PROOFS, ILLUSTRATIONS, AUTHORITIES, ETC. xxix 



washed by high tides, and its character varies with its situation and 

 its liability to submersion. 



" ' Algse, lichens, and the collateral orders of fungi,' says Professor 

 Lindley (London's Encyc., p. 9-18), ' may be said to exhibit the 

 lowest stage of vegetable development .... indeed, it seems that 

 each is resolvable into the other,' &c. (ib. p. 924.) ' Of the former, 

 many are considered by some botanists to be animalculse, and others 

 to be the seedling plants of mosses.' Thus in Eng. Botany, as to 

 Conferva stipitata, Confer, striatula, C. tesniceformis, Sir J. E. 

 Smith pronounces himself unable to decide upon their animal or 

 vegetable nature, 'even at the risk of being charged with not know- 



^j fj * " 



ing a coralline from a conferva.' He considers them as ' intermediate 

 links between the two kingdoms.' Not only is our garden cabbage 

 derived from a sea-side plant, entirely different from a cabbage in ap- 

 pearance ; but the same plant, Brassica oleracea, is also the original 

 of the Swedish turnip. (Linnceus Eng. Sot., Bras. Oler.) 



" ' The vegetable and animal kingdoms have,' say Kirby and 

 Spence, * their land debateable, occupied by those ' productions 

 moyennes' to use a term of Bonnet's which are, as it were, partly 



animal and partly vegetable,' (iv. 370) 'but a more striking 



analogy has been traced between the insects that undergo a meta- 

 morphosis and the vegetable kingdom there are circum- 

 stances which afford some ground for supposing that the substance 

 of the insect and the vegetable partakes of the same nature; at least 

 approximates more nearly than that of the insect and vertebrate 

 animal (v. 3, 59).' The development of insects is b}' no means un- 

 deviating, and is capable of being much modified by circumstances. 

 In addition to the striking instance of change of sex, in the develop- 

 ment of a second queen-bee, it may be remarked, that in the pupa 

 state insects are sometimes so matured as to be capable of continuing 

 their race. Dr. Leach gives (from a communication by Sir Joseph 

 Banks) a very interesting account of a spider which, having lost five 

 of its legs, from a web-iveaver became a hunter these legs it after- 

 wards reproduced, though they remained shorter than the others. 

 Linn. Trans xi. 393. 



" In addition to your remarks on the cow the wild original of this 

 animal possesses large lachrymal fossae in the cranium, which in the 

 domesticated animal are entirely wanting. In Hungary and Sweden, 

 there exists a remarkable variety of solidungular pig, ' being single- 

 hoofed like the horse' (the cloven -foot is given by Moses as a specific 

 mark of distinction). Linnaeus has selected the form and nature of 

 the teeth as a distinguishing characteristic of the higher mammalia; 

 yet Blumenbach and others have observed a peculiar conformation 

 of teeth in several Egyptian mummies, human ones, where the incisor 

 teeth, instead of presenting their usual sharp cutting edge, were 

 thick, short, and flat, resembling the molars ; and the canine teeth 

 only distinguishable from the bicuspides by their situation. (Reess 

 Cyclop. Art. Cranium, by Lawrence.) A similar structure has 

 also been observed in the teeth of the Esquimaux and Greenlanders. 



