368 NOTES. 
4 This twofold division is arbitrary. No essential distinction, founded on 
the nature of the elements concerned, or the laws of their combination, can 
be made; and so many so-called organic substances, as urea, ammonia, aleo- 
hol, tartaric and oxalic acids, have been prepared by inorganic methods, that 
the boundary-line is daily becoming fainter, and may in time vanish alto- 
gether. It should be added, however, that ‘‘those organic compounds 
which have been artificially formed are invariably products of decomposition, 
or, in other words, the excretions or secretions of organized bodies; and are 
far less complex in their constitution than organized structures.’’—GREGO- 
RY’s Organic Chemistry. ‘‘ Chemical synthesis has in reality reproduced 
only matters unfitted for life; that is to say, mineral matters.’’—M. Dumas. 
We would here utter our protest against the introduction of any more terms 
like inorganic, invertebrate, acephalous, etc., which express no qualities. 
5 Even the works of nearly all animals proceed in circles or segments of 
circles. 
® London Quarterly Review, January, 1869, p. 142. It is true of any great 
primary group of animals, as of a tree, that it is much more easy to define 
the summit than the base. 
7 De Bary on ‘‘ Myxomycete ;”? Darwin on ‘Carnivorous Plants.” 
® This, of course, is not universally true. If we regard a tree as an asso- 
ciation of phytons, or plants, instead of an individual, then each leaf and 
petal when developed is perfect and abiding, like the separate Polyps of a 
compound Coral. Some consider every organ a distinct individual exist- 
ence; in this view, an animal, like a tree, is a compact community. 
° It should be noted that plants evolve carbonie acid only when in a 
state of decomposition or exhaustive process, not during normal, vigorous 
growth. Both animals and plants in decay consume oxygen. ‘‘ There is 
every reason to believe that carbonic acid is continually given off from the 
interior of plants, while oxygen is absorbed.’’—CARPENTER. It is interest- 
ing to compare the temporary respiratory organ of plants, the cotyledon, 
with the gills of a tadpole: both disappearing when the evolution of the 
permanent apparatus renders them unnecessary. 
10 There are certain phenomena, even among the higher plants, connected 
with the habits of climbing plants and with the functions of fertilization, 
Which it is very difficult to explain without admitting some low form of a 
general harmonizing and regulating fanction, comparable to such an obscure 
manifestation of reflex nervous action as we have in Sponges and in oth- 
er animals in which a distinct nervous system is absent.—Prof. WYVILLE 
Tuomson’s Introductory Lecture at Edinburgh. 
11 Tf nature had endowed us with microscopic powers of vision, and the 
integuments of plants had been rendered perfectly transparent to our eyes, 
the vegetable world would present a very different aspect from the apparent 
immobility and repose in which it is now manifested to our senses.—Hum- 
BOLDT’S Cosmos, i., 341. 
‘2 See Gray’s ‘“‘Structural Botany,” p. 350; Rolleston’s ‘‘ Forms of Animal 
Life,” p. 148. 
** We may safely say that there is no plant which may not serve as food 
for some animal. 
