ANIMAL KINGDOM. 221 



we may suppose ourselves near to the point whence we 

 are to set out in order to procure another type of form. 



From what we have now seen of the Acrita, it would ap- 

 pear that there cannot be improperly assigned to the group, 

 any animal which unites to a soft pulpy consistence an 

 organization so imperfect, as to have the alimentary canal 

 either indistinct or when visible never provided but with 

 one opening, a gemmiparous system of generation, and no 

 traces whatsoever of vessels proper for the purposes of cir- 

 culation and respiration. Such an animal, I repeat, would 

 evidently not be improperly connected with the Polypi 

 and Infusoria, since it possesses their distinguishing cha- 

 racteristics. Many of the intestinal worms, therefore, 

 have been placed among the Polypes on the soundest 

 principles of reasoning. Not however all that heterogeneous 

 mass of beings which compose the Intestinaux of Cuvier, 

 but only such of them as form the greatest part of his 2d 

 and 3d divisions of Intestinaux parenchymatenx, and of 

 the Vers mollasses of Lamarck, beings that have their 

 substance in general entirely consisting of cellular tissue, 

 without any viscera. From the Polypes we appear to enter 

 among these extraordinary animals, by means of the genus 

 Scolex, and others, which to a gelatinous body add a ter- 

 minal orbicular mouth surrounded by four flexible polymor- 

 phous tentacula or feelers. These appendages gradually 

 vanishing in other species, the whole body becomes a sim- 

 ple vesicle, as the Hydatis, that extraordinary animal which 

 is often found in myriads inhabiting the liver or brain of 

 herbivorous animals, and sometimes infesting even man 

 himself. Finally, the mouth itself disappears, and the body 

 has no other characteristic property than being an elon- 

 gated linear flattened mass of cellular tissue ; which ac-: 



