Genera of the North American Palaeozoic Bryozoa. 411 



corallines, etc. : "And indeed it would seem to me much more 

 difficult to conceive that so fine arrangement of parts, such 

 masses as these bodies consist of, and such regular ramifications 

 in some, and such well-contrived organs to serve for vegetation 

 in others, should be the operation of little, poor, helpless, jelly- 

 like animals, rather than the works of more sure vegetation, 

 which carries the growth of the tallest and largest trees, with 

 the same natural ease and influence as the minutest plant." 

 (Parsons.) 



Even LiNNE could not be convinced of the purely animal 

 nature of corals, but maintained that the stems and branches 

 were of a purely vegetable nature, while the polyps were a sort of 

 flowering which had been raised and perfected to an animal 

 nature. 



The conversion from the belief of the vegetable to the animal 

 nature of corals is due to the efforts of John Ellis, of London, 

 more than to those of any other one man. E llis seems to have been 

 ignorant of the labors of his predecessors, and to have imagined 

 that his discoveries were origmal. In 1755 he published his 

 work " Essay on the Natural History of the Corallines," which, 

 from its fidelity of observations and its correct pictorial illustra- 

 tions left but little room for doubt as to the true nature of corals. 

 He also contended for the animality of Spanges, in which he was 

 not only opposed by the naturalists of his time, but this theory 

 was not universally accepted for more than one hundred years 

 later. 



LiNNE could not be convinced by the clear descriptions and 

 figures of Ellis, and wrote to him, as follows : " Zoophyta are con- 

 structed very differently, living by a mere vegetable life, and are 

 increased every year under their bark-like trees, as appears in the 

 annual rings in a section of a trunk of Gorgonia. They are, 

 therefore, vegetables, with flowers like small animals, which you 

 have most beautifully delineated. All submarine plants are 

 nourished by pores and not by roots, as we learn from Fuci. 

 As Zoophytes are, many of them, covered with a stony coat, the 

 Creator has been pleased that they should receive nourishment 

 by their naked flowers He has, therefore, furnished each with a 

 pore, which we call a mouth. All living beings enjoy some motion. 

 The Zoophytes mostly live in the perfectly undisturbed abyss of 



