Kenneth Macura, Age 11, Of Stratford, Conn., for his question:

How do living things reach a new island?

Every few yeaxs, a brand new island rises up from the ocean. At first the bare earth is washed by tides and perhaps strewn with seashells. But some years later, the place is populated with a wide variety of plants and animals, including palms, buds, insects and maybe even monkeys. This is mysterious when the island is miles ¬perhaps hundreds of miles  from any other land.

The noisiest event in modern times occured in August, 1883. It was a volcanic eruption on an island in the sundra sea between the larger islands of java, and sumatra. The volcano Krakatau b1ew its top, and it is estimated that a cubic mile of debris was exp10ded into the atmosphere. The thundering roar of the explosion was heard hundrededs of miles away. The shock waves traveled several times around the earth.

All living things on the Island of Krakatau vere destroyed  some by explosion, some by seething lava and volcanic dust. The ashy remains vere swept far out to sea by a monstrous tidal wave. When the eruption was over, Krakatau was as naked as a newly born island. Teams of scientists examined the scene of the disaster and returned from time to time to make surveys of its repopulation.

The first plants to venture back to the volcanic island were fungi and algae, ferns and other humble forms of vegetation. After 15 years, 53 different flowering plants had taken root on the island. The sea going algae may have washed ashore. Most of the other plants were thought to have sprung from seeds carried to the island by ocean currents. The ferns and fungi may have sprung from tiny spores wafted there by the winds. About a third of the plants, it was estimated, came fry wind borne seeds or spores. A few seeds vere carried there by roaming birds.

The replanting of Krakatau is typical of the way in which a new island beccmes clothed with vegetation. Animal life follows vegetation. Birds arrive and sometimes settle there. Insects and their eggs are often swept out to sea on fallen branches and a few lucky ones get beached on a new island and stay there. Monkeys and lizards, rats and other small animals may reach a new island by the same kind of happy accident.

Krakatau was 12 miles from the nearest populated island and 25 miles from the teeming island of Java. Its new tenants arrived from distant ports, and most of them had to make long voyages by air or by sea. But this is not surprising when you learn that a bulky coconut can float with an ocean current for hundreds of miles. Sooner or later it may get washed ashore on a new island where it grows into a coconut palm and produces offspring.