688 



HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



ence, the fishermen come to learn the favorable places for cap- 

 turing the coral. "When such a spot is reached, the engine is 

 thrown overboard, and as soon as it reaches the bottom, the 

 speed of the vessel is slackened, and the capstan, for hauling it 

 up is manned. In this way the the engine is dragged over the 

 bottom, becomes entangled with the rocks, and the nets catch 

 the coral. Sometimes rocks of large size are brought on board. 



Up to the last century the opinion of antiquity that coral 

 was a vegetable product was accepted by all naturalists, 

 though no one attempted an explanation how it grew. This 

 opinion was confirmed when the Count de Marsigli announced 

 his discovery of the flowers of the coral plant, and this an- 

 nouncement was considered the final proof of the vegetable 

 origin of coral. In 1723, however, Jean Andre de Peyssonnel, 

 a pupil of Marsigli's, and a student of medicine and natural 

 history at Paris, was sent to Marseilles, his native place, by 

 the Academy of Sciences, to study the coral in its living con- 

 dition, and continued his studies on the northern coast of 

 Africa, where he was sent by the French Government. 



lie soon discovered, by a series of careful and delicate ex- 

 periments, that the coral was an animal product, and that the 

 supposed flowers were the expanded little animals who build 

 up the coral, and who form one of the lowest forms in the 

 series of organized life on the globe. Peyssonnel says : " I 

 put the flower of the coral in vases full of sea- water, and I 

 saw that what had been taken for a flower of this pretended 

 plant was, in truth, 'only an animal, like a sea nettle or polyp 

 I had the pleasure of seeing the feet of the creature move 

 about, and having put the vase full of water, which contained 

 the coral, in a gentle heat over the fire, all the small animals 

 seemed to expand. The polyp extended his feet, and showed 

 what M. de Marsigli and I had taken for the petals of a flower. 

 The calyx of this pretended flower, in short, was the animal, 

 wlroh advanced and issued out of his cell." 



