Natural History of British Zoophytes. 79 
and lie 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- 
