HISTORY OF ZOOPHYTOLOGY. J 9 



tation, but while the one evolved from the extremities blossoms 

 which shrunk not under external irritations and were therefore 

 properly flowers, — the other put forth flowers which, because 

 they exhibited every sign of animality, were therefore with reason 

 considered animals. " Zoophyta," he writes to Ellis, " are con- 

 structed very differently, living by a mere vegetable life, and 

 are increased every year under their bark, like trees, as appears 

 from the annual rings in a section of the trunk of a Gorgonia. 

 They are therefore vegetables, with flowers like small animals, 

 which you have most beautifully delineated. All submarine 

 plants are nourished by pores, not by roots, as we learn from 

 Fuci. As zoophytes are, many of them, covered with a stony 

 coat, the Creator has been pleased that they should receive 

 nourishment by their naked flowers. He has therefore furnish- 

 ed each with a pore, which we call a mouth. All living beings 

 enjoy some motion. The zoophytes mostly live in the perfectly 

 undisturbed abyss of the ocean. They cannot therefore par- 

 take of that motion, which trees and herbs receive from the agi- 

 tation of the air. Hence the Creator has granted them a ner- 

 vous system, that they may spontaneously move at pleasure. 

 Their lower part becomes hardened and dead, like the solid 

 wood of a tree. The surface, under the bark, is every year fur- 

 nished with a new living layer, as in the vegetable kingdom. 

 Thus they grow and increase ; and may even be truly called ve- 

 getables, as having flowers, producing capsules, &c. Yet as they 

 are endowed with sensation, and voluntary motion, they must be 

 called, as they are, animals ; for animals differ from plants mere- 

 ly in having a sentient nervous system, with voluntary motion; 

 nor are there any other limits between the two. Those there- 

 fore who esteem these animalcules to be distinct from their stalk, 

 in my opinion, founded on observation, deceive and are de- 

 ceived."* 



There was something in this hypothesis peculiarly captivating 

 to an imaginative mind, and few poets have possessed a richer 

 fancy than Linnaeus. He seems to have ever fondly cherished 

 the opinion, for in his curious Diary, in which he has enumerat- 

 ed with much complacency all his works and merits, it is men- 

 tioned as one of his principal recommendations to the respect 



* Lin. Corresp. Vol. i. p. 151-2. 



