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0 HISTORY OF ZOOPHYTOLOGY. 
author when he laid it before the Academy, with the benevo- 
lent intention doubtless of shielding- him from the scorn and ri- 
o 
dicule that might possibly be the lot of one who had ventured 
to contradict the observations of an Italian Count, and to oppose 
the established belief ; # and he immediately afterwards read, 
before the same academicians, an essay of his own, in which he 
opposed the theory of Peyssonnel with numerous objections, 
and attempted to explain the growth of coral in accordance to 
the admitted principles of vegetable physiology.^ 
The memoir in which Peyssonnel originally proposed his doc- 
trine does not appear to have been published : the only account 
1 have seen of it is contained in the essay of Reaumur just al- 
luded to. He maintained that what Marsigdi had described as 
the blossoms of coral, were true animals or insects analogous to 
the Actiniae or sea-anemonies ; that the coral was secreted in a 
fluid form by the inhabitant Actiniae, and became afterwards 
fixed, hard, and changed into stone ; and that all other stony 
sea-plants, and even sponges, are the work of different insects, 
particular to each species of these marine bodies, which la- 
bour uniformly according to their nature, and as the Supreme 
Being has ordered and determined. Reaumur remarks, that 
these opinions were not entirely the offspring of fancy : it would 
have been more candid and just had he said they were simply 
the convictions of a practical naturalist, who had long and pa- 
tiently studied the productions in question, in their native sites 
on the coasts of France and of Barbary. Peyssonnel had seen 
the polypes of coral and of the madrepores ; he recognized their 
resemblance to the naked animal flowers ; he had witnessed 
their motions, — the extension of their tentacula, and the con- 
traction and opening of the oral aperture ; he ascertained, that, 
unlike flowers, they were to be found the same at all seasons ; 
* “ L’estime que j’ai pour M. Peyssonnel me fit meme eviter de la nommer 
pour Pauteur d’un sentiment qui ne pouvoit manquer de paroitre trop hasarde.” 
— Reaumur. 
f Observations sur la formation du corail, et des autres productions appellees 
Plantes pierreuses. Par M. de Reaumur “ II prend pour une Plante l’ecorce 
grossiere et sensible du corail, tres-distincte de ce que nous appellons corail, et 
de plus une autre ecorce beaucoup plus fine, et que les yeuxne distinguent point 
de la vraye substance coralline qu’elle revet ; et tout le reste du corail, presque 
toute la substance coralline n’est qu’une pierre sans organisation.” — Hist, de 
l’Acad. Roy. des Sc. 1727. p. 51. and more particularly his own memoir in the 
same vol. p. 380. 
