154 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO. 1751. 



meal, and by degrees, as opportunity would permit ; which he did with his for- 

 ceps : but, notwithstanding all his care, the sharp edges of the broken pieces of 

 the cranium tore the intestines, so that the faeces issued from the wound at every 

 dressing for several weeks together. 



The wound was daily dressed with dry lint, spirituous fomentations, and ca- 

 taplasms. Injections, made of sack and warm water, were found of great use, 

 thrown in in large quantities ; and (what was well worth observation) several 

 parts of the bones, as the tibia, fibula, &c. were discharged by the vagina. 



By the means above-mentioned, and proper bandages, the wound was tho- 

 roughly deterged, incamed, and, by the use of epulotics, completely cicatrized ; 

 and the woman was perfectly recovered, and afterwards grew fat. 



After the discharge of the whole fcetus, the patient had milk in her breasts, as 

 on a natural delivery. 



XIV. New Discoveries relating to the History of Coral,* by Dr. Vitaliano Do- 

 nati.-^ Translated from the French, by Tho. Stack. M. D. F. B. S. p. 95. 



Coral is a marine vegetation, in shape nearly resembling a shrub stripped of 

 its leaves. It has no roots, but is supported on a broad foot, or basis, which 

 adapts itself like wax, and sticks to any body in all its parts, so firmly, that it is 

 impossible to disengage it. The shape of this foot is not always the same; but 

 it mostly approaches to rotundity, as n, n, fig. 1, pi. 4. Its use is to hold the 

 coral fixed, and support it ; not to nourish it : since there are found pieces of 

 coral, with their feet broken ofi^, which nevertheless continue to live, to grow, 

 and to propagate, at the bottom of the sea. From this foot arises a trunk, gene- 

 rally single, the greatest thickness of which seldom exceeds an inch. 



Out of this trunk the branches shoot, which commonly are few in number ; 

 and they afterwards divide into several smaller and slenderer branches. The 

 branches are mostly disjoined, and separate ; sometimes two or more branches 

 spring from the foot united and parallel, and as it were clung together so inti- 

 mately, that the place of their union cannot be distinguished. Frequently two 

 branches adhere and unite in the same manner, in whatever place they happen 

 to touch : and from two branches thus united, there sometimes arises afterwards 

 only a single branch. If a shell happens to stick to the trunk or branches of the 

 coral, it is in time surrounded and covered, either in part, or in the whole, with 

 the same coralline matter to which it stuck. 



The greatest height to which coral rises in the Adriatic, is a Paris foot, or a 

 little more. And even this height is very rare in that sea. The trunks, as well 

 as the branches, are commonly round ; yet frequently some are flatted and 



* Red coral. Isisnobilis. Lin. Gorgonia nobilis. Lin. Gmel. 



-(■ Author of an ingenious work, entitled the Nat. Hist, of the Adriatic Sea, written in Italian 

 and printed at Venice 1750, with numerous plates. 



