INTRODUCTION. 35 



century. Imperato, a j^'eapolitaii, seems to have been the 

 first to state, as the result of his own observation, that 

 corals and madrepores were the work of living creatures 

 who dwelt in them. What reception his pubHcation met 

 with from the naturalists of that day we have not been able 

 to learn. Though this work was illustrated by figures, a 

 second edition of it did not appear till seventy- one years 

 afterwards (1672), when the author, I doubt not, had 

 passed away from the land of the living. Even then it 

 seems to have been little read, for when Peysonnel, more 

 than half a century afterwards, communicated the same dis- 

 coveries to the Academy of Sciences in Paris, they deemed 

 it quite new to them, and they appear to have treated the 

 discoverer with scorn as a fanciful dreamer, or as a presum- 

 ing upstart, who wished to be wiser than his neighbours. 



There were several things that contributed to the unfa- 

 vourable reception which PeyssonneFs discoveries met with. 

 Some time before. Count Marsigh, a scientific Italian, had 

 written on the subject, and though he described the animals 

 he had seen in the corals, he had represented them as the 

 flowers of the corals. It was too venturesome for a young 

 man but little known to enter the field against a learned 

 Count, and with that modesty that generally accompanies 



