18 
HISTORY OF ZOOPHYTOLOGY. 
zenith of his reputation, — the <c prince of naturalists,” as his 
followers loved to style him, — from whose decision on all disput- 
ed points in natural history, there was scarcely an admissible 
appeal. And Linnaeus almost merited this distinction, for he 
was a man not only 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 commen- 
dation. He had previously, in the belief that lime was never 
formed but by animals, placed the Lithophyta in the animal 
kingdom ; and he now adopted the opinions of Ellis so far as 
to include in it the horny and flexible polypidoms also, 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 belong to either. The animalcules of the Litho- 
phyta, 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 but the polypes of the proper Zoophyta, so 
far from constructing their plant-like polypidoms, were, on the 
contrary, the productions or efflorescences of it, -f* just as the 
flowers do not make the herb or tree but are the results of the 
vegetative life proceeding to perfection. Polypes, according to 
this fancy, bore the same relation to their polypidom that flowers 
do to the trunk and branches of the tree ; both grew by vege- 
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. See also Swainson’s 
“ Discourse on the Study of Nat. History,” p. 38-9. 
* Lithophyta — “ animalia mollusca, composita. Corallium calcareum, fixum, 
quod insedificarunt animalia affixa.” — Syst. 1270. 
f Zoophyta — “ animalia composita, efflorescentia. Stirps vegetans, m e ta- 
rn orphosi transiens in florens Animal.” — Syst. 1287. “ Zoophyta non sunt, uti 
Lithophyta, auctores suae testae ; sed Testa ipsorum ; sunt enim corpora (uti 
flores) imprimis generationis organa, adjectis nonnullis oris motusque instru- 
mentis, ut motum, quem extrinsecus non habent, a se ip sis obtineant.” — Syst. 
Nat. edit. 10. 799. When Berkenhout translates the first of these definitions — 
“ stems vegetating and changing into animals ;” Synop. i. 15, hg certainly de- 
parts, if not from the letter, yet from the meaning of Linnaeus. 
