18 HISTORY or ZOOPIIYTOLOGY. 



zenith of his reputation,— the "prince of naturahsts," as his 

 followers loved to style him, — from whose decision on all disput- 

 ed points in natural history, there was scarcely an admissible 

 appeal. And Linnaeus almost merited this distinction, for he 

 was a man not only of superior capacity and acquirements, of 

 great sagacity, ready apprehension, and fruitful fancy, but he 

 was also of a candid and liberal disposition ; and the ingenious 

 labours of Ellis received from him great and merited commen- 

 dation. He had previously, in the belief that lime was never 

 formed but by animals, placed the Lithophyta in the animal 

 kingdom ; and he now adopted the opinions of Ellis so far as 

 to include in it the horny and flexible polypidoms also, but at 

 the same time he broached the conjecture, for it deserves no 

 higher praise, that these were really intermediate between the 

 animal and vegetable kingdoms, so that it could not be said 

 they properly belong to either. The animalcules of the Litho- 

 phyta, like the testaceous tribes, he said, fabricated their own 

 calcareous polypidom, forming the whole mass into tubes, each 

 ending on the surface in pores or cells, where alone the animal 

 seems to dwell ;* but the polypes of the proper Zoophyta, so 

 far from constructing their plant-like polypidoms, were, on the 

 contrary, the productions or efflorescences of it, f just as the 

 flowers do not make the herb or tree but are the results of the 

 vegetative life proceeding to perfection. Polypes, according to 

 this fancy, bore the same relation to their polypidom that flowers 

 do to the trunk and branches of the tree ; both grew by vege- 



public mark that the Council can give of their high sense of the great accession 

 which natural knowledge has received from your most ingenious and accurate 

 investigations." The medal was delivered to him, Nov. 30, 1768, by Sir John 

 Pringle, the President — Soland. Zooph. Introd. p. xi. See also Swainson's 

 " Discourse on the Study of Nat. History," p. 38-9. 



* Lithophyta — " animalia moUusca, composita. Corallium calcareum, fixum, 

 quod inffidificarunt animalia aflSxa." — Syst. 1270. 



f Zoophyta — " animalia composita, efflorescentia. Stirps vegetans, meta- 

 morphosi transiens in florens Animal."— Syst. 1287. " Zoophyta non sunt, uti 

 Lithophyta, auctores suae testte ; sed Testa ipsorum ; sunt enim corpora (uti 

 flores) imprimis generationis organa, adjectis nonnullis oris motusque instru- 



mentis, ut motum, quern extrinsecus non habent, a se ipsis obtineant." Syst. 



Nat. edit. 10. 799. When Berkenhout translates the first of these delinitions 



" stems vegetating and changing into animals j" Synop. i. 15, he certainly de- 

 parts, if not from the letter, yet from the meaning of Linnaeus. 



