PREFACE vii
All
these grounds Réaumur mentions, but concludes that the corals are plants
which excrete a stony substance, and that if one sees animals in them these
must be parasites which have wandered into them. He finds it quite out of
question, as one sees, to imagine the existence of branched animals. Out of
consideration for the individual, he does not mention the name of him who had
asserted such remarkable things. In this way Peyssonel remained quite unknown
and unrecognized. But when, later on, Trembley made known his observations on
the fresh-water polypes, and in the buds of these one had before his eyes a
branched animal, Réaumur asked the botanist, Bernard de Jussieu, who was going
to the seaside, to examine what connection this had with the corals. When,
then, De Jussieu expressed himself in favour of their animal nature, Réaumur at
last believed it himself, and withdrew his former judgment. Peyssonel, who
learnt in the West Indies that Réaumur had not published the memoir sent to
him, but that later on the correctness of his discovery had been recognized, in
1751 sent a new memoir, not to Paris, but to London, where it appeared
in 1753 in the Philosophical Transactions. Thus, thirty years passed
before he succeeded in publishing his discovery, and five years more before, by
the publication of the tenth edition of Linnaeus’s ‘Systema Naturae ’ (1758), it gained general acceptance. How
many and angry writings did there not appear against Harvey’s account of the
circulation of the blood, because it was not known what to do with the air or
the spirits (Archaei) which were supposed to reside in the arteries, and
when Harvey died, twenty years after the publication of his discovery, it had
not yet become generally accepted. Much longer still was it before the
discovery of Copernicus found general acceptance, and