24 HISTORY OF ZOOPHYTOLOGY. 



when they are tadpoles ; and caterpillars blossom into butter- 

 flies. These are pretty rhapsodies for a Bonnet. Though 

 there are different manners of growth in the different parts of 

 the same animal, which the world has long been acquainted 

 with, why should we endeavour to confound the ideas of vege- 

 table and animal substances, in the minds of the people that we 

 would willingly instruct in these matters ?"* And in a subse- 

 quent letter he repeats, " I cannot reconcile myself to vegeta- 

 ting animals : the introduction of the doctrine of this mixed 

 kind of life will only confuse our ideas of nature. We have not 

 proof sufficient to determine it ; and I am averse to hypo- 

 theses."-f- 



Pallas, who published at this period an admirable history of 

 zoophytes, :{: was also the advocate of the Linnaean doctrine, 

 but he adduced no other facts than those furnished by Baster 

 in its aid, — setting, however, in bolder relief, the argument de- 

 rived from its accordance with the hypothesis of a continuous 

 series in the structure of organized beings, which, it was for 

 long a point of orthodoxy to believe, formed a chain " in linked 

 sweetness long drawn out," graduating insensibly from man to 

 the monad, — as Bonnet maintained ; or branching off into les- 

 ser series after the manner of a tree, — a simile suggested by 

 Pallas himself as more correctly representing the " System 

 of Nature." § He also adopted the opinion of Baster, who 

 in this respect continued in opposition to Linnseus, that the true 

 corallines ( Corallina) were entirely of a vegetable nature, and 

 his arguments on this head may be summed up as follows : In 

 external appearance and structure a few corallines resemble 

 some fuci, and many of them are like confervse ; they differ 

 from other zoophytes in chemical composition, for, on being 

 burned, they emit the smell of vegetable matter, neither do they 

 contain a volatile salt or animal oil ; the pores observable in 

 their calcareous portion are too small to be the habitations of po- 



* Lin. Conesp. Vol. i. p. 226. f Ilji'l- P- 260. 



^ " Printeps in hac classe opus." — Hall. Bib. Bot. ii, 566 

 § " Didicimus in Zoophytis, sic jure vocandis, vcgetabilem natunun cum ani- 

 mali ita misceri, iit veie anceps et dubia pa&sim sit." &c. Elenc. ^ooph. Prajf. 

 viii. The Introduction to tlie work is beaded. " Dc zoopliytoruin inttrmedia 

 iiatura et inventione." His ideas of the Natural System are given in an inte- 

 resting passage at p. 23-4, which is too long for quotation in this place. 



