16 HISTORY OF ZOOPHYTOLOGY. 



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 il- 

 lustrated with a series of figures of unequalled accuracy. * He 

 rarely went beyond the mere statement of the facts witnessed, 

 or what seemed an unavoidable inference from them ; but, per- 

 haps, he deserted his usual caution when, from analogy princi- 

 pally, he asserted that the articulated calcareous corallines (Co- 

 rallina, Lin.) and sponges, of a very different structure from 

 coral, madrepore, or the horny corallines, were also like them, 

 manifestly the places of abode of diflferent species of polypes. 

 In the former ( Corallina) he had indeed detected some slender 

 fibres which, it was presumed, 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 existence of polypes in them, — 

 a structure which he had examined with minute accuracy, and 

 shown to be essentially different from any known vegetable tis- 

 sue, — and, secondly, because of their chemical constituents, of 

 which he procured an accurate analysis to be made. — With re- 

 gard to the Sponges, Ellis, as Peyssonnel had previously done, 

 supposed at first that the regular holes observable in dry speci- 

 mens, strongly indicated their being once filled with animals; 

 but when after repeated examinations of recent sponge, he could 

 detect none, this conjecture was abandoned, and so thoroughly 



zoophytes was the principal fact for placing them in the animal kingdom. — Book 

 of Nature, i. 175 and 210. 



* As mentioned above, Bernard de Jussieu knew that the Sertulariadse — 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 discovery. Dr Watson, in his account of Peyssonnel's treatise in 1752, 

 tells us that Mr Trembley shewed him, " at the late excellent Duke of Rich- 

 mond's" the small white polypes of the Corallina minus ramosa alterna vice den- 

 ticulata of Ray, " exactly in form resembling the fresh-water polype, but infinite- 

 ly 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 disappeared." P. 463 — Linnseus, however, in refer- 

 ence to the observations made previous to Ellis, says they are " inchoate, non 

 ad pleimm confectae, et desiderentur adhuc quam plurima, quae dies forte reve- 

 labit."— Amoen. Acad. Vol. i. p. 186. 



I 



