46 HISTORY OF BRITISH ZOOPHYTES. 



showed how suddenly the catastrophe had come upon the 

 inhabitants, and that one skeleton was thought to be that 

 of a slave arrested by death in the very act of stealing a 

 bag of money from his master. What a lesson to us, to 

 have our loins girt about and our lamps burning, and to 

 be of them who are waiting and 'watching, and ready for 

 the coming of their Lord. 



Though the doctrine taught by Ellis was the same that 

 had been maintained by Peyssonnel, Trembley, and latterly 

 by Eeaumur, he so fully illustrated that matter, that he 

 may be said to have estabHshed its truth, effecting a revo- 

 lution in the opinions of the generality of scientific men. 

 He showed in those zoophytes of a compound nature, that 

 though a single animal inhabited each cell, yet they were 

 united, " by a tender thready line to the fleshy part that 

 occupies the middle of the whole coralline; — that the 

 polypes were organically connected with the cells, and could 

 not remove from them; — and that that which seemed a 

 plant, was the covering, whether horny or calcareous, of the 

 livdra, and was as much an animal structure as the nails 

 of a man, the horns of a bullock, or the shell of a tortoise." 



It is not necessary that we should further trace the his- 

 tory of Zoophytology ; we may merely mention some of 



