CORAL FISHING OFF THE COAST OF SICILY.
Up to the last century the opinion of antiquity that coral was a vegetable product was accepted by all naturalists, though no one attempted an explanation how it grew. This opinion was confirmed when the Count de Marsigli announced his discovery of the flowers of the coral plant, and this announcement was considered the final proof of the vegetable origin of coral. In 1723, however, Jean André de Peyssonnel, a pupil of Marsigli's, and a student of medicine and natural history at Paris, was sent to Marseilles, his native place, by the Academy of Sciences, to study the coral in its living condition, and continued his studies on the northern coast of Africa, where he was sent by the French Government.
He soon discovered, by a series of careful and delicate experiments, that the coral was an animal product, and that the supposed flowers were the expanded little animals who build up the coral, and who form one of the lowest forms in the series of organized life on the globe. Peyssonnel says: "I put the flower of the coral in vases full of sea-water, and I saw that what had been taken for a flower of this pretended plant was, in truth, only an animal, like a sea nettle or polyp, I had the pleasure of seeing the feet of the creature move about, and having put the vase full of water, which contained the coral, in a gentle heat over the fire, all the small animals seemed to expand. The polyp extended his feet, and showed what M. de Marsigli and I had taken for the petals of a flower. The calyx of this pretended flower, in short, was the animal, which advanced and issued out of his cell."
This discovery was received by the naturalists of the time with contempt and ridicule; so much so that Peyssonnel, disgusted, retired into obscurity, leaving his manuscripts in the Museum of Natural History in Paris, where they still remain, unpublished. Before his death, however, in his retirement, he had the satisfaction of seeing his views accepted, and some of those who had most ridiculed them on their first presentation, become the most enthusiastic and effective advocates of them.
Besides the coral fished for as we have described, the coral polyp constructs islands, and carries on labors which very materially affect the condition of the ocean and the form of the land, concerning which we will have occasion to speak else where.
Another fishery which may be fitly mentioned here is the oyster fishery. There are several varieties of the oyster. Those usually eaten in France are the common oyster (Ostrea edulis), and the horse foot oyster (O. hippopus). The oysters of the Mediterranean are the rose-colored oyster (O. rosacea), and the milky oyster (O. lacteola), with the small and little known crested oyster (O. instata), and the folded oyster (O. plicata). On the Corsican coast the oysters are called foliate (Olamleosa). In France the Cancale and Ostend oysters are chiefly noted. When the first of these has been fed for some time in the parks or beds, and has assumed a greenish color, it is known as the Narenna oyster, from the name of the park in the Bay of Scudre.