135 
British name as well as the more general one. Yet those 
who have called these animals Brvozoa have not done so 
without a reason nor without fully recognising the fact that 
Thompson has priority over Ehrenberg. Bronn, as far as I 
am aware, had not devoted special attention to this class, 
but as he was so justly ranked, among a generation now 
passing away, as the greatest authority on classification, his 
opinion carries much weight, though he may have received 
assistance in the details. He points out that the term 
Polyzoa, used in the separation of animals from others which 
this name would as correctly describe, is very unphilosophi- 
cal and could not be accepted. The term Bryozoa may be 
thought open to the same objection, though as here only an 
external appearance is taken and nothing approaching a 
zoological character, the objection does not apply in the 
same way. 
But the great objection of those who have refused to 
adopt Polyzoa is the entirely different meaning* Thompson 
attached to the word to that which it now conveys. The 
heading of Thompson’s paper is most important, and runs, 
“ On Polyzoa, a new animal discovered as an inhabitant of 
some zoophytes,” and in the text he says, speaking of Flus- 
tra, “in many of which I have clearly ascertained the 
animals to be Polyzoa? ” (italics mine). Dr. Busk says 
that etymologically the name as now used is not the same 
as when originally given. I am unable to quite agree with 
Dr. Busk in this way of putting it, for the difference seems 
to arise from an entirely distinct zoological conception, and 
“the inhabitant of the zoophyte” is the polypide in the 
zooecium, or cell, and the Polyzose are the polypides, so 
that by the term Polyzoa nothing more was then meant 
than a single polypide. The intimate connection of poly- 
pide and zooecium seems to be ignored as much as if we 
were being taken back to the time of Pallas. Our know- 
# “ Zoological Researches,” Mem. 5. 
