414 ADDITIONAL PHENOMENA OF NATURAL MAGIC. 



or into the stock in grafting, and the cutting will reverse 

 the action of its fluids, and throw out its branches with a 

 downward, instead of an upward tendency, such as we see 

 in that plant now so much cultivated, the weeping, or 

 drooping ash, which is a tree grafted on this principle. 

 Among animals the polypes seem to possess still more 

 wonderful powers of vitality. They are tube-like forms, 

 and if turned inside out the outer coating will become a 

 stomach, and the stomach an outer skin. They can be 

 cut into pieces, and each piece will continue to live and 

 become a perfect polype. If punctured, the punctured 

 part will shoot forth a young polype, which may be cut 

 off and separated from the parent, and cut into pieces, and 

 each piece become an independent and perfect polype. The 

 annelides, or earth-worms (Lumbricidce), seem possessed of 

 similar vital energies. These worms, like the leeches, are 

 hermaphrodites (Monoicous), the one end being male and 

 the other female. If cut in two both ends will become 

 separate individuals, and will grow into perfect worms by 

 reproducing the ends of which they are deprived. Nothing 

 is more common in turning up soil than to see worms 

 with a thick and a thin end. These are worms which 

 have been severed by the spade or other cause, the thick 

 end being one of the halves of the original worm, and the 

 thin end being a reproduction of the severed part. In 

 such cases it might be said that the hermaphrodite is two 

 animals joined together, but capable of separate existence, 

 and possessed of distinct and separable vitalities ; and so 

 of plants capable of being propagated by cuttings, 

 and of polypes that they are a combination of many 

 distinct and separable vitalities, and capable, when 

 severed from each other, of self-restoring powers : the 

 plant restoring itself by reproducing the severed root, 

 and the animal by reproducing the severed member. In 

 both plant and animal the hermaphrodite peculiarity in 



