A history of the British zoophytes / [George Johnston].

  • George Johnston
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A history of the British zoophytes / [George Johnston]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    zenith of his reputation,—the “ 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 Linneeus 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, + 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 ineedificarunt animalia affixa.”—Syst. 1270. + Zoophyta—*“ animalia composita, efilorescentia. Stirps vegetans, meta- morphosi transiens in florens Animal.”—Syst. 1287. “ Zoophytanon sunt, uti Lithophyta, auctores suze teste; 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 ipsis obtineant.”—Syst. Nat. edit. 10. 799. When Berkenhout translates the first of these detinitions— ‘‘ stems vegetating and changing into animals ;” Synop. i. 15, he certainly de- parts, if not from the letter, yet from the meaning of Linneus.
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