ON ZOOPHYTES. 529 
Towards the middle of the age in which the work of 
Aldrovandus had made known the state of natural history 
in general, appeared one of the most interesting works respect- 
ing the natural history of the zoophytes, a work which com- 
mences the long series of those for which we are indebted to 
the naturalists of Italy on the same subject. ‘This was the 
Natural History of Ferrante Imperato, of Naples. Besides a 
number of observations on the living animals which have been 
since ranged among the zoophytes, (some, perhaps, errone- 
ously) we find there, on the corals, the madrepores, the tubi- 
pores, &c., the bases of the opinion generally adopted as to 
the truly animal nature of these organized bodies ; but before 
the truth of this opinion had been recognized, they were suc- 
cessively placed in the other two kingdoms. 
The ancients, who had a very imperfect knowledge of 
corals—the genius of Aristotle having left them nothing on 
the subject—determined, after the mere consideration of the 
external form, to make vegetables of them, from whence the 
names of lithophyton and lithodendron, under which they 
were known for a long time after Dioscorides. Before him, 
we find them designated by the denominations of coralium, 
curalium, and, finally, of corallium, (the etymology of which 
is uncertain), in Theophrastus, Pliny, and Ovid. 
At the revival of learning, the numerous commentators on 
Dioscorides went little farther than himself. It therefore ap- 
pears that Imperato was the first who had a glimpse of the 
gradual passage from the corals to the tubulariz, and to the 
madrepores, and who recognized in these last, the animal 
character grow more and more pronounced, to such a degree 
that he compares them to the velelle. It is also in this 
original author, that we find for the first time, the terms pore, 
madrepore, millepore, retepore, tubipore, as well as those of 
fungite, astreolite, porpite, &c., which have since been applied 
to those determinate forms, which we call genera. We also 
VOL. XII. Mm 
