176 HISTORY OF BRITISH ZOOPHYTES. 
become as complete a polype as one that had never been 
cut: they expanded, they contracted, they moved from place 
to place. 
Still he was not satisfied, and he continued to study them, 
in the hope that he might discover some other properties. 
According to what he proposed, when he made the experi- 
ment of cutting them, he should now have concluded that 
they were plants, as the two cuttings or slips had produced 
two perfect polypes; but from the spontaneity of their 
movements he was rather disposed to regard them as animals. 
As yet he did not know how they multiplied ; and having a 
great number of them in a vase together, his attention was 
turned to this. At last he discovered one about to produce 
a little one. At first it was like a small green bud on the 
body; it rapidly increased in size, sent forth arms, or tenta- 
cula, as we shall now call them, and dropping off after some 
days, became an independent polype. Was he now convinced 
that the polype was an animal? No; this resembled the 
increase of plants by offsets, and he thought still that the 
polype might be a plant, or rather an animal plant, holding 
a middle rank betwixt the two, partaking of the nature of 
both. While he was in this state of doubt he sent some of 
them to Paris, to the distinguished naturalist Réaumur, and 
