MENTAL PHENOMENA IN COMPOUND ANIMALS. 799
has an ennobling influence on the corporeal form, and particularly on
the lineaments of the face. A comparison of the forms and features
most general in the different classes of society leaves no doubt as to the
truth of this remark. The form which is acquired becomes hereditary.
This influence is most manifest in the most exclusive ranks of society,
which seldom intermarry with other ranks, and in which the education
of the children is carefully attended to. The only way in which we
can conceive the form of the features to be influenced by the culture
of the mind is, that all excess of nutritive matter is removed from
them, and their formation more strictly confined to the type of the
organism.
Of the mental phenomena in compound and divided animals, and in animals
united by abnormal concretion.
a. In compound animals.—Among the lower animals there are many which really
represent systems of numerous individuals, united by one common stem. Plants,
likewise, are aggregates of many concurrent individuals rather than simple organisms.
For the leaf-buds of a plant are individuals which have all the same structure,Tiave the
power of independent existence when separated artificially or spontaneously, and are
capable of developing new systems of similar individuals. The vessels of each bud
are prolonged in the vascular layers of the common stem as far as the root, and thus
the stem resembles a fasciculus of distinct individual plants, which develope them¬
selves at different points of its length.
The compound animals comprehend the compound Vorticeîlinæ, Polypifera, Entozoa,
and Mollusca, as well as all those animals which propagate by division, at the period
when their separating parts are not wholly detached. Two distinct individuals of the
compound animals are sometimes united by a common stem, of which they represent
the branches, and from which they are developed by the formation of buds; as in the
case of the compound branched polypes. Sometimes they are united in a radiate
manner, wThich is the form of the Botrylli; whilst in other cases many are connected
in one mass, or, like the Infusoria, which propagate by longitudinal division, they are
united in a lateral series; or, again, like other Infusoria, and some Annelida,_which
propagate by transverse division,—they are connected in a longitudinal chain. Most
plants, and all the compound animals, are to be regarded as families of individuals,
which either are developed singly upon the common stem, as in the majority of in¬
stances, or are compound even in their embryonic condition, as in the case with the
Botrylli, according to the observation of Sars. (Froriep's Notizen, 1837, No. 51.) In
some instances the different individuals composing the compound animal have certain
important organs in common. Thus, in the Sertulariae, the canal of the stem communi¬
cates w ith the digestive cavities of each single polype. In the Hydræ, it was observed
by Trembley that the digestive cavity of the young polype at first formed part ofthat
of the parent animal, and that the food passed from the one to the other. In the Nais,
also, during the development of several new individuals by division, the intestinal canal
is continued through the whole series, and the parent animal takes food for them all.
In those Annelida which undergo spontaneous division, the imperfectly formed new
creatures, which are ’merely composed of a certain number of the segments of the
parent animal, at one period evidently obey the sensorium seated in the°cephalic por¬
tion of the parent, and execute its desires and resolves. But, in proportion as their
separation becomes more complete, and the parts which are to form the new animals
become independent, and acquire new centres of nervous action by development of
their cephalic portion, each of these new worms, also, becomes endowed with special
will and desires, which it manifests distinctly enough even before it is quite separated,
by its attempts to detach itself from the body of the parent worm.
The distinct polypes, which are united by a common stem in the compound Polypi¬
fera, are independent individuals, endowed wfith an independent will and nervous
centre. The irritation of a single polype causes the retraction of that one only, and
not of all the polypes of the stem. The stem itself has no individuality; it has no
desire, and is incapable of conceiving any object of desire. In it, however, resides