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and at another, series of ramifications ending in soft 
buds or filamentous gelatinous bodies, plant-like 
agglomerations of animals originally free and indi- 
vidualized, but finally associated by junction.— 
When we advance a step further, we ascend to 
those gradations of animal life, which assume the 
form of plants distributing their extravascular co- 
verings into branches with tufts of animal flowers, 
and in this way becoming associated and united one — 
with another. This next series of life isthe poly- — 
piaria. 
The active animals of the polypiaria of Blainville 
are generally of slender figure, provided with thread 
shaped tentacular, or cilix, some are provided with 
horny overculums for closing their cells ; others are 
spread out into convoluted expansions, or are dilated 
into leaves, or are articulated and arranged in a net- 
work of chains. 
OF those which especially command attention for 
their flower-like beauty, we may cursorily notice the 
campanularia, the sertularia, and the plumatella.— 
The ciliated circles rising out of cup-like cells from 
a twisted axis, and the plume shaped tentacula at- 
tached by radical fibres on a horny stem, and fasci- 
culi or bunches of tentacular fringes, retractile and 
closing up, like sleepy blossoms at sundown, are 
some of the most remarkable as well as beautiful of 
these animalized masses in the form of plants. 
It has been remarked that ‘as in a tree the 
flowering and reproductive organs manifest more ac- 
tive and varied functions than the general mass of 
bark and wood which serves to unite them in one — 
