FORMS AND SIZES OF ANIMALS. 5 



organic food ; and that Plants are living organisms whose 

 nourishment is derived directly from inorganic materials. 



And it may be stated here that it is one of the chief 

 provinces of the vegetable kingdom to convert mineral or 

 inorganic substances into food upon which animals can 

 subsist. 



As to modes of reproduction, it may be stated, in gen- 

 eral terms, that animals are developed from eggs or some- 

 thing equivalent to eggs ; plants from seeds or something 

 nearly or quite equivalent to seeds ; and that the mode of 

 development, and the extent to which it goes on, are re- 

 garded as essentially different in the two cases. 



Animals, as already indicated, are of all forms and 

 grades, from shapeless particles scarcely bearing the evi- 

 dences of life, and from those that so closely resemble 

 plants that even naturalists are sometimes in doubt 

 whether to call them plants or animals, up to the perfect 

 form and high rank of Man, the highest representative of 

 the animal kingdom. 



The Animal Kingdom embraces all the various forms of 

 animal life, just as the vegetable kingdom includes all 

 plants, and the mineral kingdom all rocks and minerals. 



Animals are of all sizes, from those so minute that the 

 human eye cannot detect them without the aid of the most 

 powerful microscope, up to those of massive proportions, 

 as the elephant and the whale. 



Animals, in some form, are found almost everywhere. 

 They inhabit every mountain, valley, and plain, every for- 

 est, meadow, and field, every pool, bog, and marsh, every 

 stream, pond, and lake, the shores and shallows, and even 

 the profound depths of the sea, and every tree, flower, fern, 

 moss, lichen and fungus; and, in many places, every drop 

 of water teems with animal forms. 



