Zoophyte

“ The sun, by sending his vivifying rays upon the earth, produces the formation of plants and zoophytes, which are the points of departure of organization. The animated germ deposited by the sun in plants and zoophytes grows, passes from the zoophyte to the mollusc, or articulated animal, and then undergoes a further development, by passing from the mollusc or articulated animal to the fish. This germ of a soul thus becomes a rudimentary soul, provided with certain faculties. ”

“ It is, however, possible that some Euglenæ forms may be animal and others vegetable, and while their place at nature's table is being decided, they must be content to be called Phytozoa, which, as we have before explained, is merely Zoophyte turned upside down. ”

“ There is no spectacle in Nature more extraordinary, or more worthy of our admiration, than that now under consideration. These zoophytes, whose history we are about to investigate—wretched beings gifted with a half-latent life only—these animalcules so small and so fragile—labour silently and incessantly in the bosom of the ocean, and, as they exist in innumerable aggregated masses, their cells and solid axes finish by producing in the end enormous stony masses. ”

“ The most interesting feature in the history of this zoophyte is that of its usually inhabiting the shell of some defunct univalve mollusk, such as the Trochus, or the great whelk, Buccinum undatum. This is not the most curious part of its history. ”

“ The form of the original zoophyte when living, must have been that of an inverted cone or funnel, (hence the scientific name Choanite or funnel-like,) with a long cylindrical digestive cavity in the centre, from which tubes ramified through « 44 » every part of the mass. It was attached to a rock, stone, or shell, by root-like fibres which spread out from its base; and its soft body was strengthened, as is the case in many sponges and animals of a similar nature, by numerous siliceous spines or spicula, which are often found in the flint and chalk (see Lign. 10. fig. 5) . ”

“ These enormous questions would need an army of workers; and we have not one. The fashion is all for the Mollusc and the Zoophyte. (Zoophytes are plant-like sea-animals, including Star-fishes, Jelly-fishes, Sea-anemones, and Sponges.—Translator's Note.) The depths of the sea are explored with many drag-nets; the soil which we tread is consistently disregarded. While waiting for the fashion to change, I open my harmas laboratory of living entomology; and this laboratory shall not cost the ratepayers one farthing. ”

“ Zoophytes are animals every inch of them, however low in the organic scale, and although many of the compound ones imitate the growth of plants and shrubs so exactly in their mode of spreading that it is only by the closest observation we can persuade ourselves they do not belong to the vegetable kingdom. ”

“ When this organic matter, which may be looked on as an universal seed, is collected in any great quantity, as in the seminal liquors, and in the mucilaginous parts of the infusion of plants, its first effect is to vegetate, or rather to produce vegetating beings. These zoophytes swell, extend, ramify, and produce globules, ovals, and other small bodies, of different figures, which have all a kind of animal life, a progressive motion, which is often very swift, and sometimes very slow. ”

“ Frequently but part of the zoophyte is permeated by the silex, and the other portion is in the state of a friable calcareous earth imbedded in the chalk. Sponges and other zoophytes often form the nuclei of the flint nodules; the original substance of the organic [ 186 ] body being in general silicified, and the most delicate internal structure preserved. Shells, corals, and the minute cases of foraminifera, are often immersed as it were in pure flint, appearing as if preserved in a semi-transparent medium. ”

“ For who, after all, to take a few broad instances (not to enlarge on the great root-wonder of a number of distinct individuals connected by a common life, and forming a seeming plant invariable in each species) , would have dreamed of the “bizarreries” which these very zoophytes present in their classification?
You go down to any shore after a gale of wind, and pick up a few delicate little sea-ferns. You have two in your hand, which probably look to you, even under a good pocket magnifier, identical or nearly so. ”

“ THE MOLLUSCS, ETC. The curious floral forms of the Zoöphytes have, as yet, attracted the greatest degree of attention among the constructors of marine Aquaria; yet other forms of ocean life offer equal, if not superior, opportunities for curious observation, and are equally well calculated to bear the confinement of the tank. Among them all, none more than the Molluscs, especially the shell-bearing division, which merits the careful attention of the student of Nature, as forming some of her most singular manifestations. ”

“ The true Zoophytes have all, more or less, the plant-like form, and they readily separate into two great classes, namely, the Anthozoa, or flower-life, and the Polyzoa, or many-life, in which the individuals are associated together in numbers. ”

“ There is a species of Star-fish, so brittle, that it is quite impossible to touch it without breaking it, or rather it breaks itself, for it seems to have the power of casting off its arms at pleasure. These forms complete the Radiate series of animals, they have nearly all a somewhat regular radiated form, and some of them are very beautiful, such as Sertularia, which grow in communities and form many beautiful branched objects, much resembling sea-weeds and flowers, hence the name Zoophyte, which means animal flowers. ”

“ That just described is the simplest, consisting merely of a hemispherical ciliated cup, attached to a single thread. It is barely visible to the naked eye. But there is a compound species which I have this year found to be extremely abundant in my aquarium,—whose occupants, both large and small, it excels in singularity and beauty. In structure it is to the simple Vorticella what a many-branched zoophyte is to an Actinia. My attention was first drawn to the presence of this creature by observing some pebbles and fronds of green ulva thickly coated with a fine flocculent down. ”

“ Before speaking of Molluscs, or Crustacea, or of Fish, suitable to the Aquarium, let us first devote all our attention to our Zoöphytes, those singular creatures whose strange instincts and anomalous forms have been mainly instrumental in attracting the attention of many classes of the public to that curious interest in Aquaria, which is fast spreading into a mania, threatening to absorb all others in its 52vortex, like Infusoriæ drawn within the fatal tentacles of the Actinia. ”

