HISTORY OF ZOOPIIYTOLOGY. 409 



01' horny and flexible, were arranged and described among 

 sea-weeds and mosses without any misgivings concerning the 

 propriety of doing so. 



Ferrante Imperato, an apothecary in Naples, was the first 

 naturalist, according to M. De Blainville, distinctly to publish, 

 as the result of his proper observations, the animality of corals 

 and madrepores,* and he is said to have accompanied the de- 

 scriptions of the species which fell under his notice with illus- 

 trative figures of considerable accuracy. His " Historia Natu- 

 rale," of which De Blainville assuredly speaks in very exagge- 

 rating terms when he represents it as one of the most im2:)ort- 

 ant works in the history of zoophytology, was printed at 

 Naples in ] 599 ; but although reprinted some years after- 

 wards (1672), the book, and the knowledge it contained, had 

 sunk into such complete oblivion, that when Jean- Andre 

 Peyssonnel, in the year 1727, communicated the same disco- 

 very to the Academy of Sciences in Paris, it was received by 

 the members of that learned body in a manner which is sufl[i- 

 cient to convince us that it was entirely new to them, and ex- 

 posed the author to the obloquy and censure tvhich are the 

 usual portions of an original discoverer. 



Some time previously to the publication of Peyssonners 

 discovery, those who maintained that the stony zoophytes 



* Man. d'Actinol. p. 1 4. — Lamouroux, on the contrary, places Imperato on the 

 same level with Gesner, Boccone, and Shaw — none of whom had any distinct notion 

 of the animality of any zoophytes, and had no doubt of the vegetable nature of almost 

 all of them. " Les observations de ces hommes celebres, au lieu d'^clairer les na- 

 turalistes sur cette branche interessante de la science, embrouillaient encore plus son 

 etude." Lam. Cor. Flex. Introd. p. xiv. — My copy of Imperato's work is of the 

 edition printed at Venice in 1672, folio. It is written entirely in Italian, and, being 

 ignorant of that language, I can give no opinion of the value of its letter-press. The 

 only copper-plate is a very curious one, representing the interior of Imperato's mu- 

 seum, which appears to have been a very elegant and copious collection of curiosities, 

 a servant pointing with a rod and directing the attention of two wondering visitors to 

 the more remarkable of them, while a third leans against a cabinet, and surveys, 



" • not without much content 



" Its manj' singularities." 

 The book contains, besides, many wood-cuts of a miscellaneous kind, very tolerably 

 engraved for the age. The Zoophytes figured belong chiefly to the Lithojihj-ta, with 

 some Sponges and Alcyonia. The opinions of Rumphius seem to have been as ex- 

 plicitly stated as those of Imperato, but they effected nothing. — Pall. Elench. 14, and 

 275. 



