24 
HISTORY OF ZOOPHYTOLOGY. 
when they are tadpoles ; and caterpillars blossom into butter- 
flies. These are pretty rhapsodies for a Bonnet. Though 
there are different manners of growth in the different parts of 
the same animal, which the world has long been acquainted 
with, why should we endeavour to confound the ideas of vege- 
table and animal substances, in the minds of the people that we 
would willingly instruct in these matters ?”* And in a subse- 
quent letter he repeats, “ I cannot reconcile myself to vegeta- 
ting animals : the introduction of the doctrine of this mixed 
kind of life will only confuse our ideas of nature. We have not 
proof sufficient to determine it ; and I am averse to hypo- 
theses.”-f 
Pallas, who published at this period an admirable history of 
zoophytes, J was also the advocate of the Linnsean doctrine, 
but he adduced no other facts than those furnished by Baster 
in its aid, — setting, however, in bolder relief, the argument de- 
rived from its accordance with the hypothesis of a continuous 
series in the structure of organized beings, which, it was for 
long a point of orthodoxy to believe, formed a chain c< in linked 
sweetness long drawn out,” graduating insensibly from man to 
the monad, — as Bonnet maintained ; or branching off into les- 
ser series after the manner of a tree, — a simile suggested by 
Pallas himself as more correctly representing the 66 System 
of Nature.” § He also adopted the opinion of Baster, who 
in this respect continued in opposition to Linnaeus, that the true 
corallines (Corallina) were entirely of a vegetable nature, and 
his arguments on this head may be summed up as follows : In 
external appearance and structure a few corallines resemble 
some fuci, and many of them are like confervae ; they differ 
from other zoophytes in chemical composition, for, on being 
burned, they emit the smell of vegetable matter, neither do they 
contain a volatile salt or animal oil ; the pores observable in 
their calcareous portion are too small to be the habitations of po- 
* Lin. Corresp. Vol. i. p. 226. f Ibid. p. 260. 
t “ Princeps in hac classe opus.” — Hall. Bib. Bot. ii, 566 
§ “ Didicimus in Zoophytis, sic jure vocandis, vegetabilem naturam cum ani- 
mali ita misceri, ut vere anceps et dubia passim sit.” &c. Elenc. Zooph. Prcef. 
viii. The Introduction to the work is headed. “ De zoophytorum intermedia 
natura et inventione.” His ideas of the Natural System are given in an inte- 
resting passage at p. 23-4, which is too long for quotation in this place. 
