70 Natural History of British Zoophytes. 



of habit and our fondness of opinions long cherished, or from the 

 fewness of the published observations whence the general conclu- 

 sion was drawn, it seems certain that the new doctrines were every- 

 where received with doubts and suspicion, and beyond the imme- 

 diate sphere of the Parisian academy, excited apparently so little 

 interest, that no one was induced to enter into a practical examina- 

 tion of them. Donati indeed shortly after gave a minute and ac- 

 curate description of the coral and its polypes, and a somewhat less 

 detailed one of the madrepores, but his phraseology being botanical 

 and his opinions unformed, * his researches were of little immediate 

 service to the cause of the zoologists, and perhaps rather tended to 

 support the erroneous hypothesis which they were combating.t 



Peyssonnel was still living, and it was impossible that this discus- 

 sion should not interest him. Accordingly we find that in 1751, 

 he transmitted to the Royal Society of London a MSS. treatise on 

 coral and other marine productions, % of which Dr Watson has given 

 a review in the 47th volume of its Transactions, published in 1753. 

 The treatise was sent to the English society, because " that in France 

 some lovers of natural history do attribute and even appropriate to 

 themselves his labours and his discoveries, of which they have had 

 the communication ;" — a charge probably directed against Reau- 

 mur, but which the conduct of that illustrious man, so far as appears, 

 did not warrant. The treatise contains upwards of 400 quarto pages, 

 and is the result of the observations of above thirty years, but we 



* Shortly after this, however, he made other observations which convinced 

 him of the animality of coral. He says — " I am now of opinion, that coral is 

 nothing else than a real animal, which has a very great number of heads. I consider 

 the polypes of coral as the heads of the animal. This animal has a bone rami- 

 fied in the shape of a shrub. This bone is covered with a kind of flesh, which 

 is the flesh of the animal. My observations have discovered to me several ana- 

 logies between the animals of kinds approaching to this. There are, for in- 

 stance, Keratophyta, which do not differ from coral, except in the bone, or part 

 that forms the prop of the animal. In the coral it is testaceous, and in the 

 Keratophyta it is horny." — Phil. Trans. (1757) abridg. xi. p. 83. 



f New Discoveries relating to the History of Coral, by Dr Vitaliano Donati. 

 Translated from the French, by Tho. Stack, M. D. F. R. S. (Feb. 7. 1750.)— 

 Phil. Trans. Vol. xlvii. p. 95. Haller characterizes the original as " nobile opus, 

 ex proprio labore natum." — Bib. Bot. ii. 400. 



j: Traite du corail, contenant les nouvelles decouvertes, qu'on a fait sur le 

 corail, les pores, madrepores, scharras, litophitons, eponges, et autres corps et 

 productions, que la mer fournit, pour servir a l'histoire naturelle de la mer. 

 By the Sieur de Peyssonnel, M. D. Correspondent of the Royal Academy of 

 Sciences of Paris, of that of Montpelier, and of that of Belles Lettres at Marseil- 

 les. This treatise was never published. 



