18 LECTURE I. 



sent course of Lectures, to enter, with any degree 

 of minuteness, into the history of the possible 

 cases in which a doubt might be supposed to arise 

 between the two kingdoms, to which sucli parti- 

 cular subject should be supposed most properly to 

 belong. 



The limits of animal and vegetable life are 

 generally allowed to concur or unite in those extra- 

 ordinary beings called Zoophytes, and above all 

 others in those Zoophytes called Polypes, of which 

 four different species have been discovered in our 

 own country, as well as in many other parts of Eu- 

 rope. They are small water animals, of a very 

 tender substance, and furnished at the upper part 

 with several long and slender arms, with which they 

 seize their prey : the body is of a lengthened and 

 tubular form, and the whole creature possesses, in. 

 a very high degree, the power of extending or 

 contracting itself at pleasure. It produces its 

 young principally by a species of vegetation ; cer- 

 tain small swellings or tubercles appearing at in- 

 tervals on different parts of its body, which, in 

 the space of a few days, become complete, and 

 resemble the parent animal in every respect ex- 

 cept that of size. When thus fully formed, they 



