•10 NATURAL HISTORY OP 



this was an impudent and infamous attempt at fraud 

 is undoubted. 



Ellis' researches were fully appreciated in his own 

 country, and, in 1767, the Royal Society presented 

 him with the Copley Prize Medal for his papers on 

 Natural History. In presenting" this medal the 

 President of the Society, Sir John Pringle, stated 

 that, although Ellis had opened such a wonderful view 

 of some of the most extraordinary productions of 

 nature, and had pursued his discoveries with such 

 sagacity and judgment that he might reasonably have 

 expected many testimonies of his successful labours in 

 natural history, yet that medal was delivered to him 

 as an express testimony of their approbation of his 

 excellent papers on the animal nature of the genus of 

 Zoophytes called Corallina, and of the Actinia Sociata. 



Ellis contributed no less than twenty-six communi- 

 cations to the Royal Society, exclusive of the work 

 before referred to. He held the office of King's 

 Agent for the Province of West Florida, and Agent 

 for the Island of Dominica. His extensive knowledge 

 of Zoophytes, which was much increased by the facility 

 with which he was enabled to obtain specimens from 

 the countries named, brought him into communication 

 with Linnseus, the prince of naturalists, to whom he 

 wrote several valuable letters, and from whom he 

 received letters equally important. Linnaeus seems to 

 have adopted Ellis' views to some extent. The stony 

 corals he had previously assigned to the animal king- 

 dom, and a study of Ellis' views caused him to assign 

 the horny and flexible corallines also to that kingdom, 

 although, in order to mark his opinion on the subject, 

 he founded the order Zoophyta, which he defined as 



