530 SUPPLEMENT 
find in him the denominations of alcyone, (already employed 
by Dioscorides), of coralline, of sertularize, and many others, 
which have been adopted as designatory of genera by modern 
zoologists. 
These germs remained, however, for a long time buried, 
insomuch, that these organized bodies, whose existence 
Imperato had marked by good figures, and by particular 
denominations, were regarded during the whole course 
of the 17th century, as appertaining to the mineral kingdom, 
by some writers, or to the vegetable by others. Nevertheless, 
these different authors, (deceived as they were respecting the 
nature of corals, which they divided into lithophytes and 
keralophytes, according as their solid part, the only part 
which was known, was calcareous or corneous), did not the 
less augment the number of species, and divide them into 
genera, which they endeavoured to characterize in a more 
precise manner. Thus it was that the corallines, and sertu- 
lari, which they placed among the mosses, the eschare, the 
alcyones, and even the pinnatule, of which they made fuci, 
were successively and very clearly established into distinct 
genera. 
From this time, we remark, however, many authors already 
who, like Boccone and Lluid, suspected the animal nature of 
some of these productions. Thus the former, although he 
would have it that the coral was a stone, and not a plant, 
maintained, erroneously, perhaps, that the aleyoniwm asbes- 
tinum was a hive of animals, and the latter was of opinion 
that the twhularia indivisa should be regarded as a zoophyte. 
These different facts coincided with the point of time at 
which the classification of plants began to take as its bases, 
the character furnished by the flowers. It was natural, there- 
fore, that Marsigli, probably awakened to the subject by the 
apothecaries of Marseilles, who considered some flowers as 
coral, described as such the polypi, which he had observed in 
13 
a 
