216 Biographical Memoir of' Peter Simon Pallas. 



With regard to corals, in particular, he shewed the error of the 

 definition which was then almost generally received, as if they 

 were hives of polypi ; he demonstrated their trunk to be itself a 

 living substance, a sort of animal tree with several branches and 

 heads ; a compound animal, the stony part of which is only the 

 common skeleton, which grows at the same time as the indivi- 

 dual animals, but is not fabricated by them. Linnaeus was the 

 first to support these bold ideas, which are now universally re- 

 ceived *. 



The Miscellanea Zoologica, which Pallas published the same 

 year as his Elenchus, added still more to his reputation. So 

 young an author was seen with astonishment, uniting in himself 

 all the merits of the great masters who then divided among them 

 the empire of science ; boldly assuming as his models the great 

 French naturalist and his fellow-labourer Daubenton ; taking 

 upon himself their conjoined labour, and, without allowing him- 

 self to be swayed by their authority, combining, with the pro- 

 found sagacity of the one, and the patient accuracy of the other, 

 those methodical and strict views condemned by both. 



But what would have excited still more astonishment, had 

 the public mind at this period been capable of estimating it, was 

 the sudden light which he threw upon the least known classes 

 of the animal kingdom, those which were confounded under the 

 common name of Worms. Not allowing himself to be imposed 

 upon by the errors of Linnaeus, any more than by those of Buf- 

 fon, he shewed that the presence or absence of a shell cannot 

 afford the true basis of their distribution, but that the analogy 

 of their structure ought to be first consulted ; that, in this re- 

 spect, the ascidiae, and not the tethyses, as Linnaeus imagined, are 

 the true analogies of the bivalves ; that the teredo, as Adanson 

 had already shewn, ought also to be united with them ; that the 

 univalves, on the contrary, are more allied to the slugs, the do- 

 rises and scyllaeae ; lastly, that the aphroditae, of the anatomy of 

 which he at the same time gave an excellent account, ought to 

 be placed near the nereides, the serpulae, and other articulated 

 vermes, whether these possessed shells or not. 



• The Elenchus Zoophytorum has been translated into Dutch by Boddart, 

 and into German by Wilkens. Herbst has published the latter translation 

 with additions and plates. Nuremberg, 1787? 4to. 



