Natural History of British. Zoophytes. 79 



and he instantly adopted with zeal the vegeto-animal fancy, be- 

 cause, he says, it illustrated in a wonderful manner other things 

 which were previously obscure and incomprehensible, and because 

 it was in perfect keeping with the doctrine which taught that ani- 

 mated beings were a series of links constituting one long chain that 

 could not be broken without violation to the continuity of organiza- 

 tion, — the different species being so closely connected on this side 

 and that, that neither sense nor imagination can detect the line which 

 separates one from the other. It must be allowed that in Baster 

 the doctrine of Linnaeus has found its best advocate. He tells us 

 that in zoophytes there are too many signs of a perfect vegetation to 

 permit us to believe that they can owe their origin to animalcules 

 so minute as to require a microscope to see them, and the great sim- 

 plicity of whose organization altogether unfits them for perfecting 

 such works : and as from the law of continuity indicated above it 

 was reasonable to presume the existence of beings in which the dis- 

 tinctions between animals and plants should meet and amalgamate, 

 so by a comparison of their definitions it may be made obvious that 

 these distinctions disappear in zoophytes. A plant is an organized 

 body without sense or spontaneous motion, adhering by means of a 

 root to some foreign substance whence it derives the material of its 

 life and increase : an animal, on the contrary, is an organized body 

 endowed with sensation and perception, which can, of its own free 

 will, make certain movements peculiar to itself. Like the plant, 

 zoophytes grow fixed by a root ; and yet at the same time they are 

 animals, for they shew when touched that they feel by some mo- 

 tion, and when they perceive food proper for them they seize and 

 devour it by the action of certain members. 



Having in this manner commended the theory to our favour, and 

 shewn its reasonableness and consonance to nature, Baster goes on 

 to explain the manner in which he conceives his experiments prove 

 that the Sertulariadse or flexible corallines grow. The ova or seeds 

 of these zoophytes, he asserts, pululate from the body of the mother 

 in the likeness of tender articulations or new branches, which fall 

 off on maturity, and adhere to any stone, shell, or other hard body, 

 by which they are protected until the young are excluded. Now 

 the outer coat of this egg or seed is of a vegetable nature, and it 

 throws out from the sides, in the manner of other seeds, certain 

 little roots by means of which it remains permanently attached ; 

 but the internal part of the egg or seed is animal, and growing si- 

 multaneously with its vegetable covering, it is dispersed through 

 all the ramifications and occupies their hollow interior, being de- 



