76 Natural History of British Zoophytes. 



When Ellis published these discoveries, which form in fact an 

 epoch in the history of natural science,* Linnaeus was in the ze- 

 nith of his reputation, — the " prince of naturalists," as his followers 

 loved to style him, — from whose decision on all disputed points in 

 natural history, there was scarcely an admissible appeal. And 

 Linnaeus almost merited this distinction, for he was a man not on- 

 ly of superior capacity and acquirements, of great sagacity, ready 

 apprehension, and fruitful fancy, but he was also of a candid and 

 liberal disposition ; and the ingenious labours of Ellis received from 

 him great and merited commendation. He had previously, in the 

 belief that lime was never formed but by animals, placed the Litho- 

 phyta in the animal kingdom ; and he now adopted the opinions of 

 Ellis so far as to include in it the horny and flexible polypidoms al- 

 so, but at the same time he broached the conjecture, for it deserves 

 no higher praise, that these were really intermediate between the 

 animal and vegetable kingdoms, so that it could not be said they 

 properly belonged to either. The animalcules of the Lithophyta, 

 like the testaceous tribes, he said, fabricated their own calcareous 

 polypidom, forming the whole mass into tubes, each ending on the 

 surface in pores or cells, where alone the animal seems to dwell ; t 

 but the polypes of the proper Zoophyta, so far from constructing their 

 plant-like polypidoms, were, on the contrary, the production or ef- 



Transactions, wherein he pretends to tell you, that he takes the animal out of them, 

 that forms them ; and that he put it into them, and it crept about through the 

 meanders of the sponge. This kind of insect, which harbours in sponges, I have 

 seen ; but sponges have no such animals to give them life, and to form them. 

 Their mouths are open tubes all over their surfaces, not furnished, like the tubes 

 of the Alcyonium manus mortua, with polype-like mouths or suckers. With their 

 mouths they draw in and send out the water ; they can contract and dilate them 

 at will, and the Count Marsigli has (though he thought them plants) confirmed 

 me in my opinion, that this is their manner of feeding. If you observe what he 

 has wrote on sponges in his Histoire de la Mer, and the observations he has made 

 on the Systole and Diastole of these holes in Sponges, during the time they are 

 full of water, you will be of my opinion. Take a lobe of the officinal sponge, and 

 cut it through perpendicularly and horizontally, and you will observe how near 

 the disposition of the tubes are to the figure I have given of the sections of the 

 Alcyonium manus mortua in my plate of the Sea-Pens." — Lin. Corresp. vol. i. 

 p. 79-80. 



* The Royal Society adjudged to Ellis the Copley medal, " as the most 

 public mark that the Council can give of their high sense of the great accession 

 which natural knowledge has received from your most ingenious and accurate 

 investigations." The medal was delivered to him, Nov. 30, 1768, by Sir John 

 Pringle, the President — Soland. Zooph. In trod. p. xi. 



f Lithophyta — " animalia mollusca, composita. Corallium calcareum, fixum, 

 quod insedificarunt animalia affixa." — Syst. 1270. 



