Donald schumacher, age l2, of Goltry, Okla., for his question:

Does sea coral grow from seeds?

All plants and animals develop from fertilized eggs that may be called seeds. A graceful chunk of stony coral, neither plant nor animal, is an apartment house built by numbers of small sea animals. These coral animals are polyps related to jellyfishes and sea anemones. But they have rather odd ways of multiplying their numbers.

Young corals can be born in two ways. some start life as eggs strewn into the water to take their chances in the hungry sea, and some begin as small buds on the parent polyps. The buds grow into complete corals and then separate themselves. They go off into the water and soon settle down on the lump of coral where they were born. There they build themselves living quarters, adding new units to the apartment house of their ancestors.