ng this much error from the current notions about
coral. But the belief that corals are plants remained, not only in the
popular, but in the scientific mind; and it received what appeared to be
a striking confirmation from the researches of Marsigli [113] in 1706.
For this naturalist, having the opportunity of observing freshly-taken
red coral, saw that its branches were beset with what looked like
delicate and beautiful flowers each having eight petals. It was true
that these "flowers" could protrude and retract themselves, but their
motions were hardly more extensive, or more varied, than those of the
leaves of the sensitive plant; and therefore they could not be held to
militate against the conclusion so strongly suggested by their form and
their grouping upon the branches of a tree-like structure.

Twenty years later, a pupil of Marsigli, the young Marseilles physician,
Peyssonel, conceived the desire to study these singular sea-plants, and
was sent by the French Government on a mission to the Mediterranean for
that purpose. The pupil undertook the investigation full of confidence
in the ideas of his master, but being able to see and think for himself,
he soon discovered that those ideas by no means altogether corresponded
with reality. In an essay entitled "Traite du Corail," which was
communicated to the French Academy of Science, but which has never been
published, Peyssonel writes:--

"Je fis fleurir le corail dans des vases pleins d'eau de mer, et
j'observai que ce que nous croyons etre la fleur de cette pretendue
plante n'etait au vrai, qu'un insecte semblable a une petite Ortie ou
Poulpe. J'avais le plaisir de voir remuer les pattes, ou pieds, de cette
Ortie, et ayant mis le vase plein d'eau ou le corail etait a une douce
chaleur aupres du feu, tous les petits insectes s'epanouirent.--L'Ortie
sortie etend les pieds, et forme ce que M. de Marsigli et moi avions
pris pour les petales de la fleur. Le calice de cette pretendue fleur
est le corps meme de l'animal avance et sorti hors de la cellule."*[114]

* This extract from Peyssonel's manuscript is given by M.
Lacaze Duthiers in his valuable Histoire Naturelle du Corail
(1866).

The comparison of the flowers of the coral to a "petite ortie," or
"little nettle," is perfectly just, but needs explanation. "Ortie de
mer," or "sea-nettle," is, in fact, the French appellation for our
"sea-anemone," a creature with which everybody, since the great aq