112 CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES. [vi. 



the belief that corals are plants remained, not only in the 

 popular, but in the scientific mind ; and it received what 

 appeared to be a striking confirmation from the researches 

 of Marsigli in 1706. For this naturalist, having the 

 opportunity of observing freshly-taken red coral, saw 

 that its branches were beset with what looked like deli- 

 cate and beautiful flowers, each having eight petals. It 

 was true that these " flowers " could protrude and retract 

 themselves, but their motions were hardly more exten- 

 sive, or more varied, than those of the leaves of the sen- 

 sitive plant ; and therefore they could not be held to 

 militate against the conclusion so strongly suggested by 

 their form and their grouping upon the branches of a 

 tree-like structure. 



Twenty years later, a pupil of Marsigli, the young 

 Marseilles physician, Peyssonel, conceived the desire to 

 study these singular sea-plants, and was sent by the 

 French Government on a mission to the Mediterranean 

 for that purpose. The pupil undertook the investigation 

 full of confidence in the ideas of his master, but being 

 able to see and think for himself, he soon discovered that 

 those ideas by no means altogether corresponded with 

 reality. In an essay entitled " Traitd du Corail," which 

 was communicated to the French Academy of Science, 

 but which has never been published, Peyssonel writes : 



" Je fis fleurir le corail dans des vases pleins d'eau de mer, et j'obsar- 

 vai que ce que nous croyons etre la flenr de cette pre"tendue plante 

 n'etait au vrai, qu'un insecte semblable & une petite Ortie ou Poulpe. 

 J'avais le plaisir de voir remuer les pattes, on pieds, de cette Ortie, et 

 ayant mis le vase plein d'eau ou le coraii e"tait a une douce chaleur 

 aupres du feu, tous les petites insectes s'e*panouirent. . . . L'Ortie 

 sortie etend les pieds, et forme ce que M. de Marsigli et moi avions 

 pris pour les petales de la fleur. Le calice de cette pretendue fleur est 

 le corps me"me de 1'animal avarice et sorti hors de la cellule." * 



1 This extract from Peysonnel's manuscript is given by M. Lacaze Duthiers in 

 his valuable " Histoire Naturelle du Corail " (1866). 



