124 BOTANICAL GAZETTE. 



organic and its consumption in both cases is attended by a true 

 respiration. A better statement would be that plants, in general, 

 have the power of making their own food, while animals, in general, 

 do not. We recognize that the agent in this case is the granule 

 of protoplasm colored by chlorophyll, just as in the consumption 

 of the prepared food the activity is vested in uncolored protoplasm. 

 The presence therefore of chlorophyll granules lies at the very basis 

 of this distinction between plants and animals. It is generally 

 stated that this does not ehold universally, as the fungi are devoid 

 of chlorophyll and some animals are known to possess it. The 

 question has now arisen, whether the so-called animal chlorophyll 

 is the same as that of the plant. The results of some investigations 

 upon this subject are given by K. Brandt in the Popular Science 

 Monthly for October. The investigations seem to show that mor- 

 phologically the animal chlorophyll is by no means the same as 

 the plant, for the green bodies which appear in some animals are 

 themselves cells rather than cell-contents, and are nothing else 

 than unicellular plants which have immigrated to animal bodies. 

 They are both morphologically and physiologically distinct from 

 their hosts, for they can live when separated from them and form 

 starch in the sunlight. Thus the distinction is based on the same 

 principle as before, namely the power of originating, for now we 

 can say not only that plants make their own food and animals do 

 not, but also that plants make their own chlorophyll, while ani- 

 mals do not. But a strange revelation is the relation which these 

 green algae and other yellow algae sustain to the animals in which 

 they live. When they are absent the host animal must live like 

 other animals, but when they are present they can prepare food 

 for their host out of inorganic material and the animal can live 

 with the surroundings of a plant. This partnership arrange- 

 ment beween animals and plants upon the lowest confines of the 

 two kingdoms may not seem unlikely now that it is suggested 

 and reminds one of the sentence in Dr. Gray's Darwiniana, which 

 says that "there is a limbo filled with organisms which never rise 

 hio-h enough in the scale to be manifestly either animal or plant, 

 unless it may be said of some of them that they are each in turn 

 and neither long." Chlorophyll thus holds the same relation to 

 the bodies of animals which it inhabits as it does to plants, and 

 although in the two cases it is morphologically distinct, it is physi- 

 ologically the same. — J. M. C. 



Epipactis Helle borine. — It may be of interest to you and 

 the readers of the Gazette to learn that Epipactis Helleborine 

 (the orchid, new to America, which was found near Syracuse , in 

 1879) has been discovered growing in considerable quantity on the 

 wooded slope of Scajaquady's Creek, in the northerly portion of 

 this city. The plant has been submitted to Gray, who while pro- 

 nouncing it identical with the Syracuse plant, declares that he can 

 discover' no valid distinction between it and Epipactis latifolia 

 Perhaps 200 individuals were noticed.— Davtd F. Day, Buffalo, 'N. Y 



