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Le calice de cette pretendue fleur est le corps meme de l'animal avance et sorti hors de la cellule."* * This extract from Peyssonel's manuscript is given by M. Lacaze Duthiers in his valuable Histoire Naturelle du Corail . The comparison of the flowers of the coral to a "petite ortie," or "little nettle," is perfectly just, but needs explanation.
Fifteen or sixteen years after the date of Peyssonel's suppressed paper, the Abbe Trembley published his wonderful researches upon the fresh-water Hydra.
Fifteen or sixteen years after the date of Peyssonel's suppressed paper, the Abbé Trembley published his wonderful researches upon the fresh-water Hydra. Bernard de Jussieu and Guettard followed them up by like inquiries upon the marine sea-anemones and corallines; Réaumur, convinced against his will of the entire justice of Peyssonel's views, adopted them, and made him a half-and-half apology in the preface to the next published volume of the "Mémoires pour servir
But to Peyssonel's contemporaries this was an extremely startling announcement. It was hard to imagine the existence of such a thing as an association of animals into a structure with stem and branches altogether like a plant, and fixed to the soil as a plant is fixed; and the naturalists of that day preferred not to imagine it.
Bernard de Jussieu and Guettard followed them up by like inquiries upon the marine sea-anemones and corallines; Reaumur, convinced against his will of the entire justice of Peyssonel's views, adopted them, and made him a half-and-half apology in the preface to the next published volume of the "Memoires pour servir l'Histoire des Insectes;" and, from this time forth, Peyssonel's doctrine that corals are the work of animal organisms has been part of the body of established scientific truth.
But to Peyssonel's contemporaries this was an extremely startling announcement. It was hard to imagine the existence of such a thing as an association of animals into a structure with stem and branches altogether like a plant, and fixed to the soil as a plant is fixed; and the naturalists of that day preferred not to imagine it.
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