Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/27

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HYDROIDS.
17

HYDROIDS.

By Mrs. S. B. HERRICK.

SOME of the most exquisite forms of organic Nature are to be found in that shadowy border-land which unites rather than divides the animal and vegetable worlds. It is hard to believe, even when looking with careful scrutiny at certain forms of animal life, at

Fig. 1.—Plumularia falcata. (Natural Size.)

the corals, for instance, the sponges, and the hydroids, that an existence which so closely resembles vegetation should be essentially ani-