416 HISTORY OF ZOOPHYTOLOGY. 



Dr. Parsons read his answer,"" which savours much of the 

 supercilious dogmatism of a sceptical philosophy. He does 

 not pretend that he had tested the doctrine of Peyssonnel hy 

 any experiments or observations, nor does he question his 

 veracity, hut he chose to consider the animals observed by 

 Peyssonnel in the coral and madrepores as merely accidental 

 settlers which had nothing to do with their growth, occu- 

 pants of mansions prepared for them by more active entities, 

 there being no "seeming power, proportion, and stability" 

 in the polypes to render them capable of performing such 

 works as they were thought to have done. " And indeed it 

 would seem to me," says the learned doctor, "much more 

 difficult to conceive, that so fine an arrangement of parts, 

 such masses as these bodies consist of, and such regular 

 ramifications in some, and such well-contrived organs to serve 

 for vegetation in others, should be the operations of little, 

 poor, helpless, jelly-like animals, rather than the work of 

 more sure vegetation, which carries on the growth of the 

 tallest and largest trees with the same natural ease and influ- 

 ence as the minutest plant." 



The mineral theory also found at this period its latest advo- 

 cate. Henry Baker, during his numerous microscopical en- 

 quiries, had become familiar with the beautiful and regular 

 " vegetations" which many salts and earths assume in their 

 crystallizations 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 corallines, (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 pro- 



* A Letter from' James Parsons, M. D., F. R. S., to the Rev. Mr. Birch, Seer. R. S., 

 concerning the Formation of Corals, Corallines, &c. For an account of Dr. Parsons' 

 writings, see Hall. Bib. Bot. ii. 340 ; and there is a short biographical notice of him in 

 Phil. Trans, abridg. viii. 692. 



