BRITISH ZOOPHYTES. 



CHAPTER I. 

 History of Zoophytology. 



The natural productions about to occupy our attention, have 

 been denominated Zoophytes because, according to some phy- 

 siologists, they partake of the nature both of vegetables and 

 animals, and connect the two kingdoms of organized matter ; 

 or because, as others define the term, having the outward sem- 

 blance of sea-plants, they are yet in reality the formations of little 

 animals or polypes that nestle in the cells or tubes of the zoo- 

 phyte, to which they are organically and indissolubly connected. 



Little more than a century has elapsed since the first dis- 

 coveries were made, on which these opinions are founded. Pre- 

 viously to that time zoophytes were considered the undoubted 

 subjects of the vegetable kingdom, naturalists being obviously 

 led to this allocation of them by their arborescent appearances, 

 in which it were vain to trace any likeness to any common ani- 

 mal forms,— and by their permanent fixedness to the objects 

 from which they grow, for zoophytes are attached by means of 

 a disk or tubular fibres much in the same way that marine plants 

 are, while the capabiHty of moving at will from place to place 

 was deemed to be the principal character of distinction between 

 the two classes of animated beings. The zoologist claimed 

 none of them, if we except the Actinise or animal-flowers, for 

 his province and study, but left them without dispute to botani- 

 cal writers ; and if any of these, in reference to a very few zoo- 

 phytes of the least arborescent character, hazarded a whispered 

 conjecture that they were wrongly classed, it died away in the ut- 



