b NATUEAL HISTORY OP 



have the seal of orthodoxy, he dedicated to the Bishop 

 of London. 



The experiments of Trembley, however, had a still 

 further effect upon Reaumur than merely to stimulate 

 his curiosity. They brought to his remembrance the 

 probably forgotten paper of Peysonnel, and he began 

 to think that there had been less of fancy in PeysonneFs 

 views than he had been willing to give him credit for. 

 He at once arranged with his friends, Bernard Jussieu 

 and Guettard, that they should go to the seashore, 

 and actually investigate for themselves the facts of the 

 case. They accordingly spent the autumns of 1741 

 and 1742 in making researches at different localities 

 on the French coast ; and so satisfied were they, as 

 the result of their studies, that Peysonnel's views were 

 correct, that Jussieu presented a memoir in 1742 to the 

 Academy, in which, with particular reference to Alcyo- 

 nium digitahim, Tuhularia indivisa,FLustrafoliacea, and 

 Cellejpora piimicosa, he demonstrated that the marine 

 productions examined by him, which had been ranked 

 as plants, were really the work of a kind of sea insect. 



Reaumur himself, in his work already referred to, 

 recounted the researches of his friends who, he said, 

 had recognized that many species of these bodies 

 which had the external appearance of very beautiful 

 plants were only an assemblage of a prodigious 

 number of cells of polyps. He therefore ably sup- 

 ported the views of Jussieu and Guettard, and retracted 

 all his former opposition to Peysonnel. The new 

 truth did not, however, at once prevail. The opposition 

 it had to encounter from those who held the old views 

 was very fierce ; and we are not surprised to find that 

 Peysonnel himself returned to the attack. In a com- 



