FOURTH 

 GREAT DIVISION 



OF THE 



ANIMAL KINGDOM 



ANIMALIA RADIATA. 



The Radiated Animals, Zoophyta, or Zoophytes* (a), as they 

 are termed, include a number of beings whose organization, always 

 evidently more simple than that of the three preceding divisions, also 

 presents a greater variety of ^degrees than is observed in either of 

 them, and seems to agree in but one point, viz. their parts are ar- 

 ranged round an axis, and on "one or several radii, or on one or 

 several lines extending from one pole to the other. Even the En- 

 tozoa or Intestinal Worms have at least two tendinous lines, or 

 two nervous threads proceeding from a collar round the mouth, and 

 several of them have four suckers situated round a probosciform 

 elevation. In a Avord, notwithstanding some irregularities, and 

 some very few exceptions — those of the Planaria and most of the 

 Infusoria — traces of the radiating form are always to be found, 

 which are strongly marked in the greater number, and particularly 

 in Asterias, Echinus, the Acalepha, and the inimmerable host of the 

 Polypi. 



* Neither of these denominations should be construed literally. There are some 

 genera in this division in which the radiation is but slightly marked, or even totally 

 wanting, and it is only among the Polypi that we find that constancy and form of 

 flowers which has caused them to receive the name of Zoophytes. These appella- 

 tions, however, indicate our having reached the lowest part of the animal series, 

 and that we have arrived at beings, most of which remind us more or less of the 

 vegetable kingdom, even ia their external forms — it is in this sense that I employ 

 them. 



{^ ((/) We here return to Baron Cuvier ; — the portion of the work written by 

 M. Latreille, which commenced with the Crustacea, in our third volume, having ter- 

 minated with the Dipterous Insects. — Eng. Ed. 



