Dr. Johnston's Catalogue of Zoophytes. 241 



CATALOGUE. 



Class. ZOOPHYTA. 



(zoophytes polypes, cuvier.) 



Zoophytes are defined by Dr. Johnson to be " substances which partake of the nature 

 both of vegetables and animals;" a definition which, while it avoids all delineation of cha- 

 racter, expresses an opinion that has been indeed entertained by several naturalists in re- 

 lation to some of them, but which is doubtful in what manner soever restricted, and is often 

 manifestly erroneous. And Lamarck, objecting to the name as calculated to foster this 

 false hypothesis, has substituted for it that of Polypes, which had been previously used for 

 the animalcules when considered separately from their corals, corallines, or polypidoms ; 

 but the older name is still retained by many naturalists, and is in such familiar use that it 

 cannot well be displaced by any other. Nor does it seem objectionable in any way, for 

 Zoophyta may, surely, without violence to the derivation of the word, and with strict pro- 

 priety in reference to the subjects it embraces, be applied to such animal productions as 

 assume the form and semblance of plants ; and the greater number of our corallines do this 

 so palpably that they were uniformly arranged among vegetables, until the discoveries of 

 Peysonnel, Jussieu, and more especially of Ellis, assigned them to the province and 

 study of the Zoologist. In the following catalogue, therefore, I apply the term Zoophyta 

 in the same sense, and with the same latitude, that it was used by Ellis and Solander, 

 to designate a class of inarticulate animals, or compound animalcules, which possess only- 

 one external aperture, placed in the centre of an expansile disk encircled with tentacula, 

 always unarmed with teeth or proboscis, and serving both the purposes of mouth and anus. 

 They have no circulating system ; no separate respiratory organ (for the tentacula fulfil 

 this function) ; no brain or nervous cords ; no distinctions of sex ; their stomach is a simple 

 bag, sometimes furnished with an intestine, but apparently never with biliary nor ccecal ap- 

 pendages ; and in only a few of them an ovarium has been detected. The class is not 

 exactly the same as the Polypi of Lamarck, or the Zoophyta of Fleming, for theirs do 

 not embrace the Actinia;, or Sea-anemones ; but it is exactly synonymous with the Po- 

 lypes of Cuvier, which constitute the fourth class of his Zoophytes. This most illustrious 

 naturalist has so far extended the signification of the latter term as to make it include 

 the Medusae or Sea-jellies, the Echini or Sea-eggs, and even the intestinal worms, — which, 

 we presume to think, cannot be justified either on the score of verbal accuracy, or of 

 zoological or vulgar usage. 



Ord. 1. CARNOSA. 



Char. Animals separate, fleshy, naked, voluntarily fixed by their base, and capable of 

 changing their position : mouth superior, in the ce?ltre of a disk encircled with tentacula. 



