DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN ANIMALS AND PLANTS. 3 



organisms is inorganic particles. The slime-moulds called 

 Myxomycetes, however, envelop the plant or low animals, 

 much as an Amoeba throws itself around some living plant 

 and absorbs its protoplasm ; but Myxomycetes, in their man- 

 ner of taking food, are an exception to other moulds. The 

 lowest animals swallow other living animals whole or in 

 pieces ; certain forms like Amoeba (Fig. 2) bore into minute 

 algas and absorb their pro- 

 toplasm ; others engulf sili- 

 cious-shelled plants (diatoms) 

 absorbing their protoplasm. 

 No animal swallows silica, 

 lime, ammonia, or any of 

 the phosphates as food. On 

 the other hand, plants manu- 

 facture or produce from in- 

 organic matter starch,* sugar mass. 

 and nitrogenous substances which constitute the food of 

 animals. During assimilation, plants absorb carbonic acid, 

 and in sunlight exhale oxygen ; during growth and work 

 they, like animals, consume oxygen and exhale carbonic acid. 



Animals move and have special organs of locomotion ; 

 few plants move, though some climb, and minute forms 

 have thread-like processes or vibratile lashes (cilia) resem- 

 bling the flagella of monads, and ilowers open and shut, but 

 these motions of the higher plants are purely mechanical, 

 and not performed by special organs controlled by nerves. 

 The mode of reproduction of plants and animals, however, 

 is fundamentally identical, and in this respect the two king- 

 doms unite more closely than in any other. Plants also, 

 like animals, are formed of cells, the latter in the higher 

 forms combined into tissues. 



As the lowest plants and animals are scarcely distinguish- 

 able, it is probable that plants and animals first appeared 

 contemporaneously ; and while plants are generally said 

 to form the basis of animal life, this is only partially true ; 

 a large number of fungi are dependent on decaying animal 

 matter; and most of the Protozoa live on animal food, as 



* Starch ha* been found by Bergh in Cilio-tlagellate Infusoria. 



