90 On the Genus Amathia of Lamouroux, 



This species, which was dredged at various depths from 

 2 to 16 fathoms, differs from all species known to me in the 

 great length of the pairs of cells in each internode, in the 

 long and slight spiral, and in the absence of any spines or 

 processes. 



I take this opportunity of reviewing the whole of the 

 described Australian species, with a notice of the claims 

 which the names bestowed by Lamouroux have upon our 

 attention at the present time. 



Flexible Polyzoa, formerly known, and perhaps at the 

 present day more commonly known by the name of Zoo- 

 phytes, have long occupied the attention of naturalists. 

 The history of the various ways in which they have been 

 regarded is not the least interesting part of the bibliography 

 of natural history. It is not my purpose to go into any 

 details in this part of the subject, which one can see dealt 

 with by Lamouroux (Poly piers Flexibles, par J. F. V. La- 

 mouroux, 1 vol., 8vo, 19 plates; Caen, 1816), or by Messrs. 

 Edwards and Haime in their historical introduction to the 

 Histoire Naturelles cles Corallaires (3 vols., 8vo; Paris, 

 1857.)* It is sufficient just briefly to mention the main 

 facts. Marsilli was the first who devoted himself in a 

 special manner to these organisms, which he regarded as 

 plants, in which he was followed by Reaumur, Lemery, 

 and Geoffroy, who also published observations upon 

 them. Aldovranclus, in 1548, and after him every 

 naturalist until Peysonnel, in 1727, considered all corals 

 and coral animals as vegetable substances. When the 

 latter sent his memoirs to the Academy of Sciences it 

 was disputed by all the learned of his time. He made his 

 first observations at Marseilles, in 1723, and he continued 

 them on the Barbary coast, and then at Guadeloup. He 

 sent them to the Royal Society of London, but it was not 

 until 1752 that they were translated by Watson, the 

 botanist, and published in the Philosophical Transactions. 

 The subsequent discoveries of Tremblay entirely melted 

 away whatever doubts there were on this subject. By the 

 time that Linnaeus began his work he, with others, seemed 

 still to doubt the animal nature of corals. That illustrious 

 zoologist called them hydras, because of their form. Reau- 

 mur, now entirely converted to the views of Peysonnel, 



* There is also an excellent history by Johnston in his British Zoophytes, 

 first edition, 1838, written with all the learned vivacity of one of the best 

 English writers on natural history. 