“ A species of animals called Zoophytes, by which are meant beings having such an admixture of the characteristics of both plants and animals, as to render it difficult to decide to which division they properly belong. They are animal in substance, possessed indeed of a stomach, but without the other animal characteristics of blood-vessels, bones, or organs of sense; these creatures live chiefly in water, and are mostly incapable of motion: they increase by buds or excrescences from the parent zoophyte, and if cut off will grow again and multiply; each part becoming a perfect animal. ”

“ Other allied forms are scarcely less beautiful; the petrified zoophytes called Siphonia, which, when living, consisted of a soft mass traversed by tubes, for the free ingress and egress of the water, often display the internal structure of the original: « 86 » as in the polished transverse section figured above, Lign. 24, fig. 3. Other bodies of this class occur in the flint, and present interesting examples of the zoophytes of the chalk ocean. ”

“ A whole family, comprising sponges, corals, and jelly-fish, are called Zoophytes, or plant-animals, from the difficulty of assigning them to one kingdom or the other. On the whole they rather more resemble animals, and are generally classed with them, though they lack many of their most essential qualities, and in form often bear a close resemblance to plants. ”

“ Zoophytes are animals, and nothing but animals; the justification for using a designation which signifies animal-plant is, that many of them have an exterior resemblance to plants; that they divide themselves by offshoots, as some plants do, and are sometimes crowned with organs tinted with lively colours, like some flowers. ”

“ The seeds of the Equisetum palustre appear to be alive by their twisting motion, when viewed through the microscope; but that is not animal life.
"I have just finished a collection of the Corallinæ. I think there are thirty-six species; but I believe some of them will prove varieties. I have most of the copperplates that represent them finished. They are the most difficult to examine of all the zoophytes; their pores are so small, and their manner of growing so singular.... ”

“ That the uneducated and the ill-educated should think the hypothesis that all races of beings, man inclusive, may in process of time have been evolved from the simplest monad, a ludicrous one, is not to be wondered at. But for the physiologist, who knows that every individual being is so evolved—who knows, further, that in their earliest condition the germs of all plants and animals whatever are so similar, "that there is no appreciable distinction amongst them, which would enable it to be determined whether a particular molecule is the germ of a Conferva or of an Oak, of a Zoophyte or of a Man;" ”

“ Edward found numerous Zoophytes along the coast, which excited his admiration almost as much as the Star-fish. Of one species, called “dead-men’s [329] paps, sea-fingers, etc.” (Alcyonium digitatum) , he says, “It is frequently brought ashore by the fishermen, attached to shells and stones. It is curious to observe the strange and fantastic forms which these creatures at times assume. They are loathed by the generality of people when found on the sands. ”

“ The organisms which could not be distinguished from vegetables were termed zoophytes, or plant animals, and, were space available, a comparison might be instituted between the extremes of growth of the animals and plants, from the largest whales to the tiny microscopic protozoa, and from the mould upon jam to the gigantic trees of California, one leaf of which it is said will shelter twenty men from rain. ”

“ Between zoophytes fixed to the soil, like the corals, gorgons, and aggregate zoophytes, such as sea-urchins and holothurias, Nature has placed an intermediate race, namely, the Crinoïdea, a class of zoophytes which are attached to a rock by a sort of root armed with claws, having a long flexible stem, which enables them to execute movements in the circle limited only by the length of this stem, just as the ox or goat in our paddocks is confined by its tether to the space circumscribed by the length of its rope. ”

“ CHAPTER VII. FOSSIL ZOOPHYTES.—PORIFERA OR AMORPHOZOA—POLYPIFERA OR CORALS—BRYOZOA OR MOLLUSCAN ZOOPHYTES.
Many tribes of the extraordinary beings whose mineralized relics are the immediate subject of our investigation, have largely contributed to the solid materials of which the sedimentary strata are composed. In the most ancient rocks in which vestiges of organic structures have been detected, those of Zoophytes hold a conspicuous place ”

“ These sedentary creatures, of which barnacles, sea-anemones, and zoophytes will serve as examples, once attached, do not move from the spot where they have settled down; but it is important to note that not only are their eggs or young mostly liberated into the water, and by it transported to new homes, but in their juvenile stages they often swim vigorously, and thus achieve a wide dispersal.{49} In the plant world, the higher forms, with very few exceptions, spend their lives attached to one spot, like sea-anemones, deriving their food-supply from the air and from the soil ”

“ In like manner, and with equal regularity, zoophytes, the radiata, the articulata, mollusca, fishes, reptiles, birds, and mammals, are ranged, the superior in succession over the inferior classes, in the true ascending order; and yet we at once see that the evidence of the ditch-side, amounting in the aggregate to no more than this, that the remains of the higher lie over those of the lower organisms, gives not a shadow of support to the hypothesis that the lower produced the higher. ”

“ Lign. 73.—These fossil porifera are readily distinguished from those which have engaged our attention by their more symmetrical structure. The body of the zoophyte is a mass of dense porous tissue, of a pyriform or bulbous shape, supported by a slender stem fixed at the base by rootlets. The stem is composed of very fine parallel longitudinal tubes, which extend to a series of canals that traverse the mass, and terminate in openings on the surface of a shallow central cavity, as shown in the section, fig. ”

“ All Zoophytes live in water; most of them in the sea, only a very few in fresh water, such as fresh-water sponges (Spongilla) and some primæval polyps (Hydra, Cordylophora) . A specimen of the pretty flower-like forms which are met with in great variety among Zoophytes is given on Plate VII. (Compare its explanation in the Appendix.)
The tribe of animal-plants, or Zoophytes, is divided into two distinct provinces, the Sponges, or Spongiæ, and the Sea-nettles, or Acalephæ (p. 144) . The latter are much richer in forms and more highly organized than the former. ”