12 HISTORY OF ZOOPHYTOLOGY. 



lizations from a fluid state, and, seeing nothing more uniform or 

 beautiful in the stony corals and corallines, he was naturally led 

 to give an easy assent to that doctrine which taught that these 

 were all the result of similar depositions. The new opinions 

 might be true or not when restricted to the pliant horny coral- 

 lines, (though he inclined to believe in their vegetable origin,) 

 but it was unnecessary to call in the agency of animalcules to 

 explain the formation of the hard stony kinds, which indeed 

 seemed beyond the power of an almost gelatinous animalcule to 

 excrete and laborate. Nor would he believe these to be sea- 

 plants, but rather of a mineral nature and origin. " The rocks 

 in the sea on which these corals are produced," he says, " are 

 undoubtedly replete with mineral salts, some whereof near their 

 surface, being dissolved by the sea-water, must consequently sa- 

 turate with their saline particles the water round them to a small 

 distance, where blending with the stony matter with which sea- 

 water always abounds, little masses will be constituted here and 

 there and affixed to the rocks. Such adhering masses may be 

 termed roots .- which roots attracting the saline and stony par- 

 ticles, according to certain laws in nature, may produce branch- 

 ed or other figures, and increase gradually by an apposition of 

 particles ; becoming thicker near the bottom where the saline 

 matter is more abounding, but tapering or diminishing toward 

 the extremities, where the mineral salts must be fewer, in pro- 

 portion to their distance from the rock whence they originally 

 proceed. And the different proportions of mineral saline par- 

 ticles, of the stony or other matter wherewith they are blended, 

 and of marine salt, which must have a considerable share in 

 such formations, may occasion all the variety we see. Nor does 

 it seem more difficult to imagine that the radiated, starry, or 

 cellular figures along the sides of these corals, or at the extre- 

 mities of their branches, may derive their production from salts 

 incorporated with stony matter, than that the curious delinea- 

 tions and appearances of minute shrubs and mosses on slates, 

 stones, &c. are owing to the shootings of salts intermixt with 

 mineral particles : and yet these are generally allowed to be the 

 work of mineral steams or exhalations; by which must, I think, 

 be meant the finest particles of some metal or mineral incorpo- 

 rated with and brought into action by a volatile penetrating 



