196 ZOOPHYTES. 



sprung from one side of the stem, on December 10. — Fig. 16. Their number 

 on both sides of the stem itself, had augmented to twenty-five, on Decem- 

 ber 23, the lowest now exhibiting a prolongation which formed into a new 

 cell, displaying a hydra two days later. Another prolongation, as if of 

 two parts, appeared from the third cell below, on December 7 ; this be- 

 came trifid on the 9th ; and a hydra flourished from one of its cells on the 

 15th.— Fig. 17. 



The young twig or upright stem, as above, a, b, ultimately remained 

 nine lines high without farther accessions. 



The germinating principle subsists very long dormant, and it is unex- 

 pectedly demonstrated. Above a year after fig. 12 had been sundered 

 from fig. 11, a regular shoot with five cells on each side, issued from a 

 branch situated about the middle of it. 



The articulations, generally so indistinct in living adult zoophytes, 

 were finely exposed by the young specimens. — Figs. 15, 16, 17. Neither 

 their extent nor their number seemed to be regulated by a uniform prin- 

 ciple. Most of them comprehended a pair of cells, or a space equivalent 

 to the site of a pair ; thence, though sometimes comprehending four, it is 

 questionable whether another, or intermediate articulation, was not incon- 

 spicuous, simply from being too faint, or whether it was really absent as a 

 deviation from the natural form and features of the species. The space 

 intervening between the root and the first cell was indented by eight ar- 

 ticulations. 



The nature of this peculiar feature of zoophytes is not well explained — 

 whether the articulation is a simple contraction of the parts ; whether it is 

 a real segment, wherein certain functions may be carried on independent 

 of the other articulations. 



It is exceedingly difficult to account for the generation of hydrae in 

 these reproductions. The botanist will find a great analogy to the germi- 

 nation of plants, in their progressive increment generating buds instead of 

 animals. But where animation is evidently in the developement, it is per- 

 plexing to conjecture that it may be by the depositation of elementary 

 atoms, commencing at some certain stage, which the product has at- 

 taind, as in a, h, — fig. 14 ; or whether it may not be by the evolution of 



