RADIARIES. 217 



animals take their food by a mouth at one 

 extremity of the body, plants by roots diverg- 

 ing from the other. The reproductive organs 

 in the latter occupy the place and ornature 

 of the nutritive ones in the former. The gay 

 and varied colours of the blossoms, the in- 

 finite diversity of their forms, the delicious scent 

 so many of them exhale, all are calculated to 

 draw the attention and excite the admiration of 

 the beholder, while the organs of nutrition are 

 usually hid in the earth. Not so in the animal 

 kingdom ; the nutritive organs, or rather those 

 that prepare the nutriment, are placed in the 

 most eminent and conspicuous part of the body, 

 in the vicinity of all the noblest avenues of the 

 senses, while those of reproduction are placed in 

 the most ignoble station, and are usually found 

 closely united with those passages by which the 

 excretions of the body pass off. In the Tunica- 

 ries indeed the mouth and the anal passage 1 are 

 usually very near to each other, and in the 

 polypes the same mouth that receives the food 

 rejects the feces, and it even sometimes appears 

 to happen than an animal has been swallowed, 

 and after performing the ordinary revolution 

 in the stomach, has been ejected again in a 

 living state. 



1 PL ATE IV. FJG. 1. 



