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arrangement of the great variety of bodies, the 
fubje&s of this treatife, which is interfperfed every- 
where with very curious remarks. You fee, that 
M. de Feyffonnel, if his fyhem is admitted, has 
made a great alteration ift that part of natural hi- 
hory, of which we are now treating. Naturalifts 
had been divided, whether coral, and the harder 
productions of the fea, fhould be confider’d as plants 
or hones. Thofe, who look’d upon them as hones, 
among whom was Dr. Woodward, imagin’d them- 
felves juhified in this opinion, from their exceflive 
hardnefs, and from their fpecific gravity ; and they 
were herein confirm’d, by obferving, that if thefe 
bodies were calcined, they were converted into lime. 
Guifonaeus, in his letter to Boccone, fays politively, 
that coral is not a plant, but a real mineral, com- 
pofed of much fait, and a fmall quantity of earth ; 
he fuppofes its form given it by a precipitation, fome- 
thins; like that of the arbor Diana of the chemihs. 
Diofcorides, Pliny, Casfalpinus, Boccone, Ray, 
Tournefort, and Geoffroy, thought coral to be a 
plant, from its root’s being fixed to rocks or hones, 
as thofe of trees are to the earth ; and from its fend- 
ing forth a trunk, which ramified into branches. 
This opinion was feemingly hrengthen’d by Boccone’s 
obfervation of the milky juice at the tops and in the 
cells of coral ; and moh of all by the Count de 
Marfigli’s difcovering, in the year 1706, what he 
conje< 3 ured were the flowers of coral. Both thefe 
opinions, countenanced by long time, and great au- 
thority, M. de Peyflonnel has endeavoured to over- 
turn ; and to fhew, that thele productions were 
neither hones, nor vegetables, but animals , and that, 
like 
