ARCHER, ON STEPHANOSPHARA PLUVIALIS. 199 
the phenomena of nature and the simple facts are rightly and 
properly viewed. 
To say (with Schenk and many others) that there is no 
actual distinction between the animal and vegetable kingdom, 
whatever may be intended to be thereby conveyed, so far as I 
can see, is simply to say that a germ or partially developed 
organism may go on to find itself, when matured, at random, 
or as chance or circumstances may direct, either an animal 
or a plant, that is, that it is at one time an animal, at another 
a plant, or vice versd. If people confined themselves to say- 
ing that certain phases in the development or history of 
certain organisms belonging to either kingdom are sometimes 
very difficult indeed, nay, with our present limited acquaint- 
ance with them, perhaps impossible, to distinguish from 
similar phases of certain other organisms belonging to the 
other kingdom, then acquiescence becomes a matter of course. 
For, as I venture to think, it is only the development of an 
organism from its germ until it in turn reproduces its germs 
—its origin and destiny—the nature of its ultimate fructifi- 
cation—what it grew from, and what it ends in—its tout en- 
semble, in fact—and no isolated or single phase or temporary 
condition in the course of its development, even though pro- 
tracted—that can decide the point as to its true nature. So 
far as I can at present see, the fallacy seems to me to lie in 
the assumption that a correct diagnosis as to the plant or 
animal nature of any organism ought to be made in a 
moment, at any given stage upon which we accidentally 
alight. It is true, indeed, that of very many of these doubt- 
ful or uncertain organisms, as they ordinarily present them- 
selves to us, the life-history—the beginning and the end—is 
as yet very ‘imperfectly known ; upon suchit would, of course, 
be premature to attempt to decide ; ; nor can I see that such 
cases militate against the view here sought to be expressed. 
“Non semper ea sunt, quae videntur, decipit 
Frons prima multos ”— 
is doubtless oftentimes as true of many of these lowly beings, 
in their way, as it is of men. 
Unger, with the so-called cell-circulation in the vegetable, 
as well as the movements executed by ciliated zoospores, in 
his mind’s eye, expressed himself thus—‘‘ The animal nature 
is in the plant, as it were, caged ’’—as if he would say, as it 
were, that if it could only escape its thraldom, it would be an 
animal. He would doubtless have considered himself doubly 
fortified in this view, had he known that a protoplasmic 
vegetable mass can (and does occasionally) assume an actually 
