3112. The sexual parts are themselves viscera, or the viscera themselves are sexual parts, just as the fungus is at one and the same time root and seed-capsule. The sexual parts themselves absorb, respire, and nourish.
The floral sac is not therefore a mere sexual sac, but also an absorbent sac; upon a somewhat higher grade it is even a digestive sac, the sac-wall itself being a respiratory and nutritive paries or wall.
The sexual function has at once become an ingestive function, tending unto nutrition, or the deglutition of the food is itself an act of copulation.
The sexual capsule in these animal flowers can as well be termed stomach as uterus, and its wall ovary as well as branchia.
3113. As being of a sentient, mucous nature, they are point-substance or nervous mass. The tentacula are higher organized stamina, and thus occur as cilia, surrounding the oral aperture or mouth, as in the Infusoria. These palpi or feelers are, from being organs of ingestion, both male penes as well as digits or tongues, as in the Polyps. Their structure is still wholly tubular, while their elongation appears to be for the most part effected by injection with water—they are absorbents, as in the Acalephæ. The Oozoon brings forth young in the same cavity, in which it digests and by which it respires, and impregnates itself with the same filaments, whereby it seizes, swallows, and tastes its food.
In the bottom of the cavity of the Germ-animals, granules develop, which are born or escape through the floral opening—pharynx, and again become similar beings. In others the granules also sprout forth attached to the walls of the cavity, remain there some time united with the parent animal, and thus completely represent the mode of propagation in plants by means of gemmules or buds. Among the Polyps and Acalephæ it is well known that the ova issue from apertures near the mouth; while in the Actiniæ this is stated to take place from the stomach. The ovaria are, as is well known, situated between the stomach and parietes of the body.
3114. The intestinal animals are an entire animal organism, but only in the chaotic condition. They are the fundamental tissue, the cellular system of the animal, and the higher animals are only separated cells.
3115. The propagation is in every respect similar to that of plants. Now, as the seeds are the whole plant upon a small scale, so is the granule or ovum the entire animal; it is liberated through the pharynx and continues to grow merely by increasing in size. But if the young animal protrude through the tegument, that is a true gemmiparous propagation.
3116. Those Oozoa, which like plants can develop buds, consist of several animals, and may be cut in pieces like plants; when each piece becomes again an entire animal.
3117. The Oozoa represent those products of nature which are prior or antecedent to the animal world; namely, first of all plants, and further still the inorganic kingdom also, or the earth, since they have originated in the water and can be as well developed from the stones as the Lichens. There are therefore Lithozoa or Stone-animals, and Phytozoa or Plant-animals, among the Oozoa.