Margaret Van Sterson, age , of Brookville, 5n t., for her question

Is coral rock or an animal?

Coral is both a rock and an animal. A lump of coral rock is an apartment house, the home of many little coral animals. The little animals are sea dwellers. You can see them under water, leaning out of their apartment house windows. You might see a little starry face surrounded by a circle of fingers. The fingers are tentacles, feeling through the water for bits of drifting food.

Each coral animal is a soft bodied creature and the sea is full of hungry enemies. So the little corvl protects itself. It soaks limy minerals from seawater and builds a wall around itself, The little coral‑made apartment is built on others just like it. In time the apartment house becomes huge. It may be miles high from the ocean floor to the surface. We then have an island, made of coral rock by tiny coral animals.