61 
most truly of animal production; therefore, that piensa con- 
sisting of that substance, do belong to the animal kingdom.’ 
where the link is that unites the animal and vegeta- 
ble oe of nature no one has yet been able to point out ; 
some of these Corallines appear to come the nearest to it of any- 
thing that has occurred to me in all my researches ; but then the 
calcareous covering, though ever so thin, shews us that they 
cannot be vegetables. ... The minuteness of the pores of 
Corallines, though as sma all as those of some plants, is no proof 
of their being vegetables, because there may be suckers that, 
come through these pores which our glasses cannot discover ; or 
perhaps they may be like the pores of the sponges, coe in 
such a manner as to suck in and throw out the water.’ his care- 
fal and philosophical, though according to our modern notions in- 
adequate, explanation of the nature of corallines must have been 
written not later than 1776, the year of Mr. Ellis’s death. It is 
interesting to note that as early as 1755 he had published oa 
figures of the conceptacles and tetraspores of the common o 
cinal coralline, but had apparently looked upon the spores as 
polyps. Although the species of Cora/lina, as that genus was 
accepted by Ellis and Solander, embraced only organisms of a 
vegetal nature, they were otherwise an incoherent group, agree- 
ing only in being calcareous. They included representatives of 
the green algae and also of. what are now considered three fami- 
lies of the red algae, to one of which alone the term “ coralline’’ 
is at present restricted. 
The coralline seaweeds are not so generally confined to the 
warmer seas as are their animal imitators, the corals. ey are 
locally abundant in arctic and temperate as well as in tropical 
regions. Professor Kjellman, in his ‘‘ Algae of the Arctic Sea,” 
remarks that three families of algae, the Laminariaceae (kelps), 
the Fucaceae (rockweeds), and the Corallinaceae, dominate the 
vegetation of the Arctic seas. Lithothamnion plactale i is reported 
by Professor Kjellman from within almost ten degrees of the 
north pole (Lat. 79° 56’). He says of it: ‘ Most often and 
in greatest number it is met with at a depth ne 10-20 fathom. 
On the coasts of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya it covers the 
