Natural History of British Zoophytes. 73 



Ellis, however, was not forward to publish his discovery : he wait- 

 ed further opportunities to confirm the accuracy of his first observa- 

 tions, and to institute other experiments to remove whatever ap- 

 peared hostile to the doctrine, which at length he fully explained 

 to the members of the Royal Society in a paper read before them 

 in June 1754; and it was made more generally known in the fol- 

 lowing year by the publication of his " Essay towards a natural his- 

 tory of the Corallines, and other marine productions of the like kind, 

 commonly found on the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland ;" — a 

 work so complete and accurate that it remains an unscarred monu- 

 ment of his well-earned reputation as a philosophical inquirer, and 

 is even to this day the principal source of our knowledge in this de- 

 partment of natural history.* In several essays presented subse- 

 quently to the Royal Society, and published in their Transactions, 

 he continued to illustrate and extend his opinions, and defended them 

 so successfully against his opponents, that they soon came to be very 

 generally adopted. 



There was nothing unformed nor mystical in Ellis's opinion. Cer- 

 tain marine productions which, under the names of Lithophyta and 

 Keratophyta, had been arranged among vegetables, and were still 

 very generally believed to be so, he maintained and proved with a 

 most satisfactory fulness of evidence, to be entirely of an animal na- 



ner at Gottingen, who had been in England, and become acquainted with Ellis, 

 who calls him an " excellent botanist," unhesitatingly claimed Ellis's discoveries 

 for his own, but a more bare-faced literary theft has not been recorded, and its 



detection has rendered the name of the German Professor infamous Lin. Cor- 



resp. vol. i. p. 170. and 179. — For a list of Ellis's writings the reader may con- 

 sult Hall. Bib. Bot. ii. 433, and the Introd. to Soland. Zooph. p. viii. 



* The concluding paragraph of this work may be quoted as throwing light on 

 the character of this great naturalist — "And now, should it be asked, granting all 

 this to be true, to what end has so much labour been bestowed in the demon- 

 stration ? I can only answer, that as to me these disquisitions have opened new 

 scenes of wonder and astonishment, in contemplating how varioulsy, how ex- 

 tensively life is distributed through the universe of things : so it is possible, that 

 the facts here related, and these instances of nature animated in a part hitherto 

 unsuspected, may excite the like pleasing ideas in others ; and, in minds more capa- 

 cious and penetrating, lead to farther discoveries, farther proofs (should such be 

 wanting,) that One infinitely wise, good, all-powerful Being has made, and still 

 upholds, the whole of what is good and perfect ; and hence we may learn, that, 

 if creatures of so low an order in the great scale of nature are endued with facul- 

 ties that enable them to fill up their sphere of action with such propriety ; we 

 likewise, who are advanced so many gradations above them, owe to ourselves, 

 and to Him who made us and all things, a constant application to acquire that 

 degree of rectitude and perfection, to which we also are endued with faculties 

 of attaining." 



