ON THE USE OF SOME WORDS 13 



" The Zoophytes are not, hke the Lithophytes, the 

 producers of their shells or trunks but the shells of them- 

 selves ; for the stems are true plants which, being meta- 

 morphosed, change into animated flowers (true animalculae) 

 completed by organs of generation and instruments of 

 motion, in order that they may obtain motion which ex- 

 trinsically they have not got." 



The Lithophytes of Linnaeus consisted of the genera 

 Tubipora, Madrepora, Millepora, and Cellepora, and he 

 seems to have regarded them as entirely animal in nature.^ 



Linnaeus was the last of the great naturalists of the 

 eighteenth century to cling to the view that the Zoophytes 

 are wholly or in part of a vegetable nature. 



But John Ellis, 2 one of the most brilliant and observant 

 naturalists of his time, who expressed most emphatically 

 the view that the Zoophytes are entirely animal in nature, 

 was led into the error of asserting that certain calcareous 

 Algae which he had studied are also produced by animal 

 organisms. Influenced perhaps by a statement made by 

 Linnaeus that all calcareous substances must truly be of 

 animal production, he included in the Animal Kingdom the 

 Corallines which are now called Lithothamnion, Amphiroa, 

 Corallina, Halimeda, etc. (see Chap. X. p. 197). 



In justice to him, however, it is only fair to quote a 

 passage which shows that he held this view with some 

 misgiving. 



" What and where the link is that unites the animal 

 and vegetable kingdoms of nature no one has yet been able 

 to trace out ; but some of these corallines appear to come 

 the nearest to it of anything that has occurred to me in all 

 my researches ; but then the calcareous covering, though 

 ever so thin, shows us that they cannot be vegetables." 



It is not surprising that, as a result of the researches 

 of Peyssonnel, Ellis, and others, the word zoophyte gradually 

 fell into disuse. De Lamarck (18 16) said : " It is not at 

 all convenient to give to Polyps the name Zoophytes because 



1 Animalia MoUusca, composita Corallium calcareum, fixum, quod 

 inaedificarunt animalia affixa {Systema Naturae, xii. ed. i. pt. 2, p. 1287). 

 - J. Ellis, Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc, 1767. 



