They are seen on primitive, secondary, and other 

 rocks, sometimes on stems of coral, or on blocks 

 of lava, on fragments of vases, and even on human 

 skulls, which are exhibited in museums. Sometimes 

 these Polypidoms wholly envelope the wood that 

 floats upon the water ; at other times they surround 

 and bury the fragments of wrecks, and the old vessels 

 that arc abandoned in the ports ; in fine, there are 

 some whose base, dividing into numerous fibres like 

 those of a root, penetrates deep into sandy or muddy 

 shores to find a point of fastening which the surface 

 cannot afford them. In general their base is solid or 

 extended in the corticiferous Polypidoms ; fibrous in 

 the calciferous ; and non-existing, or almost so, in the 

 carnoid Polypidoms and the cellulifcrous. Thus, as 

 this part only serves the Polypidom to fix itself, v;e 

 may consider it as a means employed by Nature to 

 prevent these beings, deprived of locomotion, from 

 becoming the sport of the waves; in this respect only 

 they resemble vegetables. 



DURATIOxV. 



All organized beings have three epochs of existence 

 — their growth, their perfection, and their decline — 

 both among the animal and the vegetable woild. 



