ORGANIC AND INORGANIC MATTER COMPARED. 73 



But such a survey will not tend to our know- 

 ledge of nature. Superficiality and error are 

 almost convertible terras. 



We shall not here enter into the physiology 

 of the combination of male and female in the 

 same individual. Among the lower orders of 

 the animal kingdom, and among plants in 

 general, (with certain exceptions,) this arrange- 

 ment, for obvious purposes, has been ordained 

 by the Creator. Passing from this topic, we 

 come to another of no little interest, namely, 

 the union of what may be termed distinct 

 centres of vitality, so as to form a composite 

 whole. Here we would first allude to the 

 zoophytes, (class Phytozoa.) On our own coast 

 many beautiful specimens of these plant-like 

 beings exist, as Thuiaria campanularia, and 

 Tertularia ; it is, however, in the warmer lati- 

 tudes of the ocfan that the phytozoa display 

 their most astonishing variety of forms ; some 

 appear like fanu of network ; others, like pliant 

 oziers, bend before the impulse of the current. 

 Here rise up corals with chaliced flowers ; 

 there madrepores, encrusting rocks, form reefs 

 dangerous to the navigator, or rise in islets 

 covered with intertropical vegetation. The 

 zoophytes are polypiferous beings, and though 

 in general each polype forms only one of an 

 assemblage, united together by a common tie — 

 as the bark unites into oneness the whole of the 

 foliage of a tree — yet each polype acts for itself 

 independently of the rest, and expands or closes 

 its floweret-form, according to the stimulus 

 c2 



