9 
sand is found to contain the remains of burrowing animals 
analogous to, and in some cases identical with, Teredo. The 
discovery of these fossil remains may serve to open our eyes toa 
larger view of the place which these creatures occupy in the 
economy of nature. 
Judged by their power to destroy works upon which man has 
bestowed much labour and cost, the destruction of which may 
imperil the lives of many. individuals, and even the safety of a 
whole community, they cannot be looked upon as other than pests 
and enemies, to be battled with and subdued by every means in 
man’s power, but it is probable that at a former period of their 
history they had more beneficent work to do, and that their power 
of rapid destruction may have been one of the instruments in the 
hands of the Creator for preparing the globe for the occupation of 
man. Some such work is now being done by these boring molluscs 
in tropical countries where the mouths of great rivers are liable to 
be closed up by enormous quantities of trees brought down by 
floods. These busy miners rapidly perforate the trees, which thus 
become broken up and carried away. 
FT: 
ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN PLANTS AND 
ANIMALS, 
BY 
MR. G. DOWKER, F.G.S. 
Read Marcu 1, 1882. 
The latest observations of Botanists and Zoologists have removed, 
one after another, the supposed boundary lines between the animal 
and vegetable kingdom, so that we may now well ask if any such 
line exists. 
Cuvier considered the distinguishing character of the animal 
to consist, firstly in its possessing the power of locomotion, second 
in its having a distinct Alimentary canal, and a circulatory system, 
thirdly that it had a more complex chemical composition possess- 
ing Nitrogen, which the plant had not, fourthly that while plants 
breathe out Oxygen, animals breathe out Carbonic Acid. 
One of our most celebrated Naturalists, writing only a few 
years ago, states ‘‘ There is one distinction between plants and 
animals that seems still to hold good, ¢.e., that plants can build up 
their structure from simple elements, while animals can only do so 
from already organised materials.” 
