'210 BKITISH CORALLINES. 



al power.* He showed, moreover, that the analogy at- 

 tempted to be drawn between the confervee and corallines 

 held good, according to his idea of them, neither in their 

 mode of growth, their structure, nor fructification ; and that 

 the chemical constitution of the two families was entirely 

 difFerent.-|- 



This able essay appears to have satisfied Pallas, and to 

 have gained him over to the opinion of his opponent ; while, 

 perhaps, Ellis was induced to abate something, not of their 

 animality, but of its degree, for, in a subsequent work, he 

 says — " What or where the link is that unites the animal 

 and vegetable kingdoms of nature, no one has yet been able 

 to point out ; some of these corallines appear to come the 

 nearest to it of anything that has occurred to me in all my 

 researches : but then the calcareous covering, though ever 

 so thin, shows us that they cannot be vegetables."! 



The belief in the animality of corallines prevailed now as 

 generally as did the opposite creed previously to the disco- 

 veries of Ellis, nor, for many years, was any addition made 

 to our knowledge of them. Lamouroux tells us, that their 

 polypes are not apparent, § but of their existence, he seems 

 to have entertained no doubt, for we are afterwards informed 

 that the position of the polypes in such species, as are referred 

 to his genus Jania, is, probably, different from their position 

 in the true Corallinse. In the former, every thing, he says, 



* " The minuteness of the pores of Corallines, though as small as 

 those of some plants, is no proof of their being vegetables, because there 

 may be suckers that come through these pores, m hich our glasses cannot 

 discover ; or perhaps they may be like the pores of sponges, contrived 

 Jn such a manner as to suck in and throw out the water." Zoophytes, 

 p. 109. 



t Phil. Trans. Ivii. p. 404, &c. | Zoophytes, p. 108. 



§ Corallines, p. .30. 



