VOL. LVH.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 471 



many kinds of these animals, as well such as swim about freely, as such as are 

 fixed to rocks and shells in the sea, that have a great many mouths in the form 

 of polypes, and yet are but single animals; such as the great variety of 

 pennatulas, or sea pens, among those that swim about, and most of the 

 sertularius, gorgonias, with many others, among those that are fixed. Yet this 

 new animal difl^ers very much from the generality of these. I think I may 

 compare it, to speak in the style of those who maintain that zoophytes vegetate, 

 to a timber tree, that sends out at a distance round it many suckers from its 

 roots, which suckers coming in time to be trees, these may and will, with 

 propriety, be reckoned so many distinct trees, though connected at their roots 

 with the parent tree, and that without any absurdity. 



Lest any doubt should still arise in this abstruse part of the operations of 

 nature, it may be proper to explain myself further, by showing that there are 

 a great many zoophytes, which were formerly called corallines, now sertularias and 

 cellularias, that from a creeping adhering tube send up several single animals, others 

 send up several branched animals. To give an instance or two of each, I shall- mention 

 the sertularia uniflora, or single bell-shaped coralline (see the Essay on Corallines, 

 pi. 14, fig. A and b) and the cellularia anguina, or snake's head coralline (see 

 the same Essay, pi. 22, fig. c) both which, like our actinia sociata, send up 

 distinct animals with one mouth each. 



Whereas the sertularia pumila, or sea oak coralline (see Essay on Coralline, 

 pi. 5, fig. a) and the cellularia bursaria, or shepherd purse corralline (see the 

 same Essay, pi. 20, fig. a) send out animals in the form of spikes or branches, 

 that have many mouths from their own creeping and adhering tubes; and yet 

 both those with one mouth to each, and these with many, I esteem as so many 

 distinct animals, notwithstanding their being connected by an adhering tube, 

 as I have said in the instance of the tree and its suckers. 



To conclude, the importance of the discovery of this new animal to natural 

 history is this, that it clears up that much-disputed point, which is, that the 

 extension or increase of the substance of these zoophytes, is of an animal, and 

 not of a vegetable growth, as some late authors would have us think, by thus 

 making the fact more clear and evident to our senses. For the poetical descrip- 

 tions of some late systematical authors have tended rather to confuse than 

 explain these matters to our ideas; for instance, they call these bodies that rise 

 up like a spike with many mouths, a vegetating stem, and their mouths, which 

 are formed like so many polypes, flowers; though with these supposed flowers, 

 they evidently seize their food, by stretching out their claws, which they call 

 the petals, to convey it to their mouths, that are in the centre of each, to swallow 

 it, digest it, and return the non-nutritive parts back again by the same way. 

 Can this then be called a vegetative life? 



