POLYPE. In its Greek and Latin forms the word polypus was first used as descriptive of the Cuttle-fish (^.v.). In speaking of the Acalephat Aristotle says, “They hold their prey as the polypus does with its feelers,” and there is no doubt that in this and other passages he referred to the octopus. The word was also, though less generally, applied to the woodlouse {Oniscus}— the reason for both usages being equally evident. Though the former meaning persists in the word poulpe, yet by the beginning of the 18th century it seems to have been forgotten, and the word was by analogy transferred to a group of animals then beginning to attract much attention. Réaumur and Bernard de Jussieu were the first to fix the usage of the word polype as applicable to hydroids, corals, and Polyzoa. In following up the discoveries of Marsigli and Peysonelle in regard to the little coral organisms, Jussieu used the name polype definitely to describe those Sertularians, Alcyonians, sea-mats, &c., which were then (1742) known as animals. Trembley had previously rediscovered Leeuwenhoek’s Hydra, and described it as a freshwater polype in a work which appeared in 1744. A polyzoon too, discovered both by Trembley and Baker in 1741, was called by the former Polype à Panache. We find the word used with the same content as Jussieu had assigned to it by Ellis in 1755, by Cavolini in 1783, and by others. In 1816 Lamouroux published his Histoire des Polypiers Coralligènes, in the preface of which he speaks of the varied character of this group of animals “nommés Hydres par Linné et Polypes par Réaumur.” In his own use of the term he applied it to sponges, hydroids, corals, and Flustrae. Lamarck too used the word very widely, and spoke of Polypei as (1) ciliati, including some ...