CLASSIFICATIONS OF ZOOPHYTES. 73 



considered, to have its due influence on our systems. Notwith- 

 standing, however, Bhiinville's unquestionable merits, his very 

 defective acquaintance with species will ever prevent him be- 

 coming a first-rate systematist : he may sketch the outline, the 

 details he cannot supply, and his attempt has exposed him to 

 numerous errors : he is too fond of generalizations where his 

 facts are few and specifical ; he wants the necessary neatness 

 and brevity of definition, and he evinces everywhere such a to- 

 tal disregard to the old nomenclature that his system is not like- 

 ly to become popular, or to be generally adopted. Many of his 

 alterations are excellent, and must meet the approval of all, for 

 surely no one will henceforth reinstate the apolypous sponges 

 and vegetating corallines, which he has so properly separated, 

 to a rank amongst proper polypes ; and his removal of the Ma- 

 drepores from the compound hydracolous polypidoms to a level 

 with the Actiniae seems to be equally judicious, and beyond fu- 

 ture cavil. 



System of H. M. D. De Blainville. (1834.) 



Class— ZOANTHA. 



Body regular, resembling- a flower, more or less elongated, free or 

 fixed, very contractile, furnished with an intestinal canal without 

 distinct parietes, and with a single large terminal aperture encircled 

 with multiform tentacula, always hollow, and in communication 

 with the musculo-cavernous parenchyma of the skin. 



The class is divided into three families : 



The Soft — Actiniadse. Lucernaria, Actinia, &c. 

 The Coriaceous — Zoanthus. 



The Calcareous— divided into 1. the MadrephylUcea, in which are 

 the genera Turbinolia and Caryophyllaea : and 2. the Ma- 

 drepores. 



Class— POLYPIARIA. 



Animals like the Hydra, viz. in general slender, furnished with a 

 single series of filiform and not numerous tentacula, naked or con- 

 tained in multiform cells (but never lamelliferous), clustered so as 

 to form a polypidom very variable in shape and structure. 

 Sub-Class I. P. SoLiDA — Containing {he hxmWes Millepores, of 

 which there is no British genus amongst recent zoophytes ; 

 and TuhuUporea which contains Tubulipora only. 



