504 BIOLOGY. 



fusoria, Polyps, Acalephse ; being single or double con- 

 centric cysts. 



3109. We may regard the Flower-animals as the fun- 

 damental mass of the sexual parts, which has attained 

 unto free motion. They are sex throughout, or nothing 

 but sex ; it cannot therefore be said that they possess 

 sexual parts like the plants, but that they are sexual 

 parts. They are sexual parts that swim. 



3110. Formerly, most of these Anthoidal animals were 

 actually taken for real plants, on account of their floral 

 and ramular form, and even their very substance; so 

 slightly withdrawn are they from the vegetable kingdom. 

 The whole difference between the two is effected by 

 the water. Could we transpose them into the air, they 

 would then become real plants. 



3111. Now, as the vegetable flower is not a mere 

 sexual system, but is also stock or trunk ; so also is the 

 animal flower at once an organ of digestion, respiration, 

 and nutrition. The lowest condition of these organs is, 

 however, only one of absorption, evaporation, and rigidi- 

 fication ; these processes will therefore be present also, 

 though only upon the lower stage they are Intestinal 

 animals; for in a simple intestine the same processes 

 could occur, only within each other, whereas they are 

 mutually dissevered or set apart in intestine, lung, and 

 capillary system or parenchyma. 



3112. The sexual parts are themselves viscera, or the 

 viscera themselves are sexual parts, just as the fungus is 

 at one and the same time root and seed-capsule. The 

 sexual parts themselves absorb, respire, and nourish. 



The floral sac is not therefore a mere sexual sac, but 

 also an absorbent sac ; upon a somewhat higher grade 

 it is even a digestive sac, the sac-wall itself being a re- 

 spiratory and nutritive paries or wall. 



The sexual function has at once become an ingestive 

 function, tending unto nutrition, or the deglutition of the 

 food is itself an act of copulation. 



The sexual capsule in these animal flowers can as well 

 be termed stomach as uterus, and its wall ovary as well 

 as branchia. 



