AND THE LOWER ANIMALS. 135 



less reconcilable to what were then regarded as the 

 fundamental laws of science. 



Until about the first third of the last century, the 

 real nature of various bodies was unknown or misun- 

 derstood. One distinguished botanist, Tournefort, 

 relying upon some observations which he had made 

 in the, cave of Antiparos, and as Fontenelle said, 

 Ci transfonnani tout en ce qu'il aimait le mieiix" believed 

 in the vegetative growth of stones. Notwithstanding 

 the very clear views which had been enounced more 

 than a century before by an Italian named Xmperato,* 

 he and most naturalists with him believed that cal- 

 careous polyparies were nothing more than vegetative 

 stones. Others, seeing a sort of relation between them 

 and the horny polyparies, regarded both as plants. 

 Indeed this opinion seemed demonstrated by Marsigli,f 

 who described the animals of the corals and other 

 allied forms, as being nothing more nor less than 

 flowers. But whilst the Italian naturalist published a 

 discovery which was probably due to the fishermen 

 of Marseilles, a French naval physician observed 

 similar appearances, and grasped more fully their 

 importance and signification. Peyspnnel declared 

 (in a memoir addressed to the French Academy in 

 1 727) that he had ascertained by repeated observations, 

 that the so-called flowers of corals, madrepores, and 

 lithophytes, were genuine animals like the actineas, 

 zoophytes known since the time of Aristotle as sea- 

 nettles (Acalephae). 



There was a very powerful reason for the rejection 



* " Historia naturalis," 1509. 



f " Histoire physique de la Mer," 1725. 



