412 * Report of the State Geologist. 



the ocean. They can not, therefore, partake of that motion which 

 trees and herbs receive from the agitation of the air. Hence the 

 Creator has granted them a nervous system, that they may spon- 

 taneously move at pleasure. Their lower part becomes hardened 

 and dead like the solid wood of a tree. The surface, under the 

 bark, is furnished every year with a new living layer as in the 

 vegetable kingdom. Thus they grow and increase and may even 

 be truly called vegetables, as having flowers, producing capsules, 

 etc. Yet as they are endowed with sensation . and voluntary 

 motion, they must be called, as they are, animals ; for animals 

 differ from plants merely in having a nervous sentient system, 

 with voluntary motion, neither are there any other limits between 

 the two." 



IS'otwitlistanding the opposition of a few naturalists, the 

 animality of corals was hereafter almost universally admitted, 

 more than one hundred and fifty 3^ears after its discovery by 

 Impera;to. 



In 1827, Professor Grant read before the American Society an 

 account of the structure of Flustra, in which he describes its 

 locomotive embryos. (JSTew Philosophical Journal, Edinburgh, 

 Yol. Ill, 1827) 



In the following year M. Audouin and Milne-Edwards gave a 

 very complete account of the anatomy of Fi.ustra. in which they 

 called attention to their close resemblance to the Ascidia and the 

 bearing of this resemblance upon their systematic rank. 



They called attention to the fact that some of the polypes 

 possessed an anal as well as an oral opening to the canal, and 

 proposed to found a division of the polyps into classes, according 

 to the form of the alimentary canal. He includes moreover 

 sponges in this class. 



Ehrenbero in his " S^^mbol^ Physicae" published in 1831 

 divided the polyps into two principal groups, Anthozoa and 

 Bryozoa, according as the alimentary canal had one or two 

 aboral openings. Afterward, in 1834, he modified this division 

 by separating the Sertularid^ and other Hydriform polyps, 

 which he placed in a class called Limorph^a. 



In 1 830 Dr. John Y. Thompson, at that time stationer! at Cork 

 as deputy inspector- general of hospitals, made a series of observa- 

 tions on the marine fauna of the coast. He examined the ani- 



