532 SUPPLEMENT 
the lithophytes, or aggregated teste, as the habitations of 
these animals. 
This important discovery, to which Peysonnel was un- 
doubtedly conducted by the observations of Marsigli, was not, 
however, immediately adopted; and Reaumur himself, in the 
memoir in which he reported it, endeavoured to contest its 
evidence, and was even afraid to name its author. But he 
was obliged to admit it, when Trembley, in a letter addressed 
to him in the month of December, 1740, had published all 
the singularities of the natural history of a little animal, 
known in the fresh waters of Europe, and which, already 
signalized by an anonymous writer, in the transactions of our 
own Royal Society, had been forgotten for more than ten 
years. We find, in fact, in the fresh water polypus, named 
hydra by Linnzus, the naked type of the coral animals. 
Shaw, the traveller, in his Voyage to Barbary, vainly pro- 
posed to regard as simple nutritive radicles, the undulating 
filaments which he saw come forth from the stelliform im- 
pressions of the madrepora ramea, and from some other 
aggregated living madrepores. The discovery of Peysonnel 
acquired all the corroboration which it deserved, especially 
from the coasting voyages of Jussieu. These voyages were 
undertaken, one in the Channel, and the other in the Atlantic, 
for the express purpose of verifying and extending this dis- 
covery, by applying it to a greater number of beings, which 
was done for the tubulariz and other genera. The name of 
polypus appears to have been first employed by Bernard de 
Jussieu, to designate the little animals, which, inhabiting 
pretended marine plants, are provided on the head or body 
with horns, (tentacula) which serve them as hands or feet, to 
take their aliment or to walk. 
Reaumur, from this time thoroughly convinced, fully adopted 
the views of Peysonnel, thus confirmed by Jussieu and Guet- 
tard. He created the name of polypier (polyparium ) since 
