HISTORY OF ZOOPHYTOLOGY. 421 



Ellis taught no novel doctrine, but he gave it fixidity and 

 currency ; and he moreover applied it to those very zoophytes 

 which possessed the vegetable appearance in the most perfec- 

 tion, many of which he was the first to notice, and which he 

 illustrated with a series of figures of unequalled accuracy.* 

 He rarely went beyond the mere statement of the facts wit- 

 nessed, or what seemed an unavoidable inference from them ; 

 but, perhaps, he deserted his usual caution when, from analogy 

 principally, he asserted that the articulated calcareous coral- 

 lines (Oorallina, Lin.) and sponges, of a very different struc- 

 ture from coral, madrepore, or the horny corallines, were also, 

 like them, manifestly the places of abode of different species 

 of polypes. In the former (Oorallina) he had indeed detected 

 some slender fibres which, it was j^resumed, might be parts of 

 polypes, but this observation he was never able to confirm, 

 and it was rather because of the porous structure of the 

 corallines, than from any thing else, that he inferred the exist- 

 ence of jjolypes in them, — a structure which he had examined 

 with minute accuracy, and shewn to be essentially different 

 from any known vegetable tissue, — and, secondly, because of 

 their chemical constituents, of which he procured an accurate 

 analysis to be made. — With regard to the sponges, Ellis, as 

 Peyssonnel had previously done, supposed at first that the 

 regular holes observable in dry specimens strongly indicated 

 their being once filled with animals ; but when, after repeated 

 examinations of recent sponge, he could detect none, this con- 

 jecture was abandoned, and so thoroughly was he afterwards 

 satisfied of the non-existence of animalcules, that he combated 

 the opinion of those who maintained the contrary, pointing 



* As mentioned above, Bernard de Jussieu knew that the Sertulariadae — the 

 zoophytes here alluded to — were animal productions, but no detailed account of his 

 observations seems ever to have been published. Trembley had made the same dis- 

 covery. Dr. Watson, in his account of Peyssonnell's treatise in 1752, tells us that 

 Mr. Trembley shewed him, "at the late excellent Duke of Richmond's," the small 

 white polj'pes of the Corallina minus ramosa altema vice denticulata of Ray, " exactly 

 in form resembling the fresh-water polype, but infinitely less." " When the water 

 was still, these animals came forth, and moved their claws in search of their prey in 

 various directions ; but , upon the least motion of the glass, they instantly disap- 

 peared." P. 463. — Linnaeus, however, in reference to the observations made previous 

 to Ellis, says they are " inchoatae, non ad plenum confectae, et desiderentur adhuc quam 

 plurima, quae dies forte revelabit." Amoen. Acad. vol. i. p. 186. 



