196 HISTORY OF THE 



ed of different substances, and assume various ap- 

 pearances. The coral plants, as they are called, 

 sometimes shoot out like trees without leaves in 

 winter; they often spread out a broad surface 

 like a fan, and not uncommonly a large bundling 

 head, like a faggot ; sometimes they are found to 

 resemble a plant with leaves and flowers, and 

 often the antlers of a stag, with great exactness 

 and regularity. In other parts of the sea are 

 seen sponges of various magnitude and extraor- 

 dinary appearances, assuming a variety of fantas- 

 tic forms, like large mushrooms, mitres, fonts, and 

 flower-pots. To an attentive spectator these va- 

 rious productions seem entirely of the vegetable 

 kind j they seem to have their leaves and their 

 flowers, and have been experimentally known to 

 shoot out branches in the compass of a year. 

 Philosophers, therefore, till of late, thought them- 

 selves pretty secure in ascribing these productions 

 to the vegetable kingdom ; and Count Marsigli, 

 who has written very laboriously and learnedly 

 upon the subject of corals and sponges, has not 

 hesitated to declare his opinion, that they were 

 plants of the aquatic kind, furnished with flowers 

 and seeds, and endued with a vegetation entirely 

 resembling that which is found upon land. This 

 opinion, however, some time after, began to be 

 shaken by Rumphius and Jussieu, and at last by 

 the ingenious Mr Ellis, who, by a more sagacious 

 and diligent inquiry into nature, put it past doubt, 

 that corals and sponges were entirely the work of 

 animals, and that, like the honey-comb which was 

 formed by the bee, the coral was the work of an 



