420 HISTORY OF 



and numbers of animals naturally produced without any union 

 ot the sexes, or other previous disposition of nature. 



This seems to be the most natural way by which these insects 

 are multiplied ; their production from the egg being not so com- 

 mon ; and though some of this kind are found with a little 

 bladder attached to their bodies, which is supposed to be filled 

 with eggs, which afterwards come to maturity, yet the artificial 

 method of propagating these animals is much more expeditious, 

 and equally certain. It is indifferent whether one of them be 

 cut into ten, or ten hundred parts, each becomes as perfect an 

 animal as that which was originally divided ; but it must be ob- 

 served, that the smaller the part which is thus separated from 

 the rest, the longer it will be in coming to maturity, or in as- 

 suming its perfect form. It would be endless to recount the 

 many experiments that have been tried upon this philosophical 

 prodigy : the animal has been twisted and turned into all man- 

 ner of shapes ; it has been turned inside out, it has been cut in 

 every division, yet still it continued to move ; its parts adapted 

 themselves again to each other, and in a short time it became as 

 voracious and industrious as before. 



Besides these kinds mentioned by Mr Trembley, there are 

 various others which have been lately discovered by the vigi- 

 lance of succeeding observers, and some of these so strongly 

 resemble a flowering vegetable in their forms, that they have 

 been mistaken by many naturalists for such, Mr Hughes, the 

 author of the natural history of Barbadoes, has described a spe- 

 cies of this animal, but has mistaken its nature, and called it a 

 sensitive flowering plant ; he observed it to take refuge in the 

 holes of rocks, and, when undisturbed, to spread forth a number 

 of ramifications, each terminated by a flowery petal, which 

 shrunk at the approach of the hand, and withdrew into the hole 

 from whence before it had been seen to issue. This plant, 

 however, was no other than an animal of the polypus kind, 

 which is not only to be found in Barbadoes, but also on many 

 parts of the coast of Cornwall, and along the shores of the 

 contineiil;. 



