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 Akyonium 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. Introd. p. xi. 
f Lithophyta " animalia mollusca, composite. Corallium calcareum, fixum, 
quod insedificarunt animalia affixa." Syst. 1270. 
