Mr. A. H. Hassall's Catalogue of Irish Zoophytes. 279 



Naples in 1599; but although again reprinted in 1672, the 

 book and the knowledge it contained had sunk into such ob- 

 livion, that when Peysonnel, in the year 1727? communicated 

 the same discovery to the Academy of Sciences in Paris, it 

 was received by the members of that learned body in a man- 

 ner which is sufficient to convince us that it was entirely new 

 to them, and exposed the author to the obloquy and censure 

 which are the usual portions of an original discoverer. 



To John Ellis, however, a merchant in London, is to be 

 accorded the honour of having placed the fact of the animality 

 of Zoophytes beyond all doubt or controversy. The inquiries 

 entered into by this individual were pi'osecuted with an ardour 

 and a diligence worthy of the subject, and affording a bright 

 and refreshing example for others to imitate ; and it is pleasing 

 to notice, that the zeal he displayed and the labour he bestowed 

 were amply recompensed by the importance of the results to 

 which his investigations led. " 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 satis- 

 factory fulness of evidence, to be entirely of an animal nature, 

 the tenements and products of animals similar in many re- 

 spects to the naked freshwater polype. By examining them 

 in a living state, through an ordinary microscope, he saw these 

 polypes in the denticles or cells of the zoophyte ; he wit- 

 nessed them display their tentacula for the capture of their 

 prey ; their varied actions and sensibility to external impres- 

 sions 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 appropriated to a single individual, yet was this united by 

 a tender thready line to the fleshy part that occupies the mid- 

 dle of the whole coralline, and in this manner connected with 

 all the individuals of that coralline. The conclusion was irre- 

 sistible : 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 in texture 

 as well as hardness, and likewise in their chemical produc- 

 tion ; for sea-plants, properly so called, such as the Algae, 

 Fuci, etc., afford in distillation little or no traces of a volatile 

 salt; whereas the coralUues aflbrd a considerable quantity, 

 and in burning yield a smell somewhat resembling that of 

 burnt horn and other animal substances, which of itself is a 



