CARYOPHYLLIA. 135 



CHAPTER XV. 



CARYOPHYLLIA. 



THE natural productions which have so long occupied 

 our attention were denominated Zoophytes, because 

 by some physiologists they were thought to partake of 

 the nature both of vegetables and animals, and con- 

 nected the two kingdoms of organized nature ; or, as 

 the term is now understood, because, having the out- 

 ward semblance of sea-plants, they are in reality the 

 formations of little animals that nestle in the tubes 

 of the zoophyte to which they are organically and in- 

 dissolubly connected. 



Little more than a century has elapsed since the 

 first discoveries were made upon which this last view 

 of their economy originated. Previously to that time, 

 zoophytes were considered the undoubted subjects of 

 the vegetable kingdom, naturalists being obviously 

 led to this allocation of them by their arborescent 

 appearance, in which it were vain to attempt to trace 

 a resemblance to the more usual forms exhibited by 

 animals, and by their permanent fixedness to the ob- 

 jects upon which they grow ; for zoophytes are at- 

 tached to foreign bodies much in the same way that 

 marine plants are, while the capability of moving from 

 place to place was deemed to be the principal cha- 



