THE ZOOPHYTES. 145 



This discovery, however, had no result, since there is 

 evidence of its entire rejection and ultimate neglect by those 

 who studied nature. It is to John Ellis, a London merchant 

 in the middle of the last century, that we are indebted for 

 having placed the animality of zoophytes beyond all doubt or 

 controversy. " There was nothing unformed or mystical in 

 Ellis's opinion. Certain marine productions, which, under the 

 names of Lithophyta and Ceratophyta, had been arranged 

 among vegetables, and were still very generally believed to be 

 so, he maintained and proved, with a most satisfactory fulness 

 of evidence, to be entirely of an animal nature, the tenements 

 and products of animals similar in many respects to the naked 

 fresh-water polype. By examining them in a living state 

 through an ordinary microscope, he saw these polypes in the 

 denticles or cells of the Zoophyta ; he witnessed them display 

 their tentacula for the capture of their prey; their varied 

 actions and sensibility to external impressions and their mode 

 of propagation ; he saw, further, that these little creatures 

 were organically connected with the cells, and could not 

 remove from them, and that although each cell was appro- 

 priated to a single individual, yet was this united by a tender, 

 thready line to the fleshy part that occupies the middle of the 

 whole coralline, and in this manner connected with all the 

 individuals of that coralline. The conclusion was irresistible: 

 the presumed plant was the skin or covering of a sort of 

 miniature hydra, a conclusion which Ellis strengthened by 

 an examination of their covering separately, which he said 

 was as much an animal structure as the nails or horns of beasts, 

 or the shell of the tortoise; for it differs from sea-plants, 

 properly so called, such as the Algae, Fuci, etc., which afford 



