HISTORY OF ZOOPHYTOLOGY. 411 



just alluded to. He maintained that what Marsigli had de- 

 scribed as the blossoms of coral, were true animals or insects 

 analogous to the Actinise or sea-anemones ; that the coral 

 was secreted in a fluid form by the inhabitant Actinise, and 

 became afterwards fixed, hard, and changed into stone ; and 

 that all other stony sea-plants, and even sponges, are the work 

 of different insects, particular to each species of these marine 

 bodies, which labour uniformly according to their nature, and 

 as the Supreme Being has ordered and determined. Reaumur 

 remarks, that these opinions were not entirely the offspring of 

 fancy ; it would have been more candid and just had he said 

 they were simply the convictions of a practical naturalist, who 

 had long and patiently studied the productions in question, in 

 their native sites on the coasts of France and of Barbary. 

 Peyssonnel had seen the polypes of coral and of the madre- 

 pores ; he recognised their resemblance to the naked animal 

 flowers ; he had witnessed their motions, — -the extension of 

 their tentacula, and the contraction and opening of the oral 

 aperture ; he ascertained that, unlike flowers, they were to be 

 found the same at all seasons ; that their corruption exhaled 

 the odour ; their chemical analysis discovered the constituent 

 principles of animal matters ; and that the stony part of them 

 exhibited no trace of vegetable organization : and opinions 

 deduced from such data, abstracting his analogical reasoning 

 of no value and little applicability, might have been sufficient 

 to have attracted at least some attention had his opponent 

 been less influential, or his own reputation and rank somewhat 

 greater.* 



The name and doctrine of Peyssonnel lay in this manner 



* Peyssonnel is remembered solely by this discovery. " M. Peyssonnel, disposed 

 from his youth to the studj' of natural history, after having qualified himself for the 

 practice of medicine, applied himself with great diligence to that science, to which 

 his inclination so strongly prompted him, and being a native of, and residing at Mar- 

 seilles, he had the opportunitj' of examining the curiosities of the sea, which the 

 fisheiTuen, more especially those who search for coral, furnished him with." Phil. 

 Trans. — He was subsequently appointed Physician-Botanist to " His Most Christian 

 Majesty" in the island of Guadalupe, and had an opportunity of prosecuting his 

 researches on the coast of Barbary. He is the author of two or three communica- 

 tions in the Phil. Trans., of which the most interesting is " An account of a visita- 

 tion of the Leprous persons in the isle of Guadalupe" in the volume for the year 1757. 

 Very recently a genus of the Algse — PeyssonneUia — has been deservedly devoted to 

 his memorv. 



