in reef-building 
activities resting sometimes with the eal- 
careous alge and sometimes with the 
corals, and with the Foraminifera and 
other groups also playing their parts, the 
problem of determining the ‘‘most impor- 
tant’’ constructive element in the calcium 
carbonate reefs of the world, ancient and 
modern, is naturally a most complicated 
and difficult one and one that may never 
be solved to the full satisfaction of those 
most interested. Alexander Agassiz, in 
1894, in summing up the general result of 
his explorations of Bermuda and the Ba- 
hamas, which had revealed a condition of 
things not realized before, frankly re- 
marked that it was a ‘‘significant example 
of how little we as yet know of the history 
of the formation of the coral reefs.’’? As 
a general proposition this remark seems 
almost as apt now as when it was made in 
1894. However, since the day of the first 
illuminating borings into the ‘‘true coral 
atoll’? of Funafuti, much evidence has 
accumulated tending to show that the im- 
portance of the corals in reef-building has 
been much over-estimated and that the 
final honors in this connection may yet go 
to the more humble lime-secreting plants. 
MarsHatn A. Howe 
NEw YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN 
UNIVERSITY CONTROL 
ru 
In a review of the different factors con- 
cerned with the administration of a uni- 
versity the corporation in ultimate control 
is the natural starting-point. It was be- 
coming that the fellows of Yale College, a 
collegiate school primarily for the educa- 
tion of the clergy, should be representative 
2 Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool. Harvard Coll., Vol. 26, 
p. 278. 
