CHAPTER XXIV. 



OF THE CLASS OF POLYPIFERA. 



1040. No doubt can now exist of the Animal character of 

 the beings composing this class ; although the Plant-like form 

 which many of them present, deceived the Naturalists of former 

 days, as it does the uninformed observer at the present time, 

 into the belief of their Vegetable nature. In the works of the 

 older Botanists, the zoophytes (a term which may be advan- 

 tageously restricted to this class), whether hard and stony, or 

 flexible and horny, were arranged and described with Sea- weeds 

 and Mosses, without any misgivings as to to the propriety of 

 doing so. So far was this theory carried, that the Sea- Anemone 

 was described as a veritable flower ; and Count Marsigli, who 

 detected the existence of analogous beings in coral and madre- 

 pore, spoke of them as the blossoms of these stony plants. It is 

 now just a century since the doctrine of their Animal character, 

 now universally admitted, was received with any degree of favour 

 by the learned. 



1041. It is only of late, however, that this class has been 

 carefully investigated and well understood. A large proportion 

 of those compound structures, which are known as Coral, 

 Madrepore, &c., come under the inspection of Naturalists only 

 in their dry state, stripped of all that characterises the living 

 animal. Hence their classification has, until recently, been 

 founded solely upon the characters presented by these structures. 

 Some of them are massive and stony ; others of more delicate 

 conformation, and of horny consistence. Some of them serve as 

 a central axis or stem, which is clothed with the living flesh ; 

 others form a tube, which sheaths the softer tissues, and this 

 variety is found to exist among both the stony corals or litho- 

 phytes, and the horny flexible corals or keratophytes. Moreover 



