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which they grow ; and from their delicate structure they 

 must be more or less constantly liable to rupture in the 

 peristaltic movements of the bowels, and the passage 

 onwards of the food ; but from the spiral arrangement 

 of one species, and the sigmoicl flexure of another, these 

 graceful filiform plants may be elongated or stretched 

 onwards for a considerable distance without danger of 

 being torn." The economy of these plants is altogether 

 peculiar ; existing as they do under circumstances totally 

 different from those in which all other plants are found, 

 and in this respect strikingly illustrative of the wonder- 

 ful capacities of vegetable life. That vegetable life can 

 exist within animal life is an extraordinary circumstance ; 

 but a circumstance still more extraordinary in connexion 

 with their history is, that many of these entophytes are 

 developed upon entozoa, or animals within animals, and 

 are in their turn the seat of other parasitic entophytes 

 more minute, while even on these parasitic entophytes 

 themselves are produced still more minute forms of 

 vegetation. To exhibit this wonderful chain of life more 

 clearly, in the intestinal canal of a species of beetle 

 there has been found a parasitic animal ; on this animal 

 is found growing a plant ; on this plant is growing an- 

 other plant, and on this second plant a third is developed, 

 the smallest variety of the one being produced upon the 

 largest variety of the other. We have thus within the 

 microscopic compass of a beetle's body, an epitome of 

 what takes place on a large scale throughout the world 

 of sense and sight life supported by life to the third 

 and the fourth degree. These parasite and parasitic- 

 parasite entophytes sometimes grow with such luxuriance 



