BRITISH CORALLINES. 209 



was " well-convinced that lime is never produced by vege- 

 tables, but by animals only."* In opposition to these high 

 authorities, Pallas considered the ancient right of the botanists 

 to the corallines far from having been disproven, for, although 

 they did differ from every other plant in their stonyness, yet 

 neither did they make any approach to any kind of acknow- 

 ledged zoophytes. When alive and fresh, they had no mu- 

 cous and polypiferous incrustation ; and their superficial 

 pores were too minute to be the cells of polypes. Jussieu had 

 accordingly failed to discover any sign of animallife in them ; 

 and the fact, now first announced, of there being a terrestrial 

 species, was a cogent argument against the belief that this 

 would ever be found. Further, Ellis had shown that, at 

 certain seasons, there appeared on the extremities of coral- 

 lines certain nodules and tubercles from which some seed- 

 like bodies could be pressed, and as these were somewhat 

 analogous to the fructification found in Fuci and Confervse, 

 the fact aflfbrded an argument in favour of their same- 

 ness.f 



Ellis, in an elaborate essay, immediately answered this 

 reasoning of Pallas, and neutralized its influence. He 

 showed that the evidence for the existence of a land species 

 was weak and nugatory ; \ he pleaded that the inability to de- 

 tect the polypes was far from proving their absence ; and 

 the minuteness of the pores being in correspondency to the 

 size of the filaments which pullulated from them, great dif- 

 ficulty in their detection, or entire failure, might be natural- 

 ly anticipated, until chance presented some favourable op- 

 portunity, or the discovery of better glasses gave us addition- 



* Lin. Corresp. i. p. 208. f Elcncb. Zoopliyt. p. 418-10. 



\ On the subject of vegetables impregnated with carbonate of lime, 

 mistaken for corals, see a note in Edin. Phil. Journ. ii. p. 198. 



o 



