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, J 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 1'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. 
