426 HISTORY OF ZOOPHYTOLOGY. 



zeal the vegeto-animal fancy, because, he says, it illustrat 

 in a wonderful manner other things which were previously 

 obscure and incomprehensible, and because it was in perfect 

 keeping with the doctrine which taught that animated beings 

 were a series of links constituting one long chain, that could 

 not be broken without violation to the continuity of organiza- 

 tion, the different species being so closely connected on this 

 side and that, that neither sense nor imagination can detect the 

 line which separates one from the other. It must be allowed 

 that in Baster the doctrine of Linnaeus has found its best ad- 

 vocate. He tells us that in zoophytes there are too many 

 signs of a perfect vegetation to permit us to believe that they 

 can owe their origin to animalcules so minute as to require a 

 microscope to see them, and the great simplicity of whose or- 

 ganization altogether unfits them for perfecting such works ; 

 and as, from the law of continuity indicated above, it was rea- 

 sonable to presume the existence of beings in which the dis- 

 tinctions between animals and plants should meet and amalga- 

 mate, so by a comparison of their definitions it may be made 

 obvious that these distinctions disappear in zoophytes. A 

 plant is an organized body without sense or spontaneous motion, 

 adhering by means of a root to some foreign substance, whence 

 it derives the material of its life and increase : an animal, 

 on the contrary, is an organized body endowed with sensation 

 and perception, which can, of its own free will, make certain 

 movements peculiar to itself. Like the plant, zoophytes grow 

 fixed by a root ; and yet at the same time they are animals, 

 for they show when touched that they feel by some motion, 

 and when they perceive food proper for them they seize and 

 devour it by the action of certain members. 



Having in this manner commended the theory to our favour, 

 and shewn its reasonableness and consonance to nature, Baster 

 goes on to explain the manner in which he conceives his ex- 

 periments prove that the Sertulariadse or flexible corallines 

 grow. The ova or seeds of these zoophytes, he asserts, pullu- 

 late from the body of the mother in the likeness of tender ar- 

 ticulations or new branches, which fall off on maturity, and 

 adhere to any stone, shell, or other hard body, by which they 

 are protected until the young are excluded. Now the outer 

 coat of this egg or seed is of a vegetable nature, and it throws 



