ON CORAL AND CORAL REEFS 117 



The comparison of the flowers of the coral to a 

 "petite ortie," or "little nettle," is perfectly just, but 

 needs explanation. "Ortie de mer," or "sea-nettle," 

 is, in fact, the French appellation for our "sea-anem- 

 one," a creature with which everybody, since the great 

 aquarium mania, must have become familiar, even to 

 the limits of boredom. In 1710, the great naturalist, 

 Reaumur, had written a memoir for the express pur- 

 pose of demonstrating that these "orties" are animals; 

 and with this important paper Peyssonel must neces- 

 sarily have been familiar. Therefore, when he declared 

 the "flowers" of the red coral to be little "orties," it 

 was the same thing as saying that they were animals 

 of the same general nature as sea-anemones. But to 

 Peyssonel's contemporaries this was an extremely 

 startling announcement. It was hard to imagine the 

 existence of such a thing as an association of animals 

 into a structure with stem and branches altogether like 

 a plant, and fixed to the soil as a plant is fixed ; and the 

 naturalists of that day preferred not to imagine it. Even 

 Reaumur could not bring himself to accept the notion, 

 and France being blessed with Academicians, whose 

 great function (as the late Bishop Wilson and an emi- 

 nent modern writer have so well shown) is to cause 

 sweetness and light to prevail, and to prevent such 

 unmannerly fellows as Peyssonel from blurting out 

 unedifying truths, they suppressed him; and, as afore- 

 said, his great work remained in manuscript, and may 

 at this day be consulted by the curious in that state, in 

 the Bibliotheque du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle. 

 Peyssonel, who evidently was a person of savage and 

 untameable disposition, so far from appreciating the 

 kindness of the Academicians in giving him time to 

 reflect upon the unreasonableness, not to say rudeness, 



