VOL. LVII.J PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 4(53 



As there can be no doubt, but every part of what is called coralline is neces- 

 sary to make out such an animal, or being, it will be very difficult, if not almost 

 impossible, to determine the proportion there ought to be between softer and 

 harder parts ; and therefore it cannot be thought unreasonable to say, that in 

 some of this tribe the stony parts are by much the greater part of the whole, 

 especially as doctor Pallas's objection can be only against the crust, or lapidescent 

 part, as the inside of many of them is far from being hard, being exactly like a 

 sertularia, so that I do not know if it would not be a good definition to one 

 well acquainted with that tribe to say, a coralline is a sertularia covered with a 

 stony or calcarious crust ; if the mouths should happen to be very small, their 

 number may make up that deficiency. We see in the greatest number of co- 

 rallines their surface full of holes ; we saw the same in escharas and milleporas 

 30 years ago ; since that time magnifying glasses have been improved, so as to 

 show us, that they are all orifices, for polype-like suckers ; why should not we 

 now admit that glasses may be still more improved, so as even to make us able to 

 see what may be the intention and use of these minute orifices, which according 

 to all rules of reasoning, we must suppose to approach in nature to those they 

 are most alike. From this extreme minuteness then of the pores of these mille- 

 pora, confessed to be zoophytes, as well as those of corallina officinalis, as before 

 mentioned, it is no great matter of surprize, that Doctor Jussieu could not per- 

 ceive any animal life in the corallines, nor Doctor Schlosser in the millcpora cal- 

 caria. As these experiments ought to be attended with many convenient coin- 

 ciding circumstances, that do not often happen to persons who only go to the sea- 

 side, perhaps for a few days, or hours ; so that it is unreasonable to conclude, be- 

 cause they have been unsuccessful, that more accurate observers may not be 

 more fortunate at another time. 



I believe I shall be justified in this, by many essays that have been made, by 

 persons of judgment, to observe the polype-like suckers in many, even of the 

 sertulariae, which they have several times attempted in vain ; I must own it has 

 often happened to me in many species, and yet I have not the least doubt of 

 their being true sertulariae from the similarity there is in their habit and form to 

 others of the same genus; and of this fact I am sure Doctor Pallas is fully 

 convinced. 



Another argument made use of by Dr. Pallas, to overthrow the animal exist- 

 ence of corallines, is taken from Mr. Meese's assertion, that he had found on 

 Bergummer heath in Friesland, a substance of the same nature with the coral- 

 lines. Meese, in his Flora Frisica, p. 75, calls it a lichen; but Dr. Pallas has 

 ventured, in his Elench, p. 427, to rank it among the corallines, under the 

 name of corallina terrestris. See the figure of it in pi. 11, fig. 28. In this Dr. 



