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Updated: May 11, 2025
Was it to the mollusks, from the cephalopodes to the bryozoans, that he had given his preference, and had malacology no more secrets for him? Not at all. Then it was on the radiates, echinoderms, acalephes, polypes, entozoons, sponges, and infusoria, that he had for such a long time burned the midnight oil? It must, indeed, be confessed that it was not on the radiates.
While crabs, butterflies, and birds have evolved through many and varied ancestral forms, the tiny Bryozoans, or, being interpreted, moss-animals, seem throughout all past ages to have found a niche for themselves where strenuous and active competition is absent. Year after year, century upon century, age upon age, they have lived and died, almost unchanged down to the present day.
And finally, beyond all exact human calculation, but estimated at some five million, we reach the Age of Invertebrates in the Silurian, and in the lowest of these rocks we find beautifully preserved fossils of Bryozoans, to all appearances as perfect in detail of structure as these which we have before us to-day in this twentieth century of man's brief reckoning.
Behind this the Age of Mammals may have numbered three millions; then back of these came the Age of Reptiles with more than seven millions of years, during all of which time the tentacles of unnumbered generations of Bryozoans waved in the sea.
BRYOZOANS. No fossils are more common in the limestones of the time than the small branching stems and lacelike mats of the bryozoans, the skeletons of colonies of a minute animal allied in structure to the brachiopod. BRACHIOPODS. These multiplied greatly, and in places their shells formed thick beds of coquina. They still greatly surpassed the mollusks in numbers.
These are known as Polyzoans or Bryozoans; and though to the eye a large colony of them appears only as a mass of thick jelly, yet when placed in water and left quiet, a wonderful transformation comes over the bit of gelatine.... "Perhaps while you gaze at the reddish jelly a pink little projection appears within the field of your lens, and slowly lengthens and broadens, retreating and reappearing, it may be, many times, but finally, after much hesitation, it suddenly seems to burst into bloom.
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