ZOOPHYTES, Zoophyta, (from C•CP an animal, and a plant) is a term applied by naturalists to a class of aquatic animals of a plant-like form, and very simple internal structure. Next to the Infusoria in the simplicity of their internal organ ization and in the multiplicity of their superficial absorbing orifices, the true ramified Zoophytes com pose the second lowest class of the animal king dom. They present no muscular nor nervous sys tem, nor organs for circulation, respiration, or secretion, and from the gemmiparous nature of their generation, they possess no trace of sexual or generative organs. The Zoophytes form a very numerous and diversified class, and from the va riety, beauty, and symmetry of their forms, the novelty and singularity of their living phenomena, their uses in domestic economy and the arts, and their importance in the economy of nature, they constitute one of the most interesting and remark able divisions of the animal kingdom. (See Zoo PHYTOLOGY, Class III.
black dye, and the others which the natives use, are the towha, a tree like the sycamore; the river river, a tree with the grain of the beech; the vow, a species of cork tree; the eckoha, a very large tree, and the kycata, a tall and beautiful tree.
There are only three species that bear useful fruit. Besides the common fern which yields to the New Zealanders their daily food, there is the fern tree with leaves like the fern, from which they obtain material for food. The root is baked between hot stones as they do their potatoes, and it is then con sidered as of a superior flavour to turnips. The herbaceous productions are celery, wild parsley, canary grass, plantain grass, a kind of rye-grass, the flag, and the Phormium tenax, a flax plant and a species of fern admirably adapted for cordage. The fibres of this plant, which was first made known by Sir Joseph Banks, are stronger than those of flax or hemp. The following results were obtained by MM. Thouin and Labillardiere: