64 Natural History of British Zoophytes. 



fourth, fifth, and sixth feathers nearly equal, and longest ; tail mo- 

 derately long and graduated ; feet large, under parts broad and adapt- 

 ed for grasping ; toes large, hind toe greatly produced ; plumage 

 full and loose. 



Paradoxornis Jlavirostris. 



Specific Char. — Bill rich orange-yellow ; crown of the head 

 and back of the neck rich rufous brown ; the whole of the upper 

 surface, wings and tail, sandy-brown ; face and throat white, mot- 

 tled with black ; part of the ear-coverts jet black ; upper part of the 

 chest grayish-white clouded with black ; under surface pale sandy- 

 brown ; tarsi and feet bluish. 



Total length, 8 inches ; wings, 3^ 

 toe, £. Habitat, Nepal. In the collection of Mr Gould. 



VIII The Natural History of British Zoophytes. By George 



Johkston, M. D., Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of 

 Edinburgh. 



I — History of Zoophytology. 



The natural productions about to occupy our attention, have been 

 denominated Zoophytes because, according to some, they partake of 

 the nature both of vegetables and animals, and connect the two king- 

 doms of organized matter; 'or because, as others define the term, 

 having the outward semblance of sea-plants, they are yet in reality 

 the formations of little animals or polypes that nestle in the cells or 

 tubes of the zoophyte, to which they are organically and indisso- 

 lubly connected. 



Little more than a century has elapsed since the first discoveries 

 were made on which these opinions are founded. Previously to that 

 time zoophytes were considered the undoubted subjects of the vege- 

 table kingdom, naturalists being obviously led to this allocation of 

 them by their arborescent appearances, in which it were vain to trace 

 any likeness to any common animal forms ; and by their permanent 

 fixedness to the objects from which they grow, for zoophytes are at- 

 tached by means of a disk or tubular fibres much in the same way 

 that marine plants are, while the capability of moving at will from 

 place to place was deemed to be the principal character of distinc- 

 tion between the two classes of animated beings. The zoologist 

 claimed none of them, if we except the Actiniae or animal-flowers, 

 for his province and study, but left them without dispute to botani- 

 cal writers ; and if any of these, in reference to a very few zoophytes 

 of the least arborescent character, hazarded a whispered conjecture 



