144 A HANDBOOK FOR SOUTHPORT. 



branched or other figures, and increase gradually by an appo- 

 sition of particles becoming thicker near the bottom, where 

 the saline matter is more abounding, but tapering or diminish- 

 ing towards the extremities, where the mineral salts must be 

 fewer in proportion to their distance from the rock whence 

 they originally proceed; and the different proportions of 

 mineral saline particles of the stony or other matter wherewith 

 they are blended, and of marine salt, which must have a con- 

 siderable share in such formations, may occasion all the variety 

 we see. Nor does it seem more difficult to imagine that the 

 radiated, starry or cellular figures along the sides of these 

 corals, or at the extremities of their branches, may derive their 

 productions from salts incorporated with the stony matter, than 

 that the curious delineations and appearances of minute shrubs 

 and mosses on slates, stones, etc., are owing to the shootings 

 of salts intermixed with mineral particles ; and yet these are 

 generally allowed to be the result of mineral steams and 

 exhalations." 



It is scarcely necessary to observe that all these theories, 

 however ingenious and interesting, are untenable ; the beauti- 

 ful and poetic hypothesis of Linnaeus is, however, the 

 nearest approximation to the truth. We learn from Dr. 

 Johnston's " Introduction to the British Zoophytes," on the 

 authority of M. de Blainville, that Ferrante Imperato, an apothe- 

 cary at Naples, was the first naturalist distinctly to announce, 

 as the result of his own observations, the animality of corals 

 and madrepores. He is said to have added to the de- 

 scription of the species which fell under his notice, illustrative 

 figures of considerable accuracy, although the "Historia 

 Naturale" was published so early as the year 1599. 



