198 ARCHER, ON STEPHANOSPHERA PLUVIALIS. 
plant cannot give origin to a Fungus—another denizen of 
the vegetable kmgdom! 
The advocates of a “ third kingdom,” intermediate between 
the animal and vegetable, as well as those who hold that, 
there being no distinction between animals and plants, an 
organism may be at one time an animal, at another a plant, 
or that the one may give birth to the other, will each, I sup- 
pose, think they can draw support from the facts adverted to 
inthis paper. In my mind they are opposed to the arguments 
of both. Those who even in this day contend that Volvo- 
cinaces are animals will doubtless feel themselves confirmed 
in that view, on account of their occasional ameeboid state, 
and on account of the parallelism to a certain extent with the 
Gregarinida. But what of Spirogyra, of Mesotenium (Con- 
jugate), of Rhizidium (which probably should be referred to 
Fungi)—of Dr. Hicks’ Moss? When, or at what point, do 
they cease to be vegetables, or are these varied organisms 
always animals? ‘ No!” say the advocates for a half-and- 
between king¢dom—“ Nor plants either—they belong to the 
‘ Protozoa’ or ‘ Phytozoidea,’ or ‘ Primalia,’ or the ‘ Regnum 
primegenum.’” If so, must all the Confervoidee, all the 
Algee—must Dr. Hicks’ Moss? Truly this “ intermediate” 
kingdom would form a most heterogeneous and incongruous 
assemblage, here and there transferred—nay, even sometimes 
violently disrupted, from both sides. Those who may, perhaps, 
think this to be exaggeration, I would refer to Owen’s 
‘Paleontology’ for “ Protozoa;” to Perty, for ‘ Phyto- 
zoidea ;”’* for “ Primalia,” to a paper published not later than 
May, 1863, “On a third kingdom of Organized Beings,” by 
‘hpomas B. Wilson, M.D., and John Cassin;+ and for the 
“Regnum primigenum,” to a paper by John Hogg, M.A., 
F.R.S., &c.—the last supported by a gaudy if not quite con- 
vincing diagram.t 
Kither hypothesis, instead of removing or even smoothing 
any difficulties, seems to me to multiply them manifold, and 
to involve far greater dilemmas, and to plunge us more deeply 
into doubts and perplexities, than those with which we find 
ourselves obliged to contend, when, as I venture to conceive, 
* Perty, ‘Zur Kenntniss kleinster Lebens-formen,’ p. 22. 
+ ‘Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences,’ Philadelphia, No. 3, 
1863, p. 118. The latter writers, indeed, think to make short work of the 
difficulty, by consigning the whole of the Alge, Lichens, Fungi, Spongix, 
and Conjugate, to the “ Primalia.” 
+ “On the Distinctions of a Plant and an Animal, and on a Fourth King- 
dom of Nature,’ by John Hogg, M.A., F.R.S., in ‘ Edinburgh New Pihlo- 
sophical Journal,’ vol, xii, N.S., p. 216. 
