ZOE YT 8 
CHAPTER I. 
NG OLDE Cla Onn: 
1. THE forms of life, under consideration in the following pages, are 
appropriately styled /lower-animals.* In external figure, the indivi- 
dual animals closely resemble flowers, and no less so in brilliancy and 
variety of colouring. Moreover, a large number of zoophytes are so 
like the trees and shrubs of land vegetation, as to have deceived even 
the philosopher till near a century since.t The mosses and ferns of 
* The word zoophyte is from the Greek fav, animal, and ow, to grow like a plant. 
Blainville states that the term was introduced by Sextus Empiricus and by Isodore of 
Seville in the sixth century. It has been differently restricted in its use by authors, and, 
on account of its various applications, is wholly rejected by Lamarck. Although the 
species have little of the implied resemblance to vegetables in their internal structure, yet 
in external appearance, the compound forms as well as simple animals are so closely 
like plants and flowers, that we have deemed it best to retain the term. It is the popular 
designation, and is moreover used by some of the latest scientific writers on the subject. 
Ehrenberg has proposed to substitute phytozoa, derived from the same roots. But the 
science requires a name that will apply to the whole compound structure,—the coral-tree, 
sea-fan, or mass of whatever shape ;—and phytozoum refers only to a sémgle polyp 3 or 
phytozoa, the plural, to polyps im general. These cannot supply the place of the very 
convenient terms zoophyte and zoophytes. Moreover, the term phytozoa (phytozoaires) 
—plant-animals—has been applied to the minute cellules—monad-like in their motions, 
and supposed to be animalcules or plant-entozoa—detected in the tissues or organs of 
some plants. 
+ All the early authors, till the commencement of the last century,—among whom are 
Dioscorides, Czesalpin, Bauhin, Ray, Geoffroy, Tournefort, and Marsigli,—arranged corals 
