S16 Z. ASCIDIOIDA. Alcyonella. 



the parent's, and continued so. In this manner he has seen files of 

 tubes and polypes formed, grafted the one on the other ; he has seen 

 these unite in polypidoms which there would have been no hesitation 

 in regarding as plants, if he had not followed them in the progress 

 of their growth, and if he had not had the opportunity of convincing 

 himself that the whole was but the assemblage of cells constructed 

 and developed one after another, and inhabited by animalcules. 



Baker next described the animal in what Raspail considers its se- 

 cond stage of developement ; and as his description is derived from 

 native specimens, 1 insert it entire, anxious to give as much com- 

 pleteness as possible to the history of a zoophyte which appears un- 

 der so many phases, and regarding which there still exist considerable 

 doubts. "I was first informed," Baker says, "of this creature bymyin- 

 dustrious friend Mr William Anderson, towards the end of the year 

 1743, as his letters shew : and in the year 1744, it was taken notice of 

 by Mr Trembley,who gave it, in his Memoirs, the name of the Polype 

 d Panache, or the Plumed Polype. My friend, who discovered it in 

 his searches for the Polype, called it the Bell-Flower Animal ; and 

 after favouring me with his own observations, sent me some of the 

 creatures themselves, which, living with me for several mouths, I 

 had suflBcient time and opportunity to examine and consider them. 

 And as there seems some little difference between those in my keep- 

 ing, and what Mr Trembley describes, they may possibly be of an- 

 other species, though of the same genus. 



" This is one of the many kinds of water animals which live as it 

 were in societies ; of which some sorts hang together in clusters, but 

 can detach themselves at pleasure ; whilst others are so intimately join- 

 ed and connected together, that no one seems capable of moving or 

 changing place without affecting the quiet and situation of all the 

 rest. But this creature forms as it were an intermediate gradation 

 between the other two, dwelling in the same general habitation with 

 others of its own species, from whence it cannot entirely separate 

 itself; and yet therein it appears perfectly at liberty to exert its own 

 voluntary motions, and can either retire into the common receptacle, 

 or push itself out from thence and expand its curious members, with- 

 out interfering with or disturbing its companions. 



" They dwell together from the number often to fifteen, (seldom ex- 

 ceeding the latter or falling short of the former number,) in a filmy kind 

 of mucilaginous or gelatinous case, which out of the water has no 

 determined form, appearing like a lump of slime, but when expand- 

 ed therein, resembles nearly the figure of a bell with the mouth up- 

 wards ; and is usually about the length of half an inch, and one quar- 



