ZOOPHYTES. 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTION. 



1. The forms of life, under consideration in the following pages, are 

 appropriately styled Jlower-animals.^ In external figure, the indivi- 

 dual animals closely resemble flowers, and no less so in brilliancy and 

 variety of colouring. Moreover, a large number of zoophytes are so 

 like the trees and shrubs of land vegetation, as to have deceived even 

 the philosopher till near a century since. f The mosses and ferns of 



* The word zoophyte is from the Greek ^uov, animal, and (puw, to grow like a 2}lant. 

 Blainville states that the term was introduced by Se.xtus Empiricus and by Isodore of 

 Seville in the sixth century. It has been differently restricted in its use by authors, and, 

 on account of its various applications, is wholly rejected by Lamarck. Although the 

 species have little of the implied resemblance to vegetables in their internal structure, yet 

 in external appearance, the compound forms as well as simple animals are so closely 

 like plants and flowers, that we have deemed it best to retain the term. It is the popular 

 designation, and is moreover used by some of the latest scientific writers on the subject. 



Ehrenberg lias proposed to substitute phytozoa, derived from the same roots. But the 

 science requires a name that will apply to the whole compound structure, — the coral-tree, 

 sea-fan, or mass of whatever shape ; — and phytozoum refers only to a single polyp ; or 

 phytozoa, the plural, to piolyps in general. These cannot supply the place of the very 

 convenient terms zoophyte and zoophytes. Moreover, the term phytozoa (phytozoaires) 

 — plant-animals — has been applied to the minute cellules — monad-like in their motions, 

 and supposed to be animalcules or plant-cntozoa — detected in the tissues or organs of 

 some plants. 



t All the early authors, till the commencement of the last century, — among whom are 

 Dioscorides, Caesalpin, Bauhin, Ray, Geoffroy, Tournefort, and Marsigli, — arranged corals 



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