CLASSIFICATIONS OF ZOOPHYTES. 443 



Blumenbacli adopted the Linnsean class Vermes, and he 

 also retained the Actinias in the order Mollusca, but the 

 proper zoophytes were differently arranged, and the alteration 

 was unquestionably for the worse. The " polypes and other 

 zoophytes inhabiting coral branches and similar structures" 

 formed the order Corallia ; and his Zoopliyta included only 

 the " naked plant-like animals without any habitations ; also 

 the animalculae of infusions ! " The genera were the same, 

 or nearly the same, as the Linnsean, and followed one another 

 apparently as their names had risen in random series to his 

 memory.* 



About the beginning of the present century, Cuvier, first of 

 all, pointed out the advantages of having our systematical 

 arrangements in harmony with anatomical structure, — of 

 making the one an index to the other, — of classifying ani- 

 mals not according to one or two external characters which 

 might really have little or no influence upon their anatomy 

 and habits, but according to their agreement in those great 

 systems by which the life, growth, and propagation of crea- 

 tures are upheld and carried on. When, however, he began 

 to arrange the animal kingdom accordingly, the knowledge 

 of the organization of Zoophytes was too imperfect to permit 

 him to follow out his principles in this department, and even 

 his latest systematical attempt exhibits many derelictions of 

 them. Having, at the suggestion of Pallas, established a 

 section of avertebrated animals for the reception of such as 

 exhibited in the disposition of their organs a radiated appear- 

 ance, to the whole of which he applied the term Zoophytes, 

 he subdivided it into five classes, of which the last but one 

 embraced the subjects of the present treatise. They were 

 named Polypes because, from the tentacula encircling their 



genera], on being dispersed from its matrix, lives and dwells in the water, where it 

 becomes at length fixed, and grows up into Fungi. This fact he gives on the autho- 

 rity of Munchhausen ; and hence he infers that as the metamorphosis of zoophytes is 

 from the vegetable to the animal, so, on the contrary, that of the Fungi is from the 

 animal to the vegetable. The Chaos ustilago, or smut, is also classed by Linnaeus 

 amongst zoophytes ; for Munchhausen had proved that if the seminal powder were 

 macerated in tepid water for some days, it would pass into oblong hjTiline animalcules 

 which sported about like fishes, as might be seen with the microscope. — Syst. Nat. 

 p. 1326. 



* Elements of Natural History, p. 269 and 274. Lond. 1 825. 



