198 ZOOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY 



Some Features of Analogy between Animals and Plants. 



Although the nature of plants is very different from that of animals, 

 and although the bodies of the one always possess faculties and even 

 substances that would vainly be sought in the other, the fact remains 

 that they are both hving bodies and that nature obviously followed a 

 uniform plan of operations in producing them. In point of fact, 

 nothing is more remarkable than the analogy observed between 

 certain of her operations in these two kinds of living bodies. 



In both of them, the most simply organised only reproduce by 

 gemmae or buds. These are reproductive corpuscles which are hke 

 eggs or seeds, but require no prehminary fertilisation, and which 

 indeed contain no embryo which has to break through its invest- 

 ments before being able to complete its development. Yet in both 

 animals and plants, when the complexity of organisation was sufficiently 

 advanced to permit of the formation of organs of fertilisation, the 

 reproduction of individuals then became exclusively or chiefly sexual. 



Another very remarkable feature of analogy, in the operations of 

 nature, between animals and plants, is the more or less complete 

 suspension of active life, that is to say, of vital movements, which is 

 experienced in certain climates and seasons by a large number of living 

 bodies of both kinds. 



In the winter of cold climates, indeed, the woody perennial plants 

 undergo a more or less complete suspension of vegetation, and hence 

 of organic or vital movements ; their fluids, which are at these periods 

 less abundant, remain inactive : during these conditions, there occur 

 in the plants no losses or absorptions of food or any alterations or 

 development ; in short, their active life is altogether suspended, 

 their bodies become torpid and yet they are not lifeless. Since the 

 truly simple plants can only hve for a year, they hurriedly produce 

 their seeds or reproductive corpuscles in cold climates and die on the 

 approach of the bad season. 



The phenomena of the more or less complete suspension of active 

 life, that is, of the organic movements composing it, are also witnessed 

 in many animals in very curious forms. 



In the winter of cold climates " life comes to an end in the most 

 imperfect animals ; and among those which retain life, a great many 

 become more or less completely torpid, so that in some all the internal 

 or vital movements are suspended, while in others they still exist 

 but are only performed with extreme slowness. Thus although nearly 

 all the classes contain animals which undergo this more or less com- 

 plete suspension of active life, it is particularly noticeable in the 

 ants, bees, and many other insects ; in the annelids, molluscs, fishes, 



