288 Mr. Burnett on the Functions 



rising vapour : and it has been noticed that these pouches 

 become fuller of liquid after the neighbouring plants have been 

 watered, or the floor of the hothouse has been wetted, although 

 none has been supplied to those in question; and the inner 

 sides of these cavities being downy, or often thickly set with 

 hairs, are thus by their structure well fitted to condense the 

 aqueous vapours which float around them ; and the throats of 

 those which cannot closely shut their mouths are frequently 

 so contracted, as, in like manner, to retard the evaporation of 

 the water they contain. Still these plants, although thus 

 curiously constructed, depend greatly also on the soil for their 

 support ; and hence, their stems are unlike the stems of the 

 attached polypes, (Madrepora, Millepora, &c.) which rather 

 resemble the Fuci, in that the organ of /heir attachment is not 

 the organ of nutrition, for, although adherent to a certain 

 spot, the stem by which they are fixed is a mere fulcrum, and 

 not in anywise a root j their absorbents are confined to their 

 upper members, and, as is probably the case, with many Hydro- 

 phytes, chiefly disposed on one surface only. In some of the 

 simplest monads, in which no cavity can be traced, the outer 

 surface must be the seat of absorption, and one great effort, in 

 animalization, is the hollowing such a gelatinous point, so as 

 to form a cavity which may represent a stomach; many animals 

 there are, as the Hydatids, which are wholly or little else than 

 stomach. In the polype this pouch, simple as it seems, is, 

 notwithstanding, considerably advanced ; still it is a digestive 

 system only, for the respiratory, circulating, sentient, and 

 reproductive, are all in embryo ; the entire surface is both 

 skin and lungs ; there is neither heart nor vessels, nothing like 

 a brain or nerve, never an organ, or for sense, for instinct, or 

 volition : and even if cut into twenty or fifty pieces, each will 

 become an entire being, possessed of all the faculties, and 

 practising all the arts which signalised its adult parent of which 

 it was so minute a part. This indestructible divisibility of many 

 of the lower animals which thus propagate by buds, by cuttings, 

 or by offsets, was familiar to the vulgar long before the matter 

 was dreamt of by philosophers ; and when Trembley was ex- 

 perimenting on the Asterias and other radiate animals, the 

 fishermen, who saw him cutting them in pieces, jocosely ob- 

 served, l( II per d son trmps, il ne peut pas tuer ces choses" 



