ba 
te a ae ae ee ee “ 
5 z 
25 
“ minerals grow, plants grow and live, animals grow, live, and feel ;” 
but as Dr. Carpenter remarked, “It is a very difficult problem to 
separate plants from animals by the simple distinction of feeling. The 
only idea we have of feeling in the lower animals arises from our 
attributing the same sensation to animals when they move as we 
experience ourselves.” The tentacles of the sea anemones moved when 
they were touched, and so we said the sea anemone felt ; the leaf of 
the sensitive plant moved when touched, the filaments of the barberry 
stamens fell down and struck the pistils when irritated—did they feel? 
The only criterion of feeling was movement in response to touch, and 
if this must be the test then many vegetable organisms, such as the 
sensitive plant, must be classed as animals. 
The test of possessing a nervous system was an equally futile one. 
Some animals, like plants, had no semblance of a mouth or stomach, and 
received their food indiscriminately at any part of their surface. Fungi, 
too, demanded organic and not inorganic matter as pabulum, whilst the 
drosera or sun-dew of our English marshes, which had the faculty of 
entrapping insects,seemed to know what substances wereworthy of being 
retained, as its glands did not close over pieces of wood which were put 
on the leaf, but-a small piece of beef was at once caught and retained 
by the glands, and after some time thé juices were extracted and it be- 
came colourless. These remarks applied with equal force to the sea 
anemone. Could they, on the face of the above experiments, refuse 
power of instinct to the strange animal plant of which he had been 
speaking ? 
It was well known, too, that those tissues of higher animals, which 
had the power of contracting when stimulated, viz., nerve and muscle 
developed voltaic currents, which hada certain direction in the tisSues, 
and Dr. Burden Sanderson, of King’s College, had lately discovered 
that these voltaic currents existed to a remarkable degree in the 
drosera and plants belonging to the same natural order. 
It was further asserted that there were substances found in plants, 
which formed no part of the animal body. First, cellulose, the chief 
constituent of woody fibre, was declared to be distinctive of vegetable 
organisms ; but this substance had been found in the human body. 
Next it was chlorophyl, that green colouring matter which gave plants 
their well-known hue, but Schultze enumerated eight species of ani- 
mals— green animalcules—to which it gave their peculiar colour. 
