t mis le vase
plein d'eau ou le corail etait a une douce chaleur aupres
du feu, tous les petites 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."[1]

[Footnote 1: This extract from Peysonnel'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
aquarium mania, must have become familiar, even to the limits of
boredom. In 1710, the great naturalist, Reaumur, had written a memoir
for the express purpose of demonstrating that these "orties" are
animals; and with this important paper Peyssonel must necessarily have
been familiar. Therefore, when he declared the "flowers" of the red
coral to be little "orties," it was the same thing as saying that
they were animals of the same general nature as sea-anemones. 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. Even
Reaumur could not bring himself to accept the notion, and France being
blessed with Academicians, whose great function (as the late Bishop
Wilson and an eminent modern writer have so well shown) is to cause
sweetness and light to prevail, and to prevent such unmannerly fellows
as Peyssonel from blurting out unedifying truths, they suppressed him;
and, as aforesaid, his great work remained in manuscript, and may
at this day be consulted by the curious in that state, in the
"Bibliotheque du Museum d'Histoire Naturelle." Peyssonel, who
evidently was a person of savage and untameable disposition, so far
from appreciating the kindness of the Academicians in giving him time
to reflect upon the unreasonableness, not to say rudeness, of making
public statements in opposition to the views of some of the most
distinguished of their body, seems bitterly to have resented the
treatme