67 
EECENT INYESTIGATIONS INTO THE NATURAL 
HISTORY OF THE RED CORAL. 
BY THE EDITOE. 
■ . ■»<>»■ ■ 
M ore than a hundred years have rolled away since a 
young French physician asserted that the so-called coral- 
plant was really an animal ; and during that immense interval 
few facts have been added to his original discoveries till 
within very recent times. Peysonnel, to whose wonderfully 
acute observation the knowledge we now possess is in great 
part due^ shared^ like most great men_, but little of the reward 
due to his valuable and laborious researches. His discovery 
when announced to the French Academy in 1827^ was^ if not 
treated with considerable contempt at least rejected in the 
most decided manner by Reaumur and the other distinguished 
savans of the period. But Peysonnel loved science for itself 
and was not to be discouraged_, so he addressed his fellow- 
citizens of Marseilles^ hoping that at all events they^, many 
of whom owed their very lives to the exertions of his nobly 
philanthrophic father_, would be led to accept his opinions. 
Alas ! the result proved as unfavourable as the former one. 
How could the people of a provincial town give credence to 
statements which had been subject almost to the ridicule of 
the philosophers of the metropolis ? He did not_, however^ 
despair. There has long been a refuge for the persecuted 
politicians of European states. England has ever received 
with kindness and hospitality the victim of oppression who has 
fled from an ungrateful country. Nor has she rejected the 
persecuted man of science when he has sought her protection. 
To England^ then_, the much- wronged Peysonnel appealed^ 
and Englishmen responded to his appeal^ with an earnestness 
which must ever be recorded to their credit. His discoveries 
were detailed at length in memoir form^ and were published 
in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society for 
1756. Since that date little was done towards clearing up 
the natural history of the coral creatures^ till in 1860 the 
French G-overnment sent out M. Lacaze-Duthiers to inquire 
into the subjects of the structure, growth, and development 
of the coral in the Mediterranean. This naturalist, who is 
well known to our scientific readers for his important re- 
searches among the mollusca, devoted himself for three years 
to the study of this group of polyps, and* has now published 
f.2 
