HYDRADXfi : HYDRA. 



137 



believed albeit credulity may be their besetting sin when even 

 naturalists, familiar with all the miracles of the insect world, were 

 amazed and wist not what to do. " II faut," exclaimed Reaumur, 

 " il faut porter la foi humaine plus loin qu'il n'est permis a des 

 hommes eclaires, pour le croire sur le premier temoignage de celui 

 qui le raconte, et assure 1'avoir vu. Peut-on se resoudre a croire 

 qu'il y ait dans la nature des animaux qu'on multiplie en les 

 hachant, pour ainsi dire, par morceaux ?"* But this illustrious 

 naturalist was himself the first to promulgate, and experimentally 

 to verify, the discoveries of Abraham Trembley, which have been 

 fully confirmed by many subsequent inquirers, and are now made 

 so familiar to us by their admission into elementary works and trea- 

 tises on natural theology, that we read of them with little surprise 

 and without incredulousness. 



* Hist, des Insectes, vi. pref. 49. 



The only fossils which have been referred to this order of Zoophytes are the 

 GRAPTOLITKS. They were probably Sertularinee, although this is still an un- 

 settled point. They are " at present one of the most distinguishing fossils of the 

 Silurian strata." Nine species are enumerated by Mr. Morris in his Catalogue of 

 British Fossils ; and the majority of them are figured in Captain Portlock's Report 

 on the Geology of the county of Londonderry, pi. xix. 



Fig. 30. 



