RED OR PRECIOUS CORAL. 7 



studies, he accepted the post of physician-botanist to the Island 

 of Guadaloupe, and never again entered France or sent a paper 

 to the x\cadeiny. His completed researches, indeed, were com- 

 municated to the Boyal Society of London, and did not appear 

 in French. As Lacaze Duthiers truly says, he merited other 

 treatment from his countrymen. His devotion during the 

 plague at Marseilles,* his enthusiasm and courage in encounter- 

 ing danger and fatigue during his explorations of the African 

 coast, and his discovery of the nature of coral ought to have 

 assured him a distinguished name. He was one of the band of 

 surgeon-naturalists (to whom allusion has more than once been 

 made) who have done so much both at home and abroad for the 

 progress of zoological science, yet whose labours and whose 

 influence have escaped the just consideration of the late Uni- 

 versity Commissioners for Scotland. Though by statutory in- 

 junction the future medical graduate must write a thesis on a 

 purely medical subject, and not on a zoological or a botanical 

 one — a freedom which his predecessors enjoyed — it is unlikely 

 that the indissoluble brotherhood between these two subjects 

 and medicine will heed either appreciation or sympathy. In the 

 future as in the past the ranks of medicine surely will produce 

 men like Peyssonnel and Eigaut, Rondelet, Kolliker, Ehlers, 

 William Harvey, Alex. Monro, Erasmus Darwin, Sir Hans 

 Sloane, John and William Hunter, John Goodsir, John Eeid, 

 George Busk, W. B. Carpenter, John Hutton Balfour, G. J. 

 Allman, James Syme, Joseph Hooker, Richard Owen, Thomas 

 Huxley, William Flower, William Turner, George Johnston, 

 Albany Hancock, Robert Grant, Alex. Dickson, G. S. Brady, 

 J. B.Pettigrew, Alleyne Nicholson, Robert Edmonstone, and many 

 others, whose services to medicine and to zoology and botany 

 have been and are an honour to their respective countries. 



The red or precious coral, then, frequents a rocky bottom on 

 the borders of the Mediterranean and its islands, and is most 

 abundant at depths from twenty-five to fifty fathoms, but may 

 extend to about one thousand fathoms. Its distribution in 

 quantity is indicated by the titles of the various fisheries. Thus 

 it occurs on the shores of Southern Italy, off the Island of Ponza, 



* He wrote a youthful memoir on the contagion of the plague, for which 

 the Academy made him a Correspondent. 



