246 LEISURE-TIME STUDIES. 



They may be animals, it is true ; but on the other hand they 

 may, with equal propriety, and with as little fear of scientific 

 contradiction, be termed plants. The ordinary modes which 

 the botanist and zoologist possess, of recognising each his 

 own and special foster-children, are perfectly useless in 

 assisting us to settle the identity and nature of the monads, 

 which present a singular combination of the properties and 

 actions of both groups of living beings, along with a most 

 mysterious absence of definite characters or of a disposition 

 to lean to either side of living nature. In their mode of 

 feeding the monads might well be animals, but in their man- 

 ner of multiplication they might equally well be plants, and 

 the puzzle is not rendered in the least degree less inex- 

 plicable, when we find that the monads bear a very close 

 resemblance in many points of their structure and life to 

 some avowed animals, whilst on the other hand they closely 

 resemble certain well-known lower plants in other aspects. 

 Thus, whatever increase of knowledge the future may bring,, 

 the nature of the monads certainly forms a moot point in 

 present-day science. 



Another case of equally complicated nature with that of 

 the monads is afforded by the consideration of certain pecu- 

 liar living bodies which in certain features of their existence 

 might well be deemed plants, but which in other, and quite 

 as marked characteristics, exhibit tendencies of animal 

 nature and kind. As will presently be pointed out, the 

 nature of the food has been very justly relied on as a dis- 

 tinctive point between the animal and plant series. The 

 power of plants to subsist on inorganic or lifeless matter 

 derived from the soil and the air, and the necessity, for the 

 support of animal life, of a bill-of-fare in which the chief 

 items are culled from the organic or living side of nature, 

 are facts well known to the great majority of readers. Plants, 

 in other words, feed on water, gases, mineral matters, and the 

 like ; whilst animals, as a rule, can subsist only on living 

 matter afforded by the substance of other animals or by 

 plants. This broad distinction is, however, virtually set at 



